If LW feels like work then it’s creating an ugh field. I’ve noticed this when I saw someone treating reading HPMOR like homework instead of as reading for pleasure.
The main/discussion split was supposed to help alleviate this but I feel like too many are treating discussion as only appropriate for rough drafts of main material.
If LW feels like work then it’s creating an ugh field.
Not necessarily.
Posting to my own blog is kinda the same way for me sometimes. It hasn’t created an ugh field and I have no problem thinking about it but I end up with a huge backlog of posts with the main idea spelled out but not understandable to others.
A couple partial solutions come to mind:
1) When you see a post that looks like it belongs on LW, tell the author. This gets rid of a lot of the uncertainty about whether LW would appreciate it or whether it’s too off-topic/speculative/whatever.
2) If there are posts (or even unwritten posts) that aren’t yet LW ready but sound promising, offer to help edit it. This takes a lot of the burden off the author to do all the work, and often an extra perspective makes the process more efficient.
3) Make it somehow more rewarding. Make sure to upvote posts you like, make sure you don’t shame people whose posts you don’t like if they sincerely thought they were contributing something you’d like, make sure you treat them how you’d treat a friend that did you a favor rather than a paid worker, etc.
When you see a post that looks like it belongs on LW, tell the author. This gets rid of a lot of the uncertainty about whether LW would appreciate it or whether it’s too off-topic/speculative/whatever.
This. Being invited feels good.
Alternatively, if an author is not sure whether their article is a LW material, they can ask in the Open Thread.
If LW feels like work then it’s creating an ugh field. I’ve noticed this when I saw someone treating reading HPMOR like homework instead of as reading for pleasure.
The main/discussion split was supposed to help alleviate this but I feel like too many are treating discussion as only appropriate for rough drafts of main material.
How can we fix this?
Not necessarily.
Posting to my own blog is kinda the same way for me sometimes. It hasn’t created an ugh field and I have no problem thinking about it but I end up with a huge backlog of posts with the main idea spelled out but not understandable to others.
A couple partial solutions come to mind:
1) When you see a post that looks like it belongs on LW, tell the author. This gets rid of a lot of the uncertainty about whether LW would appreciate it or whether it’s too off-topic/speculative/whatever.
2) If there are posts (or even unwritten posts) that aren’t yet LW ready but sound promising, offer to help edit it. This takes a lot of the burden off the author to do all the work, and often an extra perspective makes the process more efficient.
3) Make it somehow more rewarding. Make sure to upvote posts you like, make sure you don’t shame people whose posts you don’t like if they sincerely thought they were contributing something you’d like, make sure you treat them how you’d treat a friend that did you a favor rather than a paid worker, etc.
This. Being invited feels good.
Alternatively, if an author is not sure whether their article is a LW material, they can ask in the Open Thread.