Linking to a bunch of posts is going to be TLDR—that’s asking for way too much investment at that stage.
Hm. When I read the internet, I tend to click on links that look interesting. The idea of my about page rewrite was to provide a bunch of links and try to make them seem interesting, so that people reading the about page would click on at least a few. I don’t see this as asking for “investment”.
I’m glad you’re excited about this project, but I skimmed over your posts and it looks like they’re long on philosophizing and short on string substitutions. How about you write the about page the way you’d like to see it, and we either create a poll or do an A/B test to figure out which version is better?
Also, based on what you’ve describe of your experience finding Less Wrong, it sounds as though you had an unusually intense reaction to finding it. So it seems possible that if you generalize from your example, you’ll do a good job of targeting people whose brains are wired like yours, but a poor job of targeting “typical” readers.
It occurred to me that maybe you missed the fact that I’ve already done rewrites. I’d love to hear specific suggestions, e.g. “Instead of [paragraph X], write [paragraph Y]”. (Of course, you can also rewrite everything if you want. Either would be much easier for me to incorporate changes from than your current “wish list” approach. If you don’t have time to do either, I’ll probably skim over your wish list and incorporate whatever seems the most important.)
There’s a science to getting people to click on links. I am sorry to say this to a person who obviously cares very much about this, but the reason I didn’t provide you “string substitutions” for your links is because that’s going about things the wrong way. Long story short, on the internet, people want cool stuff now. You can’t hide cool stuff behind a link, and you can’t rename the link to turn the link itself into cool stuff. You have to take cool stuff and put it in their face. One has to pay attention to “bounce rate”. The bounce rate is a count of people that left without clicking a link because cool stuff was not put in their face.
I’ve seen the LessWrong website statistics. LessWrong’s home page has a horrible bounce rate. I posted the statistics and explained more here:
I am sorry to say this to a person who obviously cares very much about this, but the reason I didn’t provide you “string substitutions” for your links is because that’s going about things the wrong way.
Er, by string substitutions I meant I wanted to see you actually take a stab at writing the About page instead of just explaining how great it could be. For example, create an account on the LW wiki and make subpages on your account like I did.
Hm. When I read the internet, I tend to click on links that look interesting. The idea of my about page rewrite was to provide a bunch of links and try to make them seem interesting, so that people reading the about page would click on at least a few. I don’t see this as asking for “investment”.
I’m glad you’re excited about this project, but I skimmed over your posts and it looks like they’re long on philosophizing and short on string substitutions. How about you write the about page the way you’d like to see it, and we either create a poll or do an A/B test to figure out which version is better?
Also, based on what you’ve describe of your experience finding Less Wrong, it sounds as though you had an unusually intense reaction to finding it. So it seems possible that if you generalize from your example, you’ll do a good job of targeting people whose brains are wired like yours, but a poor job of targeting “typical” readers.
It occurred to me that maybe you missed the fact that I’ve already done rewrites. I’d love to hear specific suggestions, e.g. “Instead of [paragraph X], write [paragraph Y]”. (Of course, you can also rewrite everything if you want. Either would be much easier for me to incorporate changes from than your current “wish list” approach. If you don’t have time to do either, I’ll probably skim over your wish list and incorporate whatever seems the most important.)
There’s a science to getting people to click on links. I am sorry to say this to a person who obviously cares very much about this, but the reason I didn’t provide you “string substitutions” for your links is because that’s going about things the wrong way. Long story short, on the internet, people want cool stuff now. You can’t hide cool stuff behind a link, and you can’t rename the link to turn the link itself into cool stuff. You have to take cool stuff and put it in their face. One has to pay attention to “bounce rate”. The bounce rate is a count of people that left without clicking a link because cool stuff was not put in their face.
I’ve seen the LessWrong website statistics. LessWrong’s home page has a horrible bounce rate. I posted the statistics and explained more here:
LessWrong could grow a lot, but we’re doing it wrong.
Er, by string substitutions I meant I wanted to see you actually take a stab at writing the About page instead of just explaining how great it could be. For example, create an account on the LW wiki and make subpages on your account like I did.