Thank you for posting this. I did not attend very close to the other posts you wrote on SIAI . This one grabbed my attention because I am in the middle of preparing my first Less Wrong top level post, and would like it if people like it and I am a little anxious about how it will go. I think one thing I am going to do is post it and not read any of the comments for a week, or at least not post any follow-on comments for a week. I see many times people make an OK post or a post with only small flaws and then they jump into the discussion and look far worse in their comments than they did with their top post.
Craig: Please, please, for the love of Bayes, discuss your post in the new discussion area or on the Open Thread before you post it for the first time!
Nobody will plagiarize you, you’ll get some good feedback and a better shot at getting promoted once you do post, and you won’t risk karma at 10x that way.
Thank you for the suggestion. I have been working on the post off and on for over a month, since before the discussion area existed. So I had sort of decided on plunging into the top level post after re-writing and re-writing the sucker. I do not remember how I decided I did not want to discuss it ahead of time in the Open Thread. I like the post. I think it will be well received. It may not be. I am often surprised at how stuff I post on the internet is received; as often better than I was expecting as worse than I was expecting. It is often difficult to judge ahead of time how people are going to respond to what we offer. Still, it seems kind of mealy-mouthed or pussy-footing to not write it up as best as I can and just post it.
I understand how you feel about this, but I think most of the veterans would think more of a person who showed them respect by getting feedback before putting their first post on the main page. Certainly I would.
...I wonder if it would be possible to implement the following feature: the first post for a new account automatically goes to the Discussion page for a few days before it posts to the main site. If that were a known feature,would you be bothered by it?
Are first posts generally low quality? My first post was +50, and in my memory I recall most getting something like +10. Then again I do mostly remember just good posts.
I didn’t delete it or anything. You can read it if you want. It’s a thing I wrote and I tend to leave those where they lie, lest I go too far in the other direction and only have a four-day window of stuff I still like online at any given time.
Scanning back through the recent posts, I saw 4 or 5 first posts at 0 or lower in the last 2 months, out of about 20 first posts. (I have the feeling that there were a few more whose authors deleted them in the vain hopes of getting karma restored, but I could be wrong.)
Obviously, people who have been lurking for a while and hanging out with Less Wrongers in real life have a pretty good expected karma on their first post.
Obviously, people who have been lurking for a while and hanging out with Less Wrongers in real life have a pretty good expected karma on their first post.
And I would expect that people who are already veteran commenters when they post for the first time probably have even better prospects.
I think this comment highlights the distinction between popular and good.
High ranked posts are popular, good may or may not have anything to do with it.
Personally I find all this kowtowing to the old guard a bit distasteful. One of my favorite virtues of academia is the double blind submissions process. Perhaps there are similar approaches that could be taken here.
It won’t be until the 15th of October so I may change my mind and follow your suggestion; and I do appreciate you taking the time to give me this recommendation. That is just how I am leaning now and why.
Thank you for posting this. I did not attend very close to the other posts you wrote on SIAI . This one grabbed my attention because I am in the middle of preparing my first Less Wrong top level post, and would like it if people like it and I am a little anxious about how it will go. I think one thing I am going to do is post it and not read any of the comments for a week, or at least not post any follow-on comments for a week. I see many times people make an OK post or a post with only small flaws and then they jump into the discussion and look far worse in their comments than they did with their top post.
Craig: Please, please, for the love of Bayes, discuss your post in the new discussion area or on the Open Thread before you post it for the first time!
Nobody will plagiarize you, you’ll get some good feedback and a better shot at getting promoted once you do post, and you won’t risk karma at 10x that way.
Thank you for the suggestion. I have been working on the post off and on for over a month, since before the discussion area existed. So I had sort of decided on plunging into the top level post after re-writing and re-writing the sucker. I do not remember how I decided I did not want to discuss it ahead of time in the Open Thread. I like the post. I think it will be well received. It may not be. I am often surprised at how stuff I post on the internet is received; as often better than I was expecting as worse than I was expecting. It is often difficult to judge ahead of time how people are going to respond to what we offer. Still, it seems kind of mealy-mouthed or pussy-footing to not write it up as best as I can and just post it.
I understand how you feel about this, but I think most of the veterans would think more of a person who showed them respect by getting feedback before putting their first post on the main page. Certainly I would.
...I wonder if it would be possible to implement the following feature: the first post for a new account automatically goes to the Discussion page for a few days before it posts to the main site. If that were a known feature,would you be bothered by it?
Are first posts generally low quality? My first post was +50, and in my memory I recall most getting something like +10. Then again I do mostly remember just good posts.
My first post was embarrassingly bad. It was downvoted when new, and remains in the low single digits.
Should I resist the temptation to check it out?
I didn’t delete it or anything. You can read it if you want. It’s a thing I wrote and I tend to leave those where they lie, lest I go too far in the other direction and only have a four-day window of stuff I still like online at any given time.
Scanning back through the recent posts, I saw 4 or 5 first posts at 0 or lower in the last 2 months, out of about 20 first posts. (I have the feeling that there were a few more whose authors deleted them in the vain hopes of getting karma restored, but I could be wrong.)
Obviously, people who have been lurking for a while and hanging out with Less Wrongers in real life have a pretty good expected karma on their first post.
And I would expect that people who are already veteran commenters when they post for the first time probably have even better prospects.
I think this comment highlights the distinction between popular and good.
High ranked posts are popular, good may or may not have anything to do with it.
Personally I find all this kowtowing to the old guard a bit distasteful. One of my favorite virtues of academia is the double blind submissions process. Perhaps there are similar approaches that could be taken here.
It won’t be until the 15th of October so I may change my mind and follow your suggestion; and I do appreciate you taking the time to give me this recommendation. That is just how I am leaning now and why.