Ah, right. Hmmm. That updates me a good deal, but I’m not quite sure it changes my mind on whether a) I think I’d use it consistently or b) whether I anticipate others using it consistently.
Sadly, I strongly suspect that a very large majority of LW usage is shallow, along the lines of casually browsing Reddit. However, it seems that the private notes are only useful for deep usage, along the lines of reading a paper in an academic journal.
Personally, my usage is to check LW multiple times a day very shallowly, and then once in a while when I see something important I go a little deeper on it (probably not enough to use private notes; at least not extensively), and then even more infrequently when something seems very important, I go very deep on it (here I would use private notes). And this actually does seem like a pretty good approach to allocating my time. I’m not sure though.
I agree a lot of use is shallow, and, that seems fine. I don’t really care what percentage of the site is shallow, but I care about how much of it is deep, in absolute terms. So I’d be aiming to just encourage a bit more deep reading on the margin, and optimize the use of it.
(It occurs to me now that the admins tracking overall, anonymized metrics for “how much private notes do people take?” might be an interesting mechanism for measuring “deep reading”)
That makes sense. And I agree with what I think you’re implying: that the question of how worthwhile it’d be to build this feature depends on how much deep usage there is in absolute terms. I don’t have a great intuition for how much there is or where the threshold would be, but I’m moving closer towards thinking that it’d be worthwhile.
Ah, right. Hmmm. That updates me a good deal, but I’m not quite sure it changes my mind on whether a) I think I’d use it consistently or b) whether I anticipate others using it consistently.
Sadly, I strongly suspect that a very large majority of LW usage is shallow, along the lines of casually browsing Reddit. However, it seems that the private notes are only useful for deep usage, along the lines of reading a paper in an academic journal.
Personally, my usage is to check LW multiple times a day very shallowly, and then once in a while when I see something important I go a little deeper on it (probably not enough to use private notes; at least not extensively), and then even more infrequently when something seems very important, I go very deep on it (here I would use private notes). And this actually does seem like a pretty good approach to allocating my time. I’m not sure though.
I agree a lot of use is shallow, and, that seems fine. I don’t really care what percentage of the site is shallow, but I care about how much of it is deep, in absolute terms. So I’d be aiming to just encourage a bit more deep reading on the margin, and optimize the use of it.
(It occurs to me now that the admins tracking overall, anonymized metrics for “how much private notes do people take?” might be an interesting mechanism for measuring “deep reading”)
That makes sense. And I agree with what I think you’re implying: that the question of how worthwhile it’d be to build this feature depends on how much deep usage there is in absolute terms. I don’t have a great intuition for how much there is or where the threshold would be, but I’m moving closer towards thinking that it’d be worthwhile.