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grouchymusicologist comments on Rhetoric for the Good - Less Wrong
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As much for any LW commenter as for you: I don't mean to pick on you, but it is physically difficult to read your writing and I really, authentically want to understand what you're saying. Because I'm positive it's valuable.
Could you do me a favor and elaborate? One thing I know for sure is that the quicker I'm writing, the longer my sentences are (a terrible habit). But I don't know if that's what you're talking about or if it's something else.
Again, for all LW commenters, not just you:
I'm sorry. You are obviously a really knowledgeable person. Content comes first, you've obviously got that down. But if I've only got, like, 5 cognitive dollars to spend on LW per day, then I can't blow it all on a single comment.
Bottom line: don't write "for high schoolers to hit university seniors." Write for third graders to hit me.
Please, I know it feels gross. But just try it. It's all in the recommendations above, thanks to Luke.
No apology needed, I appreciate the feedback. My comments often come out looking longer or wordier than they seemed while I was composing them, and I'll try to remember that tendency and keep a lid on it when possible.
Thanks for listening, but... when is it not possible?
I assume there are also limits to the amount of cognitive effort anyone wants to spend writing comments.
I don't know if you're being sarcastic, but yes, there are.
I'm not being sarcastic. Sometimes writing in a way that's easy for other people to understand is just hard. Speaking for myself, normally when my own comments aren't clear it's because I've spent as much time as I'm willing to spend on writing a comment trying to come up with clearer ways to convey my idea, not because it feels gross or because I'm not trying. (For example, I rewrote that last sentence at least 4 times and it's still pretty clunky.) This seems to come as second nature to some people, the rest of us have to struggle a bit.
None of this is intended to detract from your point. Clearer writing is better.
Yeah, what saturn said, pretty much. And as comments from Desrtopa and pedanterrific in this thread suggest, not everyone finds my writing as opaque as you do. If I can make my writing 10% clearer by spending double the effort on it, I'm only occasionally going to think that's a good tradeoff (particularly when the writing in question is blog comments and not, say, my professional work).
That's reasonable, but the unintended consequence is an evaporative cooling of people who won't do the work to read what you've written. This way, LW grows ever more incomprehensible to outsiders.
Forgive me, but this seems like a little bit of an overreaction. You're the only one who's called me out for writing style (although I have no trouble believing that others have thought the same thing and not said it). Frankly, I don't comment much, but when I do, my comments tend to be reasonably highly rated.
The incomprehensible-to-outsiders thing strikes me as a reach. LW by all appearances is growing rapidly without noticeable worsening in the quality of discourse or community, which is a remarkable accomplishment. When outsiders do complain about LW being unapproachable, it's not because of people like me writing long sentences. It's because of jargon, a lot of shared background that takes time to catch up on, and the novelty of some of the ideas.
I've already said I will make a reasonable effort to do better. So, respectfully, with that promise, I think I've shouldered enough responsibility for improving colloquy around here for the time being.
(Because I don't know how well in control of my tone I am, I want to clarify that I appreciate your feedback on my commenting style, and I very much do not want to come across as annoyed or snippy.)
You have absolutely shouldered enough responsibility. That's why I keep apologizing for picking on you.
If LW's goal is to attract a dozen (or however many) new members a month with the same basic capabilities, then yes, they are accomplishing that goal. Discourse remains qualitatively steady.
The top 1%, in effect, get wealthier. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
It sounds like you're implying that a typical comment/post on LW should be accessible, in terms of rhetoric and content, to everyone on the Internet. That idea, I dismiss out of hand.
The principle of charity moves me to look for an alternative reading. The best one I can come up with is that there's some threshold of accessibility that you have in mind, which you assert a typical LW comment/post should and does not achieve.
So, OK. Can you be somewhat more concrete about what that threshold is? For example, can you point to some examples of writing you think just-meets that threshold?