Agreed. Talking from the perspective of a very occasional author, suppose I post a LW essay and then link it in r/slatestarcodex. I want it to be as easy as possible for readers to comment on my essay wherever I link it. If it’s impossible or even just inconvenient for them to simply comment on the essay, they might not do so.
In which case, why would the author post their stuff on LW, specifically?
I also see that as a downside (although not the end of the world—it depends on the filters). Like, is LW a blogging platform? Or is it a discussion forum for a particular online community? Right now we kinda have it both ways—when describing why I post on LW, I might says something like “it’s a very nice blogging platform, and also has a great crowd of regular readers & commenters who I tend to know and like”. But the harder it is for random people to comment on my posts, the less it feels like a “blogging platform”, and the more it feels like I’m just talking within a gated community, which isn’t necessarily what I’m going for.
Right now I have a pretty strong feeling that I don’t want to start a substack / wordpress / whatever and cross-post everything to LW, mostly for logistical reasons (more annoying to post, need to fix typos in two places), plus it splits up the comment section. But I do get random people opening a LW account to comment on my posts sometimes, and I like that †, and if that stops being an option it would be a marginal reason for me to switch to “separate blog + crossposting”. Wouldn’t be the end of the world, just wanted to share. Hmm, I might also / alternatively mitigate the problem by putting an “email-me” link / invitation at the bottom of all my posts.
Random thought: Just like different authors get to put different moderation guidelines on their own posts, maybe different authors could also get to put different barriers-to-new-user-comments on their own posts?? I haven’t really thought it through, it’s just an idea that popped into my head.
† Hmm, actually, I’m happy about the pretty-low-friction ability of anyone to comment on my LW posts in the case of e.g. obscure technical posts, and neuroscience posts, and random posts. I haven’t personally written posts that draw lots of really bad takes on AI, at least not so far, and I can see that being very annoying.
Agreed. Talking from the perspective of a very occasional author, suppose I post a LW essay and then link it in r/slatestarcodex. I want it to be as easy as possible for readers to comment on my essay wherever I link it. If it’s impossible or even just inconvenient for them to simply comment on the essay, they might not do so.
In which case, why would the author post their stuff on LW, specifically?
I also see that as a downside (although not the end of the world—it depends on the filters). Like, is LW a blogging platform? Or is it a discussion forum for a particular online community? Right now we kinda have it both ways—when describing why I post on LW, I might says something like “it’s a very nice blogging platform, and also has a great crowd of regular readers & commenters who I tend to know and like”. But the harder it is for random people to comment on my posts, the less it feels like a “blogging platform”, and the more it feels like I’m just talking within a gated community, which isn’t necessarily what I’m going for.
Right now I have a pretty strong feeling that I don’t want to start a substack / wordpress / whatever and cross-post everything to LW, mostly for logistical reasons (more annoying to post, need to fix typos in two places), plus it splits up the comment section. But I do get random people opening a LW account to comment on my posts sometimes, and I like that †, and if that stops being an option it would be a marginal reason for me to switch to “separate blog + crossposting”. Wouldn’t be the end of the world, just wanted to share. Hmm, I might also / alternatively mitigate the problem by putting an “email-me” link / invitation at the bottom of all my posts.
Random thought: Just like different authors get to put different moderation guidelines on their own posts, maybe different authors could also get to put different barriers-to-new-user-comments on their own posts?? I haven’t really thought it through, it’s just an idea that popped into my head.
† Hmm, actually, I’m happy about the pretty-low-friction ability of anyone to comment on my LW posts in the case of e.g. obscure technical posts, and neuroscience posts, and random posts. I haven’t personally written posts that draw lots of really bad takes on AI, at least not so far, and I can see that being very annoying.
Some authors would view the moderation as a feature, not a bug.