If it’s worth saying, but not worth its own post, even in Discussion, it goes here.
There is no clear definition of what is “worth its own post”, but in my opinion this article is a textbook example of a text that belongs there. Because there are already other texts like this. On the other hand, other texts like this are in Discussion too… which is a bad thing, and we should stop that. (For example this comment is good enough to be a post in Discussion.)
If many people ignore the Open Thread, it makes the website worse—two or three dozen new articles a week, but very little content worth remembering. If you compare it with the old articles, obviously the quality today is dramatically lower. Lower-quality articles are much easier to write than higher-quality articles, so they quickly become a new norm. Then people spend more time on LessWrong and gain less, which causes repeated complaints.
I got the point, no need to explain it. The only think I didn’t know is that there is actually a way to post my question besides starting a new thread in Discussion, all the rest is obvious enough. I think this information should be included in the Welcome thread.
It could in the text on the top of the “Discussion” page, which is also displayed when someone clicks “Create new article”. Currently there is this:
This part of the site is for the discussion of topics not yet ready or not suitable for normal top-level posts. Votes are only worth ±1 point here. For more information, see About Less Wrong.
Could be a sentence there that very short texts belong to Open Thread.
Open thread is a biweekly “article” that says:
There is no clear definition of what is “worth its own post”, but in my opinion this article is a textbook example of a text that belongs there. Because there are already other texts like this. On the other hand, other texts like this are in Discussion too… which is a bad thing, and we should stop that. (For example this comment is good enough to be a post in Discussion.)
If many people ignore the Open Thread, it makes the website worse—two or three dozen new articles a week, but very little content worth remembering. If you compare it with the old articles, obviously the quality today is dramatically lower. Lower-quality articles are much easier to write than higher-quality articles, so they quickly become a new norm. Then people spend more time on LessWrong and gain less, which causes repeated complaints.
I got the point, no need to explain it. The only think I didn’t know is that there is actually a way to post my question besides starting a new thread in Discussion, all the rest is obvious enough. I think this information should be included in the Welcome thread.
It could in the text on the top of the “Discussion” page, which is also displayed when someone clicks “Create new article”. Currently there is this:
Could be a sentence there that very short texts belong to Open Thread.