My understanding is that Discussion is simply an area that can house a larger set of materials than can the main area of Less Wrong. It is in no way limited to meta-level discussions, but meta-level discussions are welcome there.
There’s been a general request to keep meta-level discussions in the main area to a minimum, though not to zero. This request seems sensible to me. It would be nice to keep the main site full of posts that can actually help readers improve their rationality, with high signal to noise. And the Discussion area allows us to have most of the benefits from meta-level discussions without diluting the main site.
But I like the energy in this post and in some of the comments, and I might regret my original complaint in this case.
It would be nice to get some more explicit guidelines about appropriate content for the front page. In a way, meetup posts are ‘meta’ posts, and less substantial than what I’ve written here. But then, I understand what you mean about now wanting to clog the Posts section with meta-level posts. But maybe it’s okay if it’s in the Posts section but not promoted to the front page? Hard to say. Clearer guidelines would be nice...
Thanks for the link—that makes sense re. a newcomer learning a bit of the back story to LW content aims. I could also see the dividing line being as you put it: those directly focused on improving rationality vs. those about other things. Thanks for the reply.
My understanding is that Discussion is simply an area that can house a larger set of materials than can the main area of Less Wrong. It is in no way limited to meta-level discussions, but meta-level discussions are welcome there.
There’s been a general request to keep meta-level discussions in the main area to a minimum, though not to zero. This request seems sensible to me. It would be nice to keep the main site full of posts that can actually help readers improve their rationality, with high signal to noise. And the Discussion area allows us to have most of the benefits from meta-level discussions without diluting the main site.
But I like the energy in this post and in some of the comments, and I might regret my original complaint in this case.
It would be nice to get some more explicit guidelines about appropriate content for the front page. In a way, meetup posts are ‘meta’ posts, and less substantial than what I’ve written here. But then, I understand what you mean about now wanting to clog the Posts section with meta-level posts. But maybe it’s okay if it’s in the Posts section but not promoted to the front page? Hard to say. Clearer guidelines would be nice...
Too late I guess; this post got promoted to the front page.
Still, here’s me voicing my request for more explicit guidelines on this subject from the Less Wrong moderators.
Have any materialized since this post was made?
Not really.
Thanks for the link—that makes sense re. a newcomer learning a bit of the back story to LW content aims. I could also see the dividing line being as you put it: those directly focused on improving rationality vs. those about other things. Thanks for the reply.