So there was a drought of content during Christmas break, and now… abruptly… I actually feel like there’s too much content on LW. I find myself skimming down past the “new posts” section because it’s hard to tell what’s good and what’s not and it’s a bit of an investment to click and find out.
Instead I just read the comments, to find out where interesting discussion is.
Now, part of that is because the front page makes it easier to read comments than posts. And that’s fixable. But I think, ultimately, the deeper issue is with the main unit-of-contribution being The Essay.
Ideas should become comments, comments should become conversations, conversations should become blog posts, blog posts should become books. Test your ideas at every stage to make sure you’re writing something that will have an impact.
This seems basically right to me.
In addition to comments working as an early proving ground for an ideas’ merit, comments make it easier to focus on the idea, instead of getting wrapped up in writing something Good™.
I notice essays on the front page starting with flowery words and generally trying to justify themselves as an essay, when all they actually needed was to be a couple short paragraphs. Sometimes even a sentence.
So I think it might be better if the default way of contributing to LW was via comments (maybe using something shaped sort of like this feed), which then appears on the front page, and if you end up writing a comment that’s basically an essay, then you can turn it into an essay later if you want.
I ended up back here because I just wrote a short post that was an idea, and then went, “Hmmm, didn’t Raemon do a Short Form feed thing? How did that go?”
It might be nice if one could pin their short form feed to their profile.
Yeah, I’m hoping in the not-too-distant future we can just make shortform feeds an official part of less wrong. (Although, I suppose we may also want users to be able to sticky their own posts on their profile page, for various reasons, and this would also enable anyone who wants such a feed to create one, while also being able to create other things like “important things you know about me if you’re going to read my posts” or whatever.)
So there was a drought of content during Christmas break, and now… abruptly… I actually feel like there’s too much content on LW. I find myself skimming down past the “new posts” section because it’s hard to tell what’s good and what’s not and it’s a bit of an investment to click and find out.
Instead I just read the comments, to find out where interesting discussion is.
Now, part of that is because the front page makes it easier to read comments than posts. And that’s fixable. But I think, ultimately, the deeper issue is with the main unit-of-contribution being The Essay.
A few months ago, mr-hire said (on writing that provokes comments)
This seems basically right to me.
In addition to comments working as an early proving ground for an ideas’ merit, comments make it easier to focus on the idea, instead of getting wrapped up in writing something Good™.
I notice essays on the front page starting with flowery words and generally trying to justify themselves as an essay, when all they actually needed was to be a couple short paragraphs. Sometimes even a sentence.
So I think it might be better if the default way of contributing to LW was via comments (maybe using something shaped sort of like this feed), which then appears on the front page, and if you end up writing a comment that’s basically an essay, then you can turn it into an essay later if you want.
Relatedly, though, I kinda want aspiring writers on LW to read this Scott Alexander Post on Nonfiction Writing.
I ended up back here because I just wrote a short post that was an idea, and then went, “Hmmm, didn’t Raemon do a Short Form feed thing? How did that go?”
It might be nice if one could pin their short form feed to their profile.
Yeah, I’m hoping in the not-too-distant future we can just make shortform feeds an official part of less wrong. (Although, I suppose we may also want users to be able to sticky their own posts on their profile page, for various reasons, and this would also enable anyone who wants such a feed to create one, while also being able to create other things like “important things you know about me if you’re going to read my posts” or whatever.)
(It’s now the distant future, and… maybe we’ll be finally gettin around to this!)