I think that if I didn’t know anything about LessWrong, the first version would be the one that would be more likely to attract my attention. There are a lot of websites that make vague promises that reading them will improve your life. The first version at least gives examples of what exactly this website is about and how exactly it is supposed to be helpful. While the second sentence repels no one, it seems unlikely that it could pique anyone’s curiosity. That might not matter when you personally recommend LW to someone, since your recommendation would presumably be enough to make them think that there is some content behind the vague introduction. It seems to me that we might even have an interesting situation when vague introduction might work better on people who were recommended to check out LessWrong by other people (since it wouldn’t repel them), but I hypothesize that concrete introduction would be better for those who encountered LW accidentally, because while most people wouldn’t read past introduction either way, it is the first version that seems to be the one that is likely to catch at least someone’s attention.
By the way, I am not sure if having what is basically About page as a frontpage is the best way to introduce new readers to LW. Few blogs do that, most put the most recent posts on the frontpage instead. That makes them look less static.
I think that if I didn’t know anything about LessWrong, the first version would be the one that would be more likely to attract my attention. There are a lot of websites that make vague promises that reading them will improve your life. The first version at least gives examples of what exactly this website is about and how exactly it is supposed to be helpful. While the second sentence repels no one, it seems unlikely that it could pique anyone’s curiosity. That might not matter when you personally recommend LW to someone, since your recommendation would presumably be enough to make them think that there is some content behind the vague introduction. It seems to me that we might even have an interesting situation when vague introduction might work better on people who were recommended to check out LessWrong by other people (since it wouldn’t repel them), but I hypothesize that concrete introduction would be better for those who encountered LW accidentally, because while most people wouldn’t read past introduction either way, it is the first version that seems to be the one that is likely to catch at least someone’s attention.
By the way, I am not sure if having what is basically About page as a frontpage is the best way to introduce new readers to LW. Few blogs do that, most put the most recent posts on the frontpage instead. That makes them look less static.