It seems confusing/unexpected that a user has to click on “Personal Blog” to see organisational announcements (which are not “personal”). Also, why is it important or useful to keep timeful posts out of the front page by default?
If it’s because they’ll become less relevant/interesting over time, and you want to reduces the chances of them being shown to users in the future, it seems like that could be accomplished with another mechanism.
I guess another possibility is that timeful content is more likely to be politically/socially sensitive, and you want to avoid getting involved in fighting over, e.g., which orgs get to post announcements to the front page. This seems like a good reason, so maybe I’ve answered my own question.
To the extent you’re saying that the “Personal” name for the category is confusing, I agree. I’m not sure what a better name is, but I’d like to use one.
Your last paragraph is in the right ballpark, but by my lights the central concern isn’t so much about LessWrong mods getting involved in fights over what goes on the frontpage. It’s more about keeping the frontpage free of certain kinds of context requirements and social forces.
LessWrong is meant for thinking and communicating about rationality, AI x-risk and related ideas. It shouldn’t require familiarity with the social scenes around those topics.
Organisations aren’t exactly “a social scene”. And they are relevant to modeling the space’s development. But I think there’s two reasons to keep information about those organisations off the frontpage.
While relevant to the development of ideas, that information is not the same as the development of those ideas. We can focus on org’s contribution to the ideas without focusing on organisational changes.
It helps limit certain social forces. My model for why LessWrong keeps politics off the frontpage is to minimize the risk of coöption by mainstream political forces and fights. Similarly, I think keeping org updates off the frontpage helps prevent LessWrong from overly identifying with particular movements or orgs. I’m afraid this would muck up our truth-seeking. Powerful, high-status organizations can easily warp discourse. “Everyone knows that they’re basically right about stuff”. I think this already happens to some degree – comments from staff at MIRI, ARC, Redwood, Lightcone seem to me to gain momentum solely from who wrote them. Though of course it’s hard to be sure, as the comments are often also pretty good on their merits.
As AI news heats up, I do think our categories are straining a bit. There’s a lot of relevant but news-y content. I still feel good about keeping things like Zvi’s AI newsletters off the frontpage, but I worry that putting them in the “Personal” category de-emphasize them too much.
To the extent you’re saying that the “Personal” name for the category is confusing, I agree. I’m not sure what a better name is, but I’d like to use one.
Have we considered “Discussion” and “Main”?
(Context for anyone more recent than ~2016, this is a joke, those were the labels that old LessWrong used.)
It seems confusing/unexpected that a user has to click on “Personal Blog” to see organisational announcements (which are not “personal”). Also, why is it important or useful to keep timeful posts out of the front page by default?
If it’s because they’ll become less relevant/interesting over time, and you want to reduces the chances of them being shown to users in the future, it seems like that could be accomplished with another mechanism.
I guess another possibility is that timeful content is more likely to be politically/socially sensitive, and you want to avoid getting involved in fighting over, e.g., which orgs get to post announcements to the front page. This seems like a good reason, so maybe I’ve answered my own question.
To the extent you’re saying that the “Personal” name for the category is confusing, I agree. I’m not sure what a better name is, but I’d like to use one.
Your last paragraph is in the right ballpark, but by my lights the central concern isn’t so much about LessWrong mods getting involved in fights over what goes on the frontpage. It’s more about keeping the frontpage free of certain kinds of context requirements and social forces.
LessWrong is meant for thinking and communicating about rationality, AI x-risk and related ideas. It shouldn’t require familiarity with the social scenes around those topics.
Organisations aren’t exactly “a social scene”. And they are relevant to modeling the space’s development. But I think there’s two reasons to keep information about those organisations off the frontpage.
While relevant to the development of ideas, that information is not the same as the development of those ideas. We can focus on org’s contribution to the ideas without focusing on organisational changes.
It helps limit certain social forces. My model for why LessWrong keeps politics off the frontpage is to minimize the risk of coöption by mainstream political forces and fights. Similarly, I think keeping org updates off the frontpage helps prevent LessWrong from overly identifying with particular movements or orgs. I’m afraid this would muck up our truth-seeking. Powerful, high-status organizations can easily warp discourse. “Everyone knows that they’re basically right about stuff”. I think this already happens to some degree – comments from staff at MIRI, ARC, Redwood, Lightcone seem to me to gain momentum solely from who wrote them. Though of course it’s hard to be sure, as the comments are often also pretty good on their merits.
As AI news heats up, I do think our categories are straining a bit. There’s a lot of relevant but news-y content. I still feel good about keeping things like Zvi’s AI newsletters off the frontpage, but I worry that putting them in the “Personal” category de-emphasize them too much.
Have we considered “Discussion” and “Main”?
(Context for anyone more recent than ~2016, this is a joke, those were the labels that old LessWrong used.)
I do periodically think that might be better. I think changing “personal blog” to “discussion” might be fine.
Babbling ideas:
Frontpage and backpage
On-topic and anything-goes
Priority and standard
Major league and minor league
Rationality (use the tag) and all other tags.
More magic and magic
LessWrong Frontpage vs LessWrong
LessWrong vs Overcoming Bias
Less vs Wrong