My feeling about weirdness is (I think) that it would be a mistake to try to be less weird or to pretend to be less weird, but it might be appropriate to make the weirdness less immediately prominent. For instance, to take one of your examples, maybe not have HPMOR take up 1⁄4 of the “recommended reading” space at the top of the front page, but still feel free to call things “Project Hufflepuff” and refer to HJPEV in conversation with the expectation that most readers will understand and so forth.
It seems kinda unlikely that this level of weirdness-hiding is going to Kill The Spark, given e.g. that old-LW doesn’t have HPMOR on its front page at all.
(I’m trying to think of other notable varieties of weirdness and what my suggestion translates to, but actually I’m not sure there’s anything else that comes close in visible weirdness : useful weirdness ratio.)
My feeling about weirdness is (I think) that it would be a mistake to try to be less weird or to pretend to be less weird, but it might be appropriate to make the weirdness less immediately prominent. For instance, to take one of your examples, maybe not have HPMOR take up 1⁄4 of the “recommended reading” space at the top of the front page, but still feel free to call things “Project Hufflepuff” and refer to HJPEV in conversation with the expectation that most readers will understand and so forth.
It seems kinda unlikely that this level of weirdness-hiding is going to Kill The Spark, given e.g. that old-LW doesn’t have HPMOR on its front page at all.
(I’m trying to think of other notable varieties of weirdness and what my suggestion translates to, but actually I’m not sure there’s anything else that comes close in visible weirdness : useful weirdness ratio.)