This is not directly related to the wording of the introduction, but to the accessibility of the homepage to new users.
I have been an avid lurker/reader of LW since the beginning. Over the past year or two, I have almost exclusively read the discussion forum due to it’s high turnover rate and greater density of “bite-size” ideas that tend to require less time to process and understand than promoted posts.
Only recently I’ve realized that a noticeable part of the reason I immediately click “Discussion” after navigating to my http://lesswrong.com/ bookmark is
My eyes glaze over the “Less Wrong is...” section which I find overly verbose and unnecessary (e.g. Less Wrong --> bullet points: community blog --> discussion board --> rationality materials—communicates the same information in a much more clear and upfront fashion. No one stumbling upon this site cares if the blog is “curated” or that our rationality materials are “edited”—they want to see the content).
This may seem like a minor thing but: the two sections below the LessWrong banner are “MAIN” and “DISCUSSION” (are we LessWrong or Less Wrong? The banner and says one thing and the text below says another. There is a lot of variability just in the posts below). The “MAIN” link is rendered in bold by default. I click the “unvisited” link that indicates that it will take me to different content. After the layout change it took me many visits to realize that clicking “MAIN” took me to http://lesswrong.com/promoted/ which displays the actual content + previews of promoted posts. I really really think that the “MAIN” link on the homepage should not be in bold type unless you are on the ~/promoted or ~/comments pages.
This is not directly related to the wording of the introduction, but to the accessibility of the homepage to new users.
I have been an avid lurker/reader of LW since the beginning. Over the past year or two, I have almost exclusively read the discussion forum due to it’s high turnover rate and greater density of “bite-size” ideas that tend to require less time to process and understand than promoted posts.
Only recently I’ve realized that a noticeable part of the reason I immediately click “Discussion” after navigating to my http://lesswrong.com/ bookmark is
My eyes glaze over the “Less Wrong is...” section which I find overly verbose and unnecessary (e.g. Less Wrong --> bullet points: community blog --> discussion board --> rationality materials—communicates the same information in a much more clear and upfront fashion. No one stumbling upon this site cares if the blog is “curated” or that our rationality materials are “edited”—they want to see the content).
This may seem like a minor thing but: the two sections below the LessWrong banner are “MAIN” and “DISCUSSION” (are we LessWrong or Less Wrong? The banner and says one thing and the text below says another. There is a lot of variability just in the posts below). The “MAIN” link is rendered in bold by default. I click the “unvisited” link that indicates that it will take me to different content. After the layout change it took me many visits to realize that clicking “MAIN” took me to http://lesswrong.com/promoted/ which displays the actual content + previews of promoted posts. I really really think that the “MAIN” link on the homepage should not be in bold type unless you are on the ~/promoted or ~/comments pages.