I noticed enough comments about topic recently that I wanted to run a quick poll about topics and discussion categories on Less Wrong.
Since being told others opinions might cause an anchoring bias, please take the poll here before reading further:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEVJSTBTdk92UjhTWWp6U1dYSDltclE6MQ
My personal opinion at the moment (last chance to avoid having me influence your poll results) is that I want to reduce the number of people who feel that articles posted on Less Wrong are off topic and limit topical complaints. I don't want to do this because I think the complainers are wrong, because if they don't want to see something, they are correct to indicate it. But I feel that there are ways of handling this at a higher level that might be more effective than just up or down voting based on topic alone, and I feel like it would help increase the quality of discussion here to have better topical division.
I think the biggest problem with the current system is this definition for Discussion.
"This part of the site is for the discussion of topics not yet ready or not suitable for normal top-level posts."
The fact that Discussion is "not yet ready or not suitable" indicates to me that as a category it's not cutting apart topics well. "I'm making a draft about SIA and SSA that I want to put in Main" and "Someone made a new scientific paper about the OPERA Neutrino anomaly again." and "Is Twilight Sparkle a Rationalist?" Don't seem to mesh well under the same general discussion category, even though I would probably read the community discussion on any of them.
That said, I am open to arguments to establish why the Status Quo is worthwhile as well. And maybe the poll will result in a bunch of people voting for only Main and Discussion.
Please feel free to discuss anything relating to topics or discussion categories or the poll below, and thank you for answering the poll!
Honestly, I'd rather have Main and Discussion together in one spot and things promoted to the front page from there. My reasoning for this is a couple of things - A. I rarely check main. If I want to read something technical, I'm going to read the sequences anyway. B. Division upon division in places to post probably would lead to atrophy and death of certain sections. For example, I wouldn't expect many people to check a "Pre-Main" thread, largely due to bystander effect.
When I answered the poll I think I said I was unsure in favor of new divisions, but I think I've talked myself out of that. The description of Discussion really just needs to be "everything else".
ETA: What might be helpful is for it to become more of a norm that people use tags like [LINK] in the title when posting in discussion.You could have tags like [OFF TOPIC] or [PRE-MAIN] too
I don't check main because it's harder to check main. You have to go to lesswrong.com, then click main, then click new (if you don't just wanted the promoted ones, which you could access from the main page most of the time anyway).
I don't think everything should go in Discussion because I think there's some value in the 10x Karma that main articles get (and the associated higher level they are judged at). But I think clicking "main" on the main page should take you to all top level posts, not just promoted ones. Promoted articles are already promoted on lesswrong.com, they don't need to be promoted twice.