Promotion policies need to be informed by how the site is actually used.
Eliezer, you seem to have trouble distinguishing normative and positive beliefs about usage of this site. If you told us how we should use it, maybe we’d do it. Or maybe we’d tell you it’s not going to happen. But there’s little point in having secret beliefs about what we should do. This problem is clear to me in discussions of the wiki, with people continually expressing surprise about how you wanted it used. Maybe this problem doesn’t exist at all here, but the wiki story suggests that it does. I’m pretty sure you have different beliefs from CannibalSmith (who has normative beliefs and might not realize that they aren’t shared), but maybe CS is an outlier.
Like CannibalSmith, I don’t use the front page. Newcomers do use the front page. My impression is that commenting is finished on a fair number of articles before promotion, which suggests to me that most regulars don’t care that much about promotion (though I imagine they do use the front page).
My usage also seems relevant to my voting. Like the front page, “hot posts” doesn’t get my attention; instead I use new/recent posts. This reduces the salience of the score and I usually don’t think to vote. But I do vote on date-ordered comments, so I’m confused.
Promotion policies need to be informed by how the site is actually used.
Eliezer, you seem to have trouble distinguishing normative and positive beliefs about usage of this site. If you told us how we should use it, maybe we’d do it. Or maybe we’d tell you it’s not going to happen. But there’s little point in having secret beliefs about what we should do. This problem is clear to me in discussions of the wiki, with people continually expressing surprise about how you wanted it used. Maybe this problem doesn’t exist at all here, but the wiki story suggests that it does. I’m pretty sure you have different beliefs from CannibalSmith (who has normative beliefs and might not realize that they aren’t shared), but maybe CS is an outlier.
Like CannibalSmith, I don’t use the front page. Newcomers do use the front page. My impression is that commenting is finished on a fair number of articles before promotion, which suggests to me that most regulars don’t care that much about promotion (though I imagine they do use the front page).
My usage also seems relevant to my voting. Like the front page, “hot posts” doesn’t get my attention; instead I use new/recent posts. This reduces the salience of the score and I usually don’t think to vote. But I do vote on date-ordered comments, so I’m confused.