I'm not a designer and my taste in typography might be unusual, but I can try to pin down what makes reading it uncomfortable for me personally:
(1) Arial (the default font) is much less readable than other fonts. At least one informal survey suggest users prefer Verdana over Arial 2 to 1. I agree completely. Readability uses Georgia, which also seems more readable to me.
(2) "Justified" text (where each word lines up on the rightmost edge of the paragraph) is harder for me to read than unjustified text. According to Wikipedia, it noticeably impairs comprehension for people with dyslexia, too.
(3) There are too many characters per line. My understanding is that in web typography, the "standard rule" (not universally accepted) is 55-75 characters per line. On its default setting, Readability averages around 70, which feels comfortable to me. Less Wrong has ~115 characters per line, which feels too wide. With a more readable font, this might not be an issue, but I definitely notice it with the current design.
(4) Text is too small. This is a minor complaint, since you can adjust it in the browser. But by default, the text feels uncomfortably small to me.
The default font is much less readable than other fonts...
I prefer sans-serif fonts for reading on any kind of screen. Why not try specifying no font face or font size at all and use the browser default?
Text is too small.
I do not normally notice this, since I have set an absolute minimum font size on my browser. I agree it looks awful under the default settings.
In the next month, the administrators of Less Wrong are going to sit down with a professional designer to tweak the site design. But before they do, now is your chance to make suggestions that will guide their redesign efforts.
How can we improve the Less Wrong user experience? What features aren’t working? What features don’t exist? What would you change about the layout, templates, images, navigation, comment nesting, post/comment editing, side-bars, RSS feeds, color schemes, etc? Do you have specific CSS or HTML changes you'd make to improve load time, SEO, or other valuable metrics?
The rules for this thread are:
BUT DON’T JUMP TO THE COMMENTS JUST YET: Take a few minutes to collect your thoughts and write down your own ideas before reading others’ suggestions. Less contamination = more unique ideas + better feature coverage!
Thanks for your help!