Having thought about this a little more, here’s another reason I’m in favor in subreddits: they would keep people from seeing, or more importantly from voting down, posts which merely don’t interest them. I think there are whole topics which don’t do well because some people think “oh, this isn’t relevant to me/less wrong”—but there’s still a subcommunity here which is interested in exploring them rationally, and posts on that topic would be better served in a subreddit for that community. (I’m thinking of meditation, but I’m sure there are others.)
Or, to come at it another way, having a subreddit for a topic would allow people to explore it in more detail in posts there, without having to worry about keeping them readable for the LW mainstream. A post which is interesting and relevant to people who are curious about the rational implications of x may not be interesting and relevant to everyone who is interested in rationality at all.
without having to worry about keeping them readable for the LW mainstream.
To me this is a good reason not to have subreddits. It seems like a recipe for divisiveness, and people already seem to be much more relaxed about voting on Discussion posts; most of them have ratings from 0-10. So topics that aren’t relevant to LW mainstream already work fairly well when they’re left in Discussion rather than being moved to the main site.
Having thought about this a little more, here’s another reason I’m in favor in subreddits: they would keep people from seeing, or more importantly from voting down, posts which merely don’t interest them. I think there are whole topics which don’t do well because some people think “oh, this isn’t relevant to me/less wrong”—but there’s still a subcommunity here which is interested in exploring them rationally, and posts on that topic would be better served in a subreddit for that community. (I’m thinking of meditation, but I’m sure there are others.)
Or, to come at it another way, having a subreddit for a topic would allow people to explore it in more detail in posts there, without having to worry about keeping them readable for the LW mainstream. A post which is interesting and relevant to people who are curious about the rational implications of x may not be interesting and relevant to everyone who is interested in rationality at all.
To me this is a good reason not to have subreddits. It seems like a recipe for divisiveness, and people already seem to be much more relaxed about voting on Discussion posts; most of them have ratings from 0-10. So topics that aren’t relevant to LW mainstream already work fairly well when they’re left in Discussion rather than being moved to the main site.