The initial attention burst of LW is pretty heavily determined by how much the opening paragraphs and title draw people in. I feel kind of sad about that, but also don’t have a great alternative to the current HN-style algorithm that still does the other things we need karma/frontpage-sorting algorithm to do)
It’s hard to envision a different solution to this problem. When I browse a feed and decide what to read, of course things like author, karma, title, and first paragraph are the things that determine whether I’ll consider reading. How else could things work?
@Charlie Steiner: Also see this comment thread on why it’s so important to pay outsized importance to stuff like the title and presentation. Excerpts from my comment:
if you can’t think of a way to present a piece of content such that people want to click on it, then they won’t click on it, and then all the work that went into making the high-quality content went down the drain.
And:
a bunch of things have to line up for an article to go viral: someone has to click on your content (A), then like it (B), and then finally follow a call to action like sharing it or donating (C). From this perspective, it’s important to put a significant fraction of one’s efforts on quality (B) into efforts on presentation / clickability (A).
(Side note: If this sounds like advocacy for clickbait, I think it isn’t. The de facto problem with a clickbaity title like “9 Easy Tips to Win At Life” is not the title per se, but that the corresponding content never delivers.)
It’s hard to envision a different solution to this problem. When I browse a feed and decide what to read, of course things like author, karma, title, and first paragraph are the things that determine whether I’ll consider reading. How else could things work?
@Charlie Steiner: Also see this comment thread on why it’s so important to pay outsized importance to stuff like the title and presentation. Excerpts from my comment:
And: