I agree with the rambly thing, and am not that surprised that it got downvoted at all, I guess just sort of surprised it got downvoted as heavily as it did.
… is −5 really “heavily”? That’s, like, 2 people’s worth of downvotes.
Anyway, yeah, my feedback is definitely “rewrite this post so that it’s clearly comprehensible”.
By this I mean: (a) make it comprehensible; (b) make it clear that it is comprehensible. The former without the latter looks like, e.g., “yes, it’s actually clear what is being said once you do indeed hunker down and read the whole thing carefully, straight through, from beginning to end”. This is insufficient, however, because it is not at all sensible for me to read every single post, closely and carefully, from beginning to end, just on the chance that it might be comprehensible and then also might contain useful insights.
So make it not just comprehensible, but clearly so: write well and engagingly; include a summary—preferably, both at the start and at the end; if your post is long-ish, or is not written quite so engagingly that one can read through it breathlessly, as if reading a fiction story, then include proper “scaffolding”—i.e., organize your post into a hierarchical structure, with sections titled with proper headings (and for god’s sake make your headings actual heading elements, not just bold text—that way, it’s much easier to scan/skim/etc., and it means that tables of contents can be automatically generated for your post!); and so on.
Is this a lot to ask? Well, yes, but on the other hand all of these things are nothing more than “ordinary standards of good writing”! And if you don’t even try, if you don’t do any of these things, then I have to wonder how much you care about whether I read your post… in which case, the natural follow-up question is, how much should I care about reading your post?
[On an even more meta note, we’re still figuring out exactly how strict the standards for frontpage should be, now that it’s up to admins to move things there. This post was on the fence—it checks the official checkboxes for frontpage, could have used more clarity, conciseness and structure and maybe some subtle cultural tweaks (some of the writing style felt… more like a Medium post than a LW post? which I’m not sure how to weight)]
This reminds me of something that I’ve been meaning to ask for a while. Does LW support (policy-wise, I mean) the idea of posting something on one’s personal blog, and then expressing some preference about whether or not the mods should promote it to the front page? Note, I don’t mean “promote this, guys! it’s real great!”, but the other way around: “this is not really front-page worthy, imo, I am not comfortable with it being promoted” (vs. the presumptive default of “if you find this worthy of the front page, by all means promote it”). Or is the idea that if I post something that I don’t think should be front-paged, then I shouldn’t post it at all? (I can certainly see the sense in the latter view, if indeed this is the official policy—I’m just trying to figure out what the norms are.)
I pretty much agree with this. (fyi, this got upvoted and downvoted multiple times today, if it was a single −5 downvote I wouldn’t have made my comment)
Note, I don’t mean “promote this, guys! it’s real great!”, but the other way around:
We’ve talked about it, and the only hesitation I have around it is complexity cost. (i.e. there’s a list of flags about-as-useful you might add to a post page, but which collectively might make for a weirdly high number of choices to make when posting).
… is −5 really “heavily”? That’s, like, 2 people’s worth of downvotes.
Anyway, yeah, my feedback is definitely “rewrite this post so that it’s clearly comprehensible”.
By this I mean: (a) make it comprehensible; (b) make it clear that it is comprehensible. The former without the latter looks like, e.g., “yes, it’s actually clear what is being said once you do indeed hunker down and read the whole thing carefully, straight through, from beginning to end”. This is insufficient, however, because it is not at all sensible for me to read every single post, closely and carefully, from beginning to end, just on the chance that it might be comprehensible and then also might contain useful insights.
So make it not just comprehensible, but clearly so: write well and engagingly; include a summary—preferably, both at the start and at the end; if your post is long-ish, or is not written quite so engagingly that one can read through it breathlessly, as if reading a fiction story, then include proper “scaffolding”—i.e., organize your post into a hierarchical structure, with sections titled with proper headings (and for god’s sake make your headings actual heading elements, not just bold text—that way, it’s much easier to scan/skim/etc., and it means that tables of contents can be automatically generated for your post!); and so on.
Is this a lot to ask? Well, yes, but on the other hand all of these things are nothing more than “ordinary standards of good writing”! And if you don’t even try, if you don’t do any of these things, then I have to wonder how much you care about whether I read your post… in which case, the natural follow-up question is, how much should I care about reading your post?
This reminds me of something that I’ve been meaning to ask for a while. Does LW support (policy-wise, I mean) the idea of posting something on one’s personal blog, and then expressing some preference about whether or not the mods should promote it to the front page? Note, I don’t mean “promote this, guys! it’s real great!”, but the other way around: “this is not really front-page worthy, imo, I am not comfortable with it being promoted” (vs. the presumptive default of “if you find this worthy of the front page, by all means promote it”). Or is the idea that if I post something that I don’t think should be front-paged, then I shouldn’t post it at all? (I can certainly see the sense in the latter view, if indeed this is the official policy—I’m just trying to figure out what the norms are.)
I pretty much agree with this. (fyi, this got upvoted and downvoted multiple times today, if it was a single −5 downvote I wouldn’t have made my comment)
We’ve talked about it, and the only hesitation I have around it is complexity cost. (i.e. there’s a list of flags about-as-useful you might add to a post page, but which collectively might make for a weirdly high number of choices to make when posting).