HPMOR for me represented the lowest time and effort cost for gaining the ability to kind of grok what this community was about and what its culture was like. I had read a few posts here and there around the original LW site and some posts on SlateStarCodex, but it wasn’t until after I binge read HPMOR over the course of 1-2 weeks that I felt okay with starting on the Sequences. Before reading HPMOR, I could tell that the Sequences were obviously very important to the community, but I wasn’t sure whether they were worth the time and effort to read all the way through...asking new members to read the Sequences before being able to fully join the community is quite a lot to ask of new members (though is still a good thing, since we need that common intellectual framework of thought as a community). Reading HPMOR was fun, I enjoyed the rationality mindset that was conveyed through the story, and I then felt like this was a community I wanted to be a part of. Whether HPMOR should be on the front page or not...eh, I don’t know if it matters very much, I was able to find HPMOR fairly quickly after I initially started poking around the rationalist community internetspace. If putting HPMOR on the front page for new users helps them decide that they want to see what else this community has to offer and to potentially join it, then great. If it doesn’t, then it shouldn’t be on the frontpage, though I do think that having a link that’s reasonably prominent somewhere on the site to HPMOR and other rationalist fanfiction would be a useful and good thing. I want to read other rationalist fanfiction stories, but I’m not really sure where to find them.
I think that the frontpage is missing something very important though...a big link to some content that explicitly states what the community is, why it is that way, and the things the community is actively working on. And, perhaps most importantly, content that explicitly states why Johnny-New-Reader/random person who just stumbled across the site, should actually care about what it is we do here. We need some way of conveying in a relatively concise manner, what it is we do here, why a new person should care, and why they would benefit from sticking around here and eventually reading the Sequences. I think it’s perfectly fine to ask that new members to the community read the Sequences, but I think we should have content that explicitly states why they should and why it’s worth their time. While writing this post, I opened up a new tab to see what clicking on the Sequences link shows you...it shows basically the Sequences, and some info about what they are and that they were written by Eliezer, but there’s no: “And this is why you should read them/this is why they are worth your time” present. Having that kind of content show up on the frontpage (as a link, or whatever form works best) provides new readers with a quick and dirty way to see if they are interested in the rationalist community and if they should spend the very significant time and effort it takes to actually join and take part in the rationalist community.
EDIT: Oops, I totally derped and forgot that this post is in the Meta section...you can ignore the stuff below...
The above paragraph probably belonged more in the Meta section of the site...but it felt tangentially related enough to the subject of this post (should HPMOR be on the front page) that I decided to just post it here instead of creating a new post in the Meta (which I’m not sure if I can do or not, this is only my second comment).
HPMOR for me represented the lowest time and effort cost for gaining the ability to kind of grok what this community was about and what its culture was like. I had read a few posts here and there around the original LW site and some posts on SlateStarCodex, but it wasn’t until after I binge read HPMOR over the course of 1-2 weeks that I felt okay with starting on the Sequences. Before reading HPMOR, I could tell that the Sequences were obviously very important to the community, but I wasn’t sure whether they were worth the time and effort to read all the way through...asking new members to read the Sequences before being able to fully join the community is quite a lot to ask of new members (though is still a good thing, since we need that common intellectual framework of thought as a community). Reading HPMOR was fun, I enjoyed the rationality mindset that was conveyed through the story, and I then felt like this was a community I wanted to be a part of. Whether HPMOR should be on the front page or not...eh, I don’t know if it matters very much, I was able to find HPMOR fairly quickly after I initially started poking around the rationalist community internetspace. If putting HPMOR on the front page for new users helps them decide that they want to see what else this community has to offer and to potentially join it, then great. If it doesn’t, then it shouldn’t be on the frontpage, though I do think that having a link that’s reasonably prominent somewhere on the site to HPMOR and other rationalist fanfiction would be a useful and good thing. I want to read other rationalist fanfiction stories, but I’m not really sure where to find them.
I think that the frontpage is missing something very important though...a big link to some content that explicitly states what the community is, why it is that way, and the things the community is actively working on. And, perhaps most importantly, content that explicitly states why Johnny-New-Reader/random person who just stumbled across the site, should actually care about what it is we do here. We need some way of conveying in a relatively concise manner, what it is we do here, why a new person should care, and why they would benefit from sticking around here and eventually reading the Sequences. I think it’s perfectly fine to ask that new members to the community read the Sequences, but I think we should have content that explicitly states why they should and why it’s worth their time. While writing this post, I opened up a new tab to see what clicking on the Sequences link shows you...it shows basically the Sequences, and some info about what they are and that they were written by Eliezer, but there’s no: “And this is why you should read them/this is why they are worth your time” present. Having that kind of content show up on the frontpage (as a link, or whatever form works best) provides new readers with a quick and dirty way to see if they are interested in the rationalist community and if they should spend the very significant time and effort it takes to actually join and take part in the rationalist community.
EDIT: Oops, I totally derped and forgot that this post is in the Meta section...you can ignore the stuff below...
The above paragraph probably belonged more in the Meta section of the site...but it felt tangentially related enough to the subject of this post (should HPMOR be on the front page) that I decided to just post it here instead of creating a new post in the Meta (which I’m not sure if I can do or not, this is only my second comment).