Thanks for the feedback! I agree that it’s hard to balance between “being succinct” and “answering every pet objection”, and collapsing sections could help. A few questions:
Can you give an example of what content in either of these intros you would collapse?
Would you treat collapsed sections like extended footnotes?
Would linking out to pages that explain a particular concept/objection work, or does the explanation need to be embedded in the page?
Is there a website (not necessarily related to AI safety) that you think has a good implementation of collapsing sections?
Sorry, I don’t have time to review the articles at the moment.
On collapsable sections vs footnotes: • Collapsible sections work well for longer content as you’ve identified. A short collapsable section might seem weird. • Collapsible sections are more visible than footnotes so people are more likely to click them. They also have a title attached so you know that there is something in the document addressing question/objection X even if you don’t read it. In contrast, footnotes are better for signalling that something isn’t necessary to read unless you really care about the details • The reading flow is often nicer for collapsible sections
Holden Karnofsky often uses collapsable sections well (see example). He often recaps previous articles to fill in context without assuming someone has read the article (or to remind folks of the details).
I can also share an example of a summary I wrote. I don’t think I’m very good at this yet as I’m still learning how use collapsible sections, but I found this really helpful since it’s good for summaries to be short, but the collapsable sections allowed me to give readers a sense of all the main ideas included in the paper if that’s what they want.
Linking can help, but the reading flow isn’t as natural as with collapsable sections. On the other hand, I imagine many folk uncollapse sections by default, so it make sense to link instead if most readers wouldn’t want to follow that rabbit hole.
I was recently experimenting in extreme amounts of folding (LW linkpost): I’d be interested to hear from Chris whether he thinks this is too much folding?
I think it depends on the audience. That level of collapsible sections is too much for a more “normy” audience, but there will be some folks who love it.
Thanks for the feedback! I agree that it’s hard to balance between “being succinct” and “answering every pet objection”, and collapsing sections could help. A few questions:
Can you give an example of what content in either of these intros you would collapse?
Would you treat collapsed sections like extended footnotes?
Would linking out to pages that explain a particular concept/objection work, or does the explanation need to be embedded in the page?
Is there a website (not necessarily related to AI safety) that you think has a good implementation of collapsing sections?
Sorry, I don’t have time to review the articles at the moment.
On collapsable sections vs footnotes:
• Collapsible sections work well for longer content as you’ve identified. A short collapsable section might seem weird.
• Collapsible sections are more visible than footnotes so people are more likely to click them. They also have a title attached so you know that there is something in the document addressing question/objection X even if you don’t read it. In contrast, footnotes are better for signalling that something isn’t necessary to read unless you really care about the details
• The reading flow is often nicer for collapsible sections
The BlueDot Future of AI course uses collapsible sections very well.
Holden Karnofsky often uses collapsable sections well (see example). He often recaps previous articles to fill in context without assuming someone has read the article (or to remind folks of the details).
I can also share an example of a summary I wrote. I don’t think I’m very good at this yet as I’m still learning how use collapsible sections, but I found this really helpful since it’s good for summaries to be short, but the collapsable sections allowed me to give readers a sense of all the main ideas included in the paper if that’s what they want.
Linking can help, but the reading flow isn’t as natural as with collapsable sections. On the other hand, I imagine many folk uncollapse sections by default, so it make sense to link instead if most readers wouldn’t want to follow that rabbit hole.
I was recently experimenting in extreme amounts of folding (LW linkpost): I’d be interested to hear from Chris whether he thinks this is too much folding?
I think it depends on the audience. That level of collapsible sections is too much for a more “normy” audience, but there will be some folks who love it.