I’ll agree that it’s more than a little redundant, especially when I understood the point he was getting at in the first part. But how much of that is the fault of his writing here and how much of it is the fault of the fact that he’s written about the issue before? And, more importantly, if you were to hand this article to someone who knows nothing about Yudkowsky or Less Wrong, would that extra length help them? I’d argue that a lot of the article’s length comes from trying to avoid some of his most common problems—instead of referencing a post where he’d said something before, he would explain the concept from the ground up using a different metaphor. (which is good for those of us who don’t want to scrape through old Facebook rants)
Either way, in its current form it is definitely not out of place for rhetoric, and more than enough for Less Wrong.
I’m not the biggest fan of how large the recommended reading is. I understand the incentive to drive people to read the sequences, but the images and text are the single largest presence on the landing page. I could understand if it was at the bottom, or perhaps in a non-existent sidebar, but as it stands, they feel a little imposing. The font is pretty good, and the interface is clean, but I’m afraid it might be a little too clean—there aren’t very many colors on the page to hold your attention. Also, it might be a good idea to add the functions for italicizing and embolding above the comment box, in order to prevent people from trying to use reddit markup. (or just add in-built support for the markup to begin with)
Is there any plan to add a feature that allows citations in a post? It’s not that important, in the grand scheme of things, but seeing as the website is oriented towards encouraging comprehensive reading it might be useful. Additionally, I agree with some of the other comments here that the general website speed is slow. I made quite a few spelling errors in the first draft of this post due to lag. I have yet to try using the site on anything other than my crappy chromebook, which may be the issue, but even then, that’s a huge blow to accessibility.
Other than that, I can’t think of much. It’s definitely an excellent effort, so far.