I noticed a thing that might hinder the goals of longevity as described here (“build on what was already said previously”): it feels like a huge cost to add a tiny/incremental comment to something because of all the zero-sum attention games it participates in.
It would be nice to do a silent comment, which:
Doesn’t show up in Recent Comments
Collapsed by default
(less confident) Doesn’t show up in author’s notifications (unless “Notify on Silent” is enabled in personal settings)
(kinda weird) Comment gets appended automatically to previous comment (if yours) in a nice, standard format.
The operating metaphor is to allow the equivalent of bulleted lists to span across time, which I suppose would mostly be replies to yourself.
It feels strange to keep editing one comment, and too silent. Also disrupts flow for readers.
I don’t see often that people have added several comments (via edit or otherwise) across months, or even days. Yet people seem to use a lot of nested lists here. Hard to believe that those list-erious ways go away if spread out in time.
There’s this other economy to keep in mind of readers scrolling past walls of text. Often, I can and want to make what I’m saying cater to multiple attention spans (a la arbital?), and collapsed-by-default comments allow the reader to explore at will.
A strange worry (that may not be true for other people) is attempting to contribute to someone else’s long thread or list feels a little uncomfortable/rude without reading it all/carefully. With collapsed-by-default, you could set up norms that it’s okay to reply without engaging deeply.
It would be nice to have collapsing as part of the formatting
With this I already feel like I’m setting up a large-ish personal garden that would inhibit people from engaging in this conversation even if they want to, because there’s so much going on.
And I can’t edit this into my previous comment without cluttering it.
There’s obviously no need for having norms of “talking too much” when it’s decoupled from the rest of the control system
I do remember Eliezer saying in a small comment somewhere long ago that “the thumb rule is to not occupy more than three places in the Recent Comments page” (paraphrased).
I noticed a thing that might hinder the goals of longevity as described here (“build on what was already said previously”): it feels like a huge cost to add a tiny/incremental comment to something because of all the zero-sum attention games it participates in.
It would be nice to do a silent comment, which:
Doesn’t show up in Recent Comments
Collapsed by default
(less confident) Doesn’t show up in author’s notifications (unless “Notify on Silent” is enabled in personal settings)
(kinda weird) Comment gets appended automatically to previous comment (if yours) in a nice, standard format.
The operating metaphor is to allow the equivalent of bulleted lists to span across time, which I suppose would mostly be replies to yourself.
It feels strange to keep editing one comment, and too silent. Also disrupts flow for readers.
I don’t see often that people have added several comments (via edit or otherwise) across months, or even days. Yet people seem to use a lot of nested lists here. Hard to believe that those list-erious ways go away if spread out in time.
As a meta-example, even to this I want to add:
There’s this other economy to keep in mind of readers scrolling past walls of text. Often, I can and want to make what I’m saying cater to multiple attention spans (a la arbital?), and collapsed-by-default comments allow the reader to explore at will.
A strange worry (that may not be true for other people) is attempting to contribute to someone else’s long thread or list feels a little uncomfortable/rude without reading it all/carefully. With collapsed-by-default, you could set up norms that it’s okay to reply without engaging deeply.
It would be nice to have collapsing as part of the formatting
With this I already feel like I’m setting up a large-ish personal garden that would inhibit people from engaging in this conversation even if they want to, because there’s so much going on.
And I can’t edit this into my previous comment without cluttering it.
There’s obviously no need for having norms of “talking too much” when it’s decoupled from the rest of the control system
I do remember Eliezer saying in a small comment somewhere long ago that “the thumb rule is to not occupy more than three places in the Recent Comments page” (paraphrased).
Why not just have a comment which is a list of bullet points and keep editing it?