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jwhendy comments on Back to the Basics of Rationality - Less Wrong
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I understand this, but want to add some comments/questions. I'm newer and am not exactly sure what differentiates top-level vs. discussion-area-appropriate posts. About only says this about the discussion area:
But the common understanding I find is that discussion = "meta" (perhaps as well as weaker/less-developed posts). Should the About section be clarified to reflect this? It seems that there are unofficially defined prescriptions floating around.
Would you clarify meta vs. non-meta. Is "meta" just concerned with suggestions about the LW site and the participants? If a post on raising the sanity waterline isn't meta, would this post, which suggests ways to do this, be considered meta? In other words, if Luke has presented some arguments for the "best rationally decided methods to help others become more rational at a basic level"... is that meta?
Lastly, for something like this topic which might imply action for those capable of writing content here and elsewhere to help noobs, I would consider the more experienced users to be the target audience. In other words, the post may be viewed as looking for teacher-level individuals to propagate LW content into several other formats in order to make rationality more accessible.
Given this, will a post like this receive adequate feedback/response from the "teacher-level" members if it is posted in the discussion area? If the simple answer is that most of those able to contribute to such an effort read the discussion area regularly, this is all the answer that is needed.
If that's not the case, however, could the discussion area be a black hole of sorts for a post like this?
To propose a possible solution for some of these points: define clear guidelines for top-level/discussion areas such that this post would have fallen under the discussion area definition. Then perhaps it could be moved to the top-level with enough voiced comments to do so?
My understanding is that Discussion is simply an area that can house a larger set of materials than can the main area of Less Wrong. It is in no way limited to meta-level discussions, but meta-level discussions are welcome there.
There's been a general request to keep meta-level discussions in the main area to a minimum, though not to zero. This request seems sensible to me. It would be nice to keep the main site full of posts that can actually help readers improve their rationality, with high signal to noise. And the Discussion area allows us to have most of the benefits from meta-level discussions without diluting the main site.
But I like the energy in this post and in some of the comments, and I might regret my original complaint in this case.
It would be nice to get some more explicit guidelines about appropriate content for the front page. In a way, meetup posts are 'meta' posts, and less substantial than what I've written here. But then, I understand what you mean about now wanting to clog the Posts section with meta-level posts. But maybe it's okay if it's in the Posts section but not promoted to the front page? Hard to say. Clearer guidelines would be nice...
Too late I guess; this post got promoted to the front page.
Still, here's me voicing my request for more explicit guidelines on this subject from the Less Wrong moderators.
Have any materialized since this post was made?
Not really.
Thanks for the link -- that makes sense re. a newcomer learning a bit of the back story to LW content aims. I could also see the dividing line being as you put it: those directly focused on improving rationality vs. those about other things. Thanks for the reply.
My impression is that the discussion area has a higher percentage of regular readers, possibly only because it's more difficult to find.
I'm not clear on what you mean. You're saying that because it's more difficult to locate, readership regularity is increased? Do you think that "teacher-level" members fall into that class of regular readers?
I think what he meant was that those who read the discussion section tend to be higher level, because having to go beyond LW's front page screens out many of the more casual readers.
Yep.
Ah - got it.