What I dislike most about the idea is that it gives some sort of official collective endorsement to external websites. One thing I like about LW is that except for the institutions that historically gave rise to it (OB and SIAI), it has no official doctrine and official endorsements. There are issues of broad consensus, but they are never officially presented as such. Thus, even if I have some disagreements with the majority on these issues, I can always voice my arguments without the unpleasant feeling that I'm invading the forum as an outsider trying to pick arguments over matters of consensus. (Which would constitute borderline trolling even if I'm right.)
Now, if there is a list of officially LW-endorsed websites, and I think some of them are bad and I don't want to endorse them by any means, raising such concerns would mean picking fruitless and frustrating arguments with the majority. And frankly, I think it is quite plausible that some websites hit enough "applause lights" that they might find themselves on the LW endorsement list, even though their intellectual standards leave much to be desired.
If individual LW members wish to promote external websites, I'm all for it. They can post links in discussions, and by all means allow them to post links in their profiles more conspicuously and prominently than now, not just to their own websites but also to a list of favorite websites. But please don't insist on an official list of collectively endorsed links.
You've articulated some of the problems of a blogroll well. Perhaps the blogroll idea could be evolved into a concept that better fits the needs of this community, while retaining its core value and simplicity:
1) Along side a link could be its controversy level, based on the votes for and against the link. By making the controversy explicit, the link can no longer be seen as a straight-up endorsement.
2) Along side a link could be its ranking based on say only the top 50 users. This would let people explicitly see what the majority vs. the "elite ratio...
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!