Linking to a bunch of posts is going to be TLDR—that’s asking for way too much investment at that stage. Here’s why:
Imagine that you’re on this site you’ve never been to. It has links with words you already know (probably the same old boring crap) and links with words you don’t already know (Is it any good, or am I going to waste ten minutes reading about the etymology of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?). … For these reasons, I had NO IDEA how awesome this site was the first few times I came here.
I explained how to hook the users in Getting Their Attention and here I explain what I needed to know, as a new user, before I could move from being hooked to actually joining:
Relying on links outside the about us page to tell the reader what it’s about is asking for too large of a time investment at that point. They’re not trying to read ten posts on the about us page, they’re coming to the about us page to try and figure out WHETHER to read ten posts.
Also, saying this on the about us page is a bad idea “Less Wrong makes heavy use of previously introduced topics for leverage”—you’re telling them “You have to invest all of this in order to even get started”. What they’re trying to do is to figure out WHETHER to invest. To put the horse before the cart, we have to put the benefit before the cost.
Now, you COULD choose to target a different audience—you could target people who aren’t rationalists, but is an about us page with links on it going to interest them in rationality if they’re not already the type to be interested? No. If you want to target that audience, you’ll have to do something pretty spectacular. Actually, it would be awesomely fun to try and figure out how to do that. I’d be happy to brainstorm with you about that, anytime. But that’s a project. Unless you’ve discovered a method that’s proven to work, I think the best approach is to target the audience who is already on a similar wavelength. People who are already rationalists, or who have similar interests with the current batch of LessWrong users and want to continue to develop in a similar direction.
So, as a person who was already a rationalist, what I needed was to know on the about us page in order for me to make an investment was that there were people like me doing things that I wanted to do with other people like me. If it were me writing the about page, that’s what my main focus would be. It does get more specific though:
Specific things I needed to know before I was interested in joining:
How you define “rationalist”. That’s what finally inspired me to join. I had to realize that there was a community of people gathered around a theme of rationality, and that they do rationality the way that I do. I needed to have that “Wow, a community with people like me!” experience.
It is a community blog (you may want to hint at what that is in case people are new to the concept). I was excited by the idea of maybe finally having an outlet for my ideas. I also wanted to know what the purpose of the blog is and what LessWrong aims to do with it. Action words.
I was excited by the idea of having intelligent people give me real, honest, rational critiques on my perspectives. I didn’t know this at first, but the discussion forum has an attitude that’s a little bit like the serious style of a peer-reviewed journal, it’s not your usual casual internet forum. What people DO with the forum, the purposes that are typically served with it, would be nice to know here. Same thing with the blog. For me, the purposes I was hoping they’d serve were to be an outlet for good ideas that didn’t have any place to go and that they’d be a place where I could be groomed by intelligent people, who would see flaws that I wouldn’t notice. Those were the two main activities I wanted when I joined.
Tell them how big the group is. It’s hard to believe there’s actually a community of rationalists that numbers in the thousands. It’s exciting to hear “There’s this group of people like you and they’re big!” But the number of users isn’t anywhere to be seen and trying to get that out of Google is like nailing jello to a tree (really fun exercise, but not as useful as a fact).
What the community is like. I think this needs to have two versions: A gist, for the “about us” section, that explains what things LessWrong members have in common, and what topics they’re most interested in discussing, geared for making people feel like they relate to the group. And a new user orientation, on a different page. I describe this in a different comment. Seeing that gist of the culture is really important if you want people to have those recognition experiences where they’re like “People like me have gathered! I want to join!”
What the buzz about “sequences” is all about. We could use a little history: This guy Eliezer decided to explain rationality to people so he wrote these pieces of writing called sequences. The sequences are fascinating, challenging, informative, and hilarious. They were interesting enough that they actually began to gain popularity. Lots of people gathered around a theme of rationality and overcoming their biases.
I still don’t have the history of how this started all straight in my head. A crash course in how this phenomenon of people gathering around the theme of rationality happened would be nice. A quick blow-by-blow in chronological order is all I need in an about page. However, I think the first thing to put there is a description that tells people what the group is like and what purposes the group serves, so they get the opportunity to have that “People like me doing stuff I want to do!” experience.
