I feel like Quick Takes and Popular Comments on the EA forum both do a good job of showing me content I’m glad to have seen (and in the case of the EA forum that I wouldn’t have otherwise seen) and of making the experience of making a shortform better (in that you get more and better engagement). So far, this also seems fairly true on LessWrong, but we’re presumably out of equilibrium.
Overall, I feel like posts on LessWrong are too long, and so am particularly excited about finding my way to things that are a little shorter. (It would also be cool if we could figure out how to do rigour well or other things that benefit from length, but I don’t feel like I’m getting that much advantage from the length yet).
My guess is that the problems you gesture at will be real and the feature will still be net positive. I wish there were a way to “pay off” the bad parts with some of the benefit; probably there is and I haven’t thought of it.
I feel like Quick Takes and Popular Comments on the EA forum both do a good job of showing me content I’m glad to have seen (and in the case of the EA forum that I wouldn’t have otherwise seen) and of making the experience of making a shortform better (in that you get more and better engagement). So far, this also seems fairly true on LessWrong, but we’re presumably out of equilibrium.
Overall, I feel like posts on LessWrong are too long, and so am particularly excited about finding my way to things that are a little shorter. (It would also be cool if we could figure out how to do rigour well or other things that benefit from length, but I don’t feel like I’m getting that much advantage from the length yet).
My guess is that the problems you gesture at will be real and the feature will still be net positive. I wish there were a way to “pay off” the bad parts with some of the benefit; probably there is and I haven’t thought of it.