First: note that you can turn this off in your user settings. (Habryka mentioned this in the stickied post about it)
The reason we’re pushing meetups this month is because of SlateStarCodex Meetups Everywhere. This is not a permanent change to the site, it’s a temporary solution to a fairly difficult problem. The point is not that people who aren’t interested in meetups should be forced to engage with them, the problem is that we do want everyone who is interested in meetups to know that there’s a major meetup coordination event happening this month.
(I do think we should make the “hide map” button easier to access and will probably add something like that next week)
There’s a generally hard problem where LessWrong as a site does a lot of different things, and there’s really only one space to put things that everyone will see them. We mostly haven’t emphasized meetups over the past couple years because they don’t quite make the cut of “top 2 things that we want everyone to see on the frontpage”. (And meanwhile this has made it harder for meetup organizers to get traction)
I actually think the compromise solution of “once a year, for few weeks, the site reminds everyone that meetups exist and gets them to sign up for notifications if they want them” might actually be the least-bad option. (Although what I notice just now is that the front-page-map fails to have the most important call-to-action there, of the “sign up for meetup announcements” button)
The frontpage map in general was somewhat rushed to be “in time to be useful to SSC everywhere”, so there are probably some more optimizations we can do to it, both to make it easier for people to turn off if they don’t care, and to actually sign up for notifications if they want.
How about asking the user when they click on “Community Events” to allow the browser to get their location? Then if the user says yes, use that location to show the right events on the left side of the front page.
First: note that you can turn this off in your user settings. (Habryka mentioned this in the stickied post about it)
The reason we’re pushing meetups this month is because of SlateStarCodex Meetups Everywhere. This is not a permanent change to the site, it’s a temporary solution to a fairly difficult problem. The point is not that people who aren’t interested in meetups should be forced to engage with them, the problem is that we do want everyone who is interested in meetups to know that there’s a major meetup coordination event happening this month.
(I do think we should make the “hide map” button easier to access and will probably add something like that next week)
There’s a generally hard problem where LessWrong as a site does a lot of different things, and there’s really only one space to put things that everyone will see them. We mostly haven’t emphasized meetups over the past couple years because they don’t quite make the cut of “top 2 things that we want everyone to see on the frontpage”. (And meanwhile this has made it harder for meetup organizers to get traction)
I actually think the compromise solution of “once a year, for few weeks, the site reminds everyone that meetups exist and gets them to sign up for notifications if they want them” might actually be the least-bad option. (Although what I notice just now is that the front-page-map fails to have the most important call-to-action there, of the “sign up for meetup announcements” button)
The frontpage map in general was somewhat rushed to be “in time to be useful to SSC everywhere”, so there are probably some more optimizations we can do to it, both to make it easier for people to turn off if they don’t care, and to actually sign up for notifications if they want.
Aha, thanks. Sorry for being grumpy about it! (I hadn’t known there was a profile setting to turn it off.)
How about asking the user when they click on “Community Events” to allow the browser to get their location? Then if the user says yes, use that location to show the right events on the left side of the front page.
That’s what usually happens, but most people don’t click on community events. So having one month that makes sure everyone knows about it is helpful