Linking to a bunch of posts is going to be TLDR—that’s asking for way too much investment at that stage.
Hm. When I read the internet, I tend to click on links that look interesting. The idea of my about page rewrite was to provide a bunch of links and try to make them seem interesting, so that people reading the about page would click on at least a few. I don’t see this as asking for “investment”.
I’m glad you’re excited about this project, but I skimmed over your posts and it looks like they’re long on philosophizing and short on string substitutions. How about you write the about page the way you’d like to see it, and we either create a poll or do an A/B test to figure out which version is better?
Also, based on what you’ve describe of your experience finding Less Wrong, it sounds as though you had an unusually intense reaction to finding it. So it seems possible that if you generalize from your example, you’ll do a good job of targeting people whose brains are wired like yours, but a poor job of targeting “typical” readers.
It occurred to me that maybe you missed the fact that I’ve already done rewrites. I’d love to hear specific suggestions, e.g. “Instead of [paragraph X], write [paragraph Y]”. (Of course, you can also rewrite everything if you want. Either would be much easier for me to incorporate changes from than your current “wish list” approach. If you don’t have time to do either, I’ll probably skim over your wish list and incorporate whatever seems the most important.)
There’s a science to getting people to click on links. I am sorry to say this to a person who obviously cares very much about this, but the reason I didn’t provide you “string substitutions” for your links is because that’s going about things the wrong way. Long story short, on the internet, people want cool stuff now. You can’t hide cool stuff behind a link, and you can’t rename the link to turn the link itself into cool stuff. You have to take cool stuff and put it in their face. One has to pay attention to “bounce rate”. The bounce rate is a count of people that left without clicking a link because cool stuff was not put in their face.
I’ve seen the LessWrong website statistics. LessWrong’s home page has a horrible bounce rate. I posted the statistics and explained more here:
I am sorry to say this to a person who obviously cares very much about this, but the reason I didn’t provide you “string substitutions” for your links is because that’s going about things the wrong way.
Er, by string substitutions I meant I wanted to see you actually take a stab at writing the About page instead of just explaining how great it could be. For example, create an account on the LW wiki and make subpages on your account like I did.
About Us—Building Interest
Linking to a bunch of posts is going to be TLDR—that’s asking for way too much investment at that stage. Here’s why:
I explained how to hook the users in Getting Their Attention and here I explain what I needed to know, as a new user, before I could move from being hooked to actually joining:
Relying on links outside the about us page to tell the reader what it’s about is asking for too large of a time investment at that point. They’re not trying to read ten posts on the about us page, they’re coming to the about us page to try and figure out WHETHER to read ten posts.
Also, saying this on the about us page is a bad idea “Less Wrong makes heavy use of previously introduced topics for leverage”—you’re telling them “You have to invest all of this in order to even get started”. What they’re trying to do is to figure out WHETHER to invest. To put the horse before the cart, we have to put the benefit before the cost.
Now, you COULD choose to target a different audience—you could target people who aren’t rationalists, but is an about us page with links on it going to interest them in rationality if they’re not already the type to be interested? No. If you want to target that audience, you’ll have to do something pretty spectacular. Actually, it would be awesomely fun to try and figure out how to do that. I’d be happy to brainstorm with you about that, anytime. But that’s a project. Unless you’ve discovered a method that’s proven to work, I think the best approach is to target the audience who is already on a similar wavelength. People who are already rationalists, or who have similar interests with the current batch of LessWrong users and want to continue to develop in a similar direction.
So, as a person who was already a rationalist, what I needed was to know on the about us page in order for me to make an investment was that there were people like me doing things that I wanted to do with other people like me. If it were me writing the about page, that’s what my main focus would be. It does get more specific though:
Specific things I needed to know before I was interested in joining:
How you define “rationalist”. That’s what finally inspired me to join. I had to realize that there was a community of people gathered around a theme of rationality, and that they do rationality the way that I do. I needed to have that “Wow, a community with people like me!” experience.
