Manual moderation is a big unknown—risk aversion means that you don’t want your time spent writing to be wasted by some moderator deciding not to publish. And delay between writing and publishing is a problem too—you want feedback as soon as you wrote it while it’s still fresh in your mind.
If people thought moderators would be very friendly, and very fast, that would matter less, but it’s unusual expectation to have, even when it turns out to be true.
These are two very rational reasons why people post on LW and not OB.
Precisely. Stuff on LW is posted unless some moderator decides to remove it; it’s not brought to the main page unless some moderator approves, but it exists, can be read, and can be linked to.
Stuff on OB doesn’t exist until a moderator decides it does.
If I’ve written something that I think the moderator will either dislike or be indifferent to, there’s no point in sending it in to OB. Posting it on LW will get it seen and thought about, and if it’s sufficiently popular, the moderators may even feel pressure to give it front-page access even if they dislike it personally.
Manual moderation is a big unknown—risk aversion means that you don’t want your time spent writing to be wasted by some moderator deciding not to publish. And delay between writing and publishing is a problem too—you want feedback as soon as you wrote it while it’s still fresh in your mind.
If people thought moderators would be very friendly, and very fast, that would matter less, but it’s unusual expectation to have, even when it turns out to be true.
These are two very rational reasons why people post on LW and not OB.
Precisely. Stuff on LW is posted unless some moderator decides to remove it; it’s not brought to the main page unless some moderator approves, but it exists, can be read, and can be linked to.
Stuff on OB doesn’t exist until a moderator decides it does.
If I’ve written something that I think the moderator will either dislike or be indifferent to, there’s no point in sending it in to OB. Posting it on LW will get it seen and thought about, and if it’s sufficiently popular, the moderators may even feel pressure to give it front-page access even if they dislike it personally.