By the by, is this a vote for or against making an actual post on this subject (or neither)? I’m trying to get a sense of whether that would be acceptable and useful; I’ve gotten a handful of upvotes on comments about it, but I don’t know if that means to go ahead or not. (This is an area of local etiquette I’m not yet familiar with and don’t particularly want to take the karma hit for messing up.)
In general, suggestions for site improvements are frowned upon because very few people here are keen on actually implementing them, and the typical response is “Yeah that’d be great, now let’s have a long discussion about how great that is and subtle improvements that could make it even better while not actually doing anything.”
Less Wrong needs improvements, but more than that it needs people willing to improve it. The Intro Page idea has been around for awhile, but the people who have control over the site have a lot of other stuff to focus on and there’s limited time. So overall I don’t think a post would be good, but I’m unsure as to how to fix the general problem.
the people who have control over the site have a lot of other stuff to focus on
If it was done on the wiki, would they need to commit time to it? It seems like a dedicated member or set of members could just write the page and present it to the community as a fait accompli. The only reason I haven’t done it is that i don’t feel I know enough yet. Maybe I’ll do it anyway, and that will inspire more experienced LWers to come fix it. ;)
Yes, write something on the wiki and ask later for it to be placed somewhere useful. There is the problem that the people who need introductions probably aren’t going to write them. If you go back to reading the sequences, it would be a good exercise to write summaries.
I like your characterization of what is “wrong” with the sequences, but I’m not sure what
ought to be done about it. I suspect that different people need to read different sequence postings. I would like to have the introductionpages for each sequence be expanded to provide roughly a paragraph of description for each posting in the sequence. If you disagree with the paragraph or don’t understand it, then you should probably read that posting.
ETA: After reading Will’s comment, I will withdraw my vote. Proceed with caution.
I suspect that different people need to read different sequence postings.
I agree; that’s one of the things I wanted to discuss (and something my solution would theoretically address). I might try to find another useful place to put my longer writeup of the subject, e.g. my own talk page on the wiki.
By the by, is this a vote for or against making an actual post on this subject (or neither)? I’m trying to get a sense of whether that would be acceptable and useful; I’ve gotten a handful of upvotes on comments about it, but I don’t know if that means to go ahead or not. (This is an area of local etiquette I’m not yet familiar with and don’t particularly want to take the karma hit for messing up.)
In general, suggestions for site improvements are frowned upon because very few people here are keen on actually implementing them, and the typical response is “Yeah that’d be great, now let’s have a long discussion about how great that is and subtle improvements that could make it even better while not actually doing anything.”
Less Wrong needs improvements, but more than that it needs people willing to improve it. The Intro Page idea has been around for awhile, but the people who have control over the site have a lot of other stuff to focus on and there’s limited time. So overall I don’t think a post would be good, but I’m unsure as to how to fix the general problem.
Thanks, that’s the answer I was looking for.
If it was done on the wiki, would they need to commit time to it? It seems like a dedicated member or set of members could just write the page and present it to the community as a fait accompli. The only reason I haven’t done it is that i don’t feel I know enough yet. Maybe I’ll do it anyway, and that will inspire more experienced LWers to come fix it. ;)
Yes, write something on the wiki and ask later for it to be placed somewhere useful. There is the problem that the people who need introductions probably aren’t going to write them. If you go back to reading the sequences, it would be a good exercise to write summaries.
Yup. And for people who don’t need them, it’s pretty tedious.
That occurred to me as well. We’ll see how that comes along.
I’ll vote for making a post.
I like your characterization of what is “wrong” with the sequences, but I’m not sure what ought to be done about it. I suspect that different people need to read different sequence postings. I would like to have the introduction pages for each sequence be expanded to provide roughly a paragraph of description for each posting in the sequence. If you disagree with the paragraph or don’t understand it, then you should probably read that posting.
ETA: After reading Will’s comment, I will withdraw my vote. Proceed with caution.
I agree; that’s one of the things I wanted to discuss (and something my solution would theoretically address). I might try to find another useful place to put my longer writeup of the subject, e.g. my own talk page on the wiki.