It is a community blog (you may want to hint at what that is in case people are new to the concept). I was excited by the idea of maybe finally having an outlet for my ideas. I also wanted to know what the purpose of the blog is and what LessWrong aims to do with it. Action words.
I was excited by the idea of having intelligent people give me real, honest, rational critiques on my perspectives. I didn’t know this at first, but the discussion forum has an attitude that’s a little bit like the serious style of a peer-reviewed journal, it’s not your usual casual internet forum. What people DO with the forum, the purposes that are typically served with it, would be nice to know here. Same thing with the blog. For me, the purposes I was hoping they’d serve were to be an outlet for good ideas that didn’t have any place to go and that they’d be a place where I could be groomed by intelligent people, who would see flaws that I wouldn’t notice. Those were the two main activities I wanted when I joined.
Tell them how big the group is. It’s hard to believe there’s actually a community of rationalists that numbers in the thousands. It’s exciting to hear “There’s this group of people like you and they’re big!” But the number of users isn’t anywhere to be seen and trying to get that out of Google is like nailing jello to a tree (really fun exercise, but not as useful as a fact).
What the community is like. I think this needs to have two versions: A gist, for the “about us” section, that explains what things LessWrong members have in common, and what topics they’re most interested in discussing, geared for making people feel like they relate to the group. And a new user orientation, on a different page. I describe this in a different comment. Seeing that gist of the culture is really important if you want people to have those recognition experiences where they’re like “People like me have gathered! I want to join!”
What the buzz about “sequences” is all about. We could use a little history: This guy Eliezer decided to explain rationality to people so he wrote these pieces of writing called sequences. The sequences are fascinating, challenging, informative, and hilarious. They were interesting enough that they actually began to gain popularity. Lots of people gathered around a theme of rationality and overcoming their biases.
I still don’t have the history of how this started all straight in my head. A crash course in how this phenomenon of people gathering around the theme of rationality happened would be nice. A quick blow-by-blow in chronological order is all I need in an about page. However, I think the first thing to put there is a description that tells people what the group is like and what purposes the group serves, so they get the opportunity to have that “People like me doing stuff I want to do!” experience.
Hm. When I read the internet, I tend to click on links that look interesting. The idea of my about page rewrite was to provide a bunch of links and try to make them seem interesting, so that people reading the about page would click on at least a few. I don’t see this as asking for “investment”.
I’m glad you’re excited about this project, but I skimmed over your posts and it looks like they’re long on philosophizing and short on string substitutions. How about you write the about page the way you’d like to see it, and we either create a poll or do an A/B test to figure out which version is better?
Also, based on what you’ve describe of your experience finding Less Wrong, it sounds as though you had an unusually intense reaction to finding it. So it seems possible that if you generalize from your example, you’ll do a good job of targeting people whose brains are wired like yours, but a poor job of targeting “typical” readers.
It occurred to me that maybe you missed the fact that I’ve already done rewrites. I’d love to hear specific suggestions, e.g. “Instead of [paragraph X], write [paragraph Y]”. (Of course, you can also rewrite everything if you want. Either would be much easier for me to incorporate changes from than your current “wish list” approach. If you don’t have time to do either, I’ll probably skim over your wish list and incorporate whatever seems the most important.)
There’s a science to getting people to click on links. I am sorry to say this to a person who obviously cares very much about this, but the reason I didn’t provide you “string substitutions” for your links is because that’s going about things the wrong way. Long story short, on the internet, people want cool stuff now. You can’t hide cool stuff behind a link, and you can’t rename the link to turn the link itself into cool stuff. You have to take cool stuff and put it in their face. One has to pay attention to “bounce rate”. The bounce rate is a count of people that left without clicking a link because cool stuff was not put in their face.
I’ve seen the LessWrong website statistics. LessWrong’s home page has a horrible bounce rate. I posted the statistics and explained more here:
LessWrong could grow a lot, but we’re doing it wrong.
Er, by string substitutions I meant I wanted to see you actually take a stab at writing the About page instead of just explaining how great it could be. For example, create an account on the LW wiki and make subpages on your account like I did.