Tagging (Click Gear Icon to filter Coronavirus content)

A couple weeks back, as coronavirus content took over LessWrong, we thought “Hmm, so… we’ve almost finished this new tagging feature. Maybe we should hurry to finish that up so that we can use it to help manage this avalanche of COVID-19 posts?”

For the past week we’ve been rolling out features to help with this. Right now, since Tagging is still in beta, we’re testing it out just with a Coronavirus tag.

1. You can now filter out Coronavirus-tagged posts from the Home Page.

If you click the gear icon to the right of the “Latest Posts” section, you’ll open up a settings tab where you can test the new tag filtering system. You can currently filter on Personal Blogposts, and Coronavirus-tagged posts. You can choose to hide them, or to only show posts with a matching tag. (Later on, once we’ve implemented a wider-ranging tag system, you’ll be able to filter arbitrary combinations of tags).

Right now the filter system only applies to the Latest Posts section, but soon we’ll most likely extend this to the Recent Discussion section and the ”/​allPosts” page.

2. Home Page Coronavirus Section

We’ve also recently added a section at the top of the home page which displays the top 3 posts on the Coronavirus Tag Page. We found that we wanted more than one stickied post, to keep multiple conversations going on the Justified Advice Thread, Open Thread, and Link Database, and other important posts we wanted people to be able to keep track of.

But! If you are sick of CV content, you can open up the gear-icon in the Recommendations section, and hide Top Coronavirus Content widget.

Meanwhile, it you want all the CV content...

3. There’s a Coronavirus Tag Page!

If you want to catch up on all the COVID-19 content, it’s all available over at https://​​www.lesswrong.com/​​tag/​​coronavirus.

Currently, only admins can add a tag to a post. But all users can upvote or downvote the relevance of a tag to a particular post. On the Tag Page, you’ll see a little vote button to the left of the karma. Voting affects the post’s Tag Relevance Score, which determines the sort order on a tag page.

(It’s fine to be a bit more strategic about how to upvote or downvote on tag-relevance. The goal is not to determine “how good is this post overall?” but “how high on the tag page should the post appear?”. The system is designed so that the collective decision-making of the LessWrong userbase can output a pretty good set of “top posts” that new users see when they first come to the page, or when glance at the Tag Hover Preview.)

4. Beta Feedback, Upcoming Features

What sort of additional features would you like for Tags, or for Coronavirus content in particular?

Some features we’re currently considering include:

  • Better sorting and filtering on the tag page (in particular, being able to see all Coronavirus un-resolved questions)

  • Possibly including a “Recent Discussion” section for the Tag page.

  • Subscribing to a tag, so you’re alerted to all new posts with that tag.