I really think LessWrong would benefit by giving users avatars. I think this would make the site much more visually appealing, but I also think it would vastly decrease the cognitive load required to read threaded conversations.
Edit: I don’t retract this comment but I should have rephrased it and posted it as a reply to this comment
I also note that avatars could use tricks to solve various constraints I’m imagining the LessWrong team might want to impose.
For example, if you think avatars might make the comments section too visually interesting you could render them in greyscale, or with muted colors. And if you think they might lead to people playing weird games with their avatars (I don’t think this is likely, but I can imagine someone worrying about it), you could let users choose from a small collection of acceptable-to-you, auto-generated images based on a hash of their username.
I originally designed LW with avatars, but couldn’t find a good compromise between avatars and high density of comment sections (they add a bunch of vertical height that means all comments need to either have more top margin or have a much deeper indent).
I am generally open to avatars and might want to give it another shot sometime.
I’d expected you to also be wary of them giving the site a distinctly casual feel, and/or less aesthetically harmonious feel (neither of which are necessarily wrong, but are definitely choices). Do those feel relevant to you?
I was thinking of customly generated avatars that are aesthetically consistent with the site (similar to how Google creates avatars based on your initials, or gives you cool animals if you are a guest)
Interesting, good to know. I’m curious if you considered doing something like lobste.rs, where the avatar is next to the username and the same height as the text.
I’d also find it waaaay easier to track conversations and build models of “who is who” with avatars. A guess I have that hasn’t been verified is that a lot of people on LW might be opposed from a “people would start to use their avatars for signalling purposes” angle. I’d be open to hearing more of that side, but currently I think I’d be for avatars.
I should have posted this comment here and rephrased it, sorry:
I also note that avatars could use tricks to solve various constraints I’m imagining the LessWrong team might want to impose.
For example, if you think avatars might make the comments section too visually interesting you could render them in greyscale, or with muted colors. And if you think they might lead to people playing weird games with their avatars (I don’t think this is likely, but I can imagine someone worrying about it), you could let users choose from a small collection of acceptable-to-you, auto-generated images based on a hash of their username.
np, yeah that small amount of brainstorming from you has updated me to “even if we don’t do [pick whatever image you want] there’s still probs a way to get the visual stickyness”.
I’d also be super interested in the results of a study on ability to recall/track individuals in a thread with their head-shots vs autogen images.
I actually like the fact that I don’t immediately know who is speaking to who in a thread. I feel like it prevents me from immediately biasing my judgment of what a person is saying before they say it.
I really think LessWrong would benefit by giving users avatars. I think this would make the site much more visually appealing, but I also think it would vastly decrease the cognitive load required to read threaded conversations.
Edit: I don’t retract this comment but I should have rephrased it and posted it as a reply to this comment
I also note that avatars could use tricks to solve various constraints I’m imagining the LessWrong team might want to impose.
For example, if you think avatars might make the comments section too visually interesting you could render them in greyscale, or with muted colors. And if you think they might lead to people playing weird games with their avatars (I don’t think this is likely, but I can imagine someone worrying about it), you could let users choose from a small collection of acceptable-to-you, auto-generated images based on a hash of their username.
I originally designed LW with avatars, but couldn’t find a good compromise between avatars and high density of comment sections (they add a bunch of vertical height that means all comments need to either have more top margin or have a much deeper indent).
I am generally open to avatars and might want to give it another shot sometime.
I’d expected you to also be wary of them giving the site a distinctly casual feel, and/or less aesthetically harmonious feel (neither of which are necessarily wrong, but are definitely choices). Do those feel relevant to you?
I was thinking of customly generated avatars that are aesthetically consistent with the site (similar to how Google creates avatars based on your initials, or gives you cool animals if you are a guest)
Interesting, good to know. I’m curious if you considered doing something like lobste.rs, where the avatar is next to the username and the same height as the text.
Yeah, that was the kind of thing I was thinking about. Lobste.rs’ was one inspiration I had for something that did it reasonably well.
I’d also find it waaaay easier to track conversations and build models of “who is who” with avatars. A guess I have that hasn’t been verified is that a lot of people on LW might be opposed from a “people would start to use their avatars for signalling purposes” angle. I’d be open to hearing more of that side, but currently I think I’d be for avatars.
I should have posted this comment here and rephrased it, sorry:
np, yeah that small amount of brainstorming from you has updated me to “even if we don’t do [pick whatever image you want] there’s still probs a way to get the visual stickyness”.
I’d also be super interested in the results of a study on ability to recall/track individuals in a thread with their head-shots vs autogen images.
I actually like the fact that I don’t immediately know who is speaking to who in a thread. I feel like it prevents me from immediately biasing my judgment of what a person is saying before they say it.