Indeed. Corrected ; (english isn’t my mother tongue).
On a side note, I’ve never seen any of my posts or comments so thoroughly put down in votes; neither did anyone react by saying anything. Someone to elaborate ? I’m feeling lost and dumb on that one. Is it just that my post didn’t meet some level of quality, and hence was too irrelevant to even call for a reply ? No other reason I could think of seems to fit.
Worrying that I was a useless ineffectual person, and worrying about where all my time went, I put a stop watch on my participation in comp.lang.lisp. I got a terrible shock. “5 minute posts” actually took half an hour to write. Larger, technical posts that I thought took half an hour to write actually took two to three hours.
I contemplate writing a serious reply to your comment. Re-read the top level post slowly and carefully. Think about it. What is it really trying to say? Draft a critique. Think about that that. Cut out my own crap, and stitch the pieces back together. Two hours, minimum.
Participating seriously in an intellectual forum such as LessWrong is very time consuming. Calibrate your expectations around the idea that the open market price, if you were to purchase an intelligent and thoughtful reply, would be $100 to $150. Was your top level post really so excellent that it earned that?
I’ll take that into consideration next time I write a post, as I almost always do write them in one, fast go.
There are a few ideas here that I disagree with, or don’t understand, though.
While my top post wasn’t as excellent as to be worth $ 100, neither were all my comments which were upvoted, and neither are some of the other articles or comments which I have had the occasion to read on LW.
The latter doesn’t excuse poor quality for my part, or anyone else for that matter, as this place deserves our very best, but it nevertheless sets a lower perceived level of posting quality as being admitted and even encouraged here.
The former, puzzles me to no end, as the best explanation I can come up with involve myself having some blatant gap, a blind spot where my intellect and the posting quality derived, is lacking, while in most other instances it appears to be ok.
I have thought about reposting, perhaps in a comment, the main points I was trying to articulate in this article. This way I could maybe see if there’s disagreement or indifference towards any of those, or if the article itself was poorly written, and the point of it, difficult to follow. I’m still afraid that since I appear to be mistaken, and don’t know with certainty why, that I’m only going to worsen this case. Nevertheless, I also need to know, else how am I to do better next time ?
I’m having trouble reading your post, it’s long and confusing and lacks a central argument. It doesn’t seem to get anywhere. Try cutting it down to two or three paragraphs.
No official guidelines have been put forth on that question. If you do edit in a way that could invalidate replies, you should put in a note to that effect. The main reason not to edit is that people who have already read the article are unlikely to see the edits, whereas they would be looking for new comments.
I have to confess that I had a “tl;dr” reaction too; I wasn’t hooked within the first three paragraphs or so, and I scanned for the hook after that but didn’t find it.
Do you mean on the first, or on the second, edited text ? If on the second then it is probably not a good idea for me try to repost this for the moment. I should first attempt to learn how to write more compellingly.
I think that this post still needs another rewrite. I would recommend making it shorter again, and using bullets and other organizational tools. Also, even just a full space between paragraphs would make it more readable. This is the first post that comes up, by the way, when you search ‘theism’.
Pet peeve: loose != lose.
Indeed. Corrected ; (english isn’t my mother tongue).
On a side note, I’ve never seen any of my posts or comments so thoroughly put down in votes; neither did anyone react by saying anything. Someone to elaborate ? I’m feeling lost and dumb on that one. Is it just that my post didn’t meet some level of quality, and hence was too irrelevant to even call for a reply ? No other reason I could think of seems to fit.
Worrying that I was a useless ineffectual person, and worrying about where all my time went, I put a stop watch on my participation in comp.lang.lisp. I got a terrible shock. “5 minute posts” actually took half an hour to write. Larger, technical posts that I thought took half an hour to write actually took two to three hours.
I contemplate writing a serious reply to your comment. Re-read the top level post slowly and carefully. Think about it. What is it really trying to say? Draft a critique. Think about that that. Cut out my own crap, and stitch the pieces back together. Two hours, minimum.
Participating seriously in an intellectual forum such as LessWrong is very time consuming. Calibrate your expectations around the idea that the open market price, if you were to purchase an intelligent and thoughtful reply, would be $100 to $150. Was your top level post really so excellent that it earned that?
I’ll take that into consideration next time I write a post, as I almost always do write them in one, fast go.
There are a few ideas here that I disagree with, or don’t understand, though.
While my top post wasn’t as excellent as to be worth $ 100, neither were all my comments which were upvoted, and neither are some of the other articles or comments which I have had the occasion to read on LW.
The latter doesn’t excuse poor quality for my part, or anyone else for that matter, as this place deserves our very best, but it nevertheless sets a lower perceived level of posting quality as being admitted and even encouraged here.
The former, puzzles me to no end, as the best explanation I can come up with involve myself having some blatant gap, a blind spot where my intellect and the posting quality derived, is lacking, while in most other instances it appears to be ok.
I have thought about reposting, perhaps in a comment, the main points I was trying to articulate in this article. This way I could maybe see if there’s disagreement or indifference towards any of those, or if the article itself was poorly written, and the point of it, difficult to follow. I’m still afraid that since I appear to be mistaken, and don’t know with certainty why, that I’m only going to worsen this case. Nevertheless, I also need to know, else how am I to do better next time ?
I’m having trouble reading your post, it’s long and confusing and lacks a central argument. It doesn’t seem to get anywhere. Try cutting it down to two or three paragraphs.
Is it ok to radically edit and change something that’s been there for more than a day ?
No official guidelines have been put forth on that question. If you do edit in a way that could invalidate replies, you should put in a note to that effect. The main reason not to edit is that people who have already read the article are unlikely to see the edits, whereas they would be looking for new comments.
Then I shall note here that I made that edit, and rewrote the whole text.
TBH, after this long I’d make a new post.
I have to confess that I had a “tl;dr” reaction too; I wasn’t hooked within the first three paragraphs or so, and I scanned for the hook after that but didn’t find it.
Do you mean on the first, or on the second, edited text ? If on the second then it is probably not a good idea for me try to repost this for the moment. I should first attempt to learn how to write more compellingly.
Ooops, sorry, didn’t realise you’d already done the rewrite.
The rewrite is a definite improvement. I still feel you haven’t made your case, I’m afraid.
I feel my issue, beyond the poor writing style, is that I am making not one but two cases.
The case about theism in particular, and then a more general case about tolerance, which is linked to the theism problem, and contains it.
A good deal of what I wanted to say for the second case, as well as stuff I hadn’t thought of, has been better said in the recent It’s okay to be (at least a little) irrational post too.
I think that this post still needs another rewrite. I would recommend making it shorter again, and using bullets and other organizational tools. Also, even just a full space between paragraphs would make it more readable. This is the first post that comes up, by the way, when you search ‘theism’.
Yes.