I think that discussion should be for things that are incomplete that an author wants help with, or that are trivial, funny, or otherwise not as important. That way Main vs Discussion has a functional distinction: Main is things you want to read if you’re a lurker and just want to learn the important stuff; Discussion is things you want to read if you are a community member and want to contribute to the community and help explore vague ill-formed thoughts.
I post some very long, substantive pieces in Discussion because they are incomplete and for discussion.
Dividing things into “short” and “long”, or “significant contribution by poster” vs. “no significant contribution by poster”, is not useful. The Michael Fox lecture is a notable experiment in rationality studies; this post provides new details on it and is therefore significant. It is also complete. The fact that I, the person who has linked to the content, have little to add, is of no interest to someone trying to learn things. I don’t know why you care whether the explanation found here is short or long. The content, the thing linked to, is long and substantive and important; and putting it in Discussion will make people looking for long and substantive and important things miss it.
I’ll move this into Discussion because the parent of this comment has 24 votes—but I think it belongs in Main; and I think the worrying about links going in Main is probably people worrying that somebody else is getting karma too easily, rather than thinking about how to make the site effective.
Well, I’m not vehement about it, but I see the goal of Main as putting our best face forward, and I want it to be reserved for posts that do a lot of work on the reader’s behalf. Yes, this is partly about signaling, but it’s good for new readers if the most prominent material shows strong signals of quality.
Why?
I think that discussion should be for things that are incomplete that an author wants help with, or that are trivial, funny, or otherwise not as important. That way Main vs Discussion has a functional distinction: Main is things you want to read if you’re a lurker and just want to learn the important stuff; Discussion is things you want to read if you are a community member and want to contribute to the community and help explore vague ill-formed thoughts.
I post some very long, substantive pieces in Discussion because they are incomplete and for discussion.
Dividing things into “short” and “long”, or “significant contribution by poster” vs. “no significant contribution by poster”, is not useful. The Michael Fox lecture is a notable experiment in rationality studies; this post provides new details on it and is therefore significant. It is also complete. The fact that I, the person who has linked to the content, have little to add, is of no interest to someone trying to learn things. I don’t know why you care whether the explanation found here is short or long. The content, the thing linked to, is long and substantive and important; and putting it in Discussion will make people looking for long and substantive and important things miss it.
I’ll move this into Discussion because the parent of this comment has 24 votes—but I think it belongs in Main; and I think the worrying about links going in Main is probably people worrying that somebody else is getting karma too easily, rather than thinking about how to make the site effective.
I see someone has already moved it into Discussion, without asking or telling me. How rude.
Well, I’m not vehement about it, but I see the goal of Main as putting our best face forward, and I want it to be reserved for posts that do a lot of work on the reader’s behalf. Yes, this is partly about signaling, but it’s good for new readers if the most prominent material shows strong signals of quality.