MBlume comments on Of Gender and Rationality - Less Wrong

41 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 16 April 2009 12:56AM

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Comment author: MBlume 16 April 2009 04:29:22PM 10 points [-]

On OB/LW this primarily takes the form (started by Eliezer, I think) of embedding a link to a previous article in every other sentence, which certainly comes off as intimidating, at least to me.

That's interesting -- I quite enjoy that convention, and feel like it makes the site more penetrable to newcomers. To me, the purpose of the links seems to be "if this sentence seems to follow from the last, keep reading. If I seem to have made an unsupported leap, you may profit by following the link."

Comment author: dclayh 16 April 2009 07:23:59PM 1 point [-]

It's nice for reading, yes (although it does mean that reading one Eliezer post can quickly turn into eight tabs' worth of previous posts), but when it comes to writing a post (or even a comment), I feel like if I don't have a bunch of references I'm leaving myself open to accusations of "Oh, that point was addressed here, here, and here. Try doing some reading."

Which might not be a bad thing, necessarily: it's certainly not too productive to be constantly going over the same ground as MrHen says below, but it certainly does affect what I choose to write.

Comment author: MBlume 16 April 2009 07:34:45PM 2 points [-]

reading one Eliezer post can quickly turn into eight tabs' worth of previous posts

I spent a lot of happy afternoons this way last year (didn't get much done on my quantum problem sets though)

but when it comes to writing a post (or even a comment), I feel like if I don't have a bunch of references I'm leaving myself open to accusations of "Oh, that point was addressed here, here, and here. Try doing some reading."

Ah, this I totally get. I think this might be a good function for the welcome thread -- you could just leave a comment saying "hi, I'm thinking about writing something about X -- is there anything I ought to be reading first?"

Comment author: MrHen 16 April 2009 10:02:19PM 0 points [-]

Ah, this I totally get. I think this might be a good function for the welcome thread -- you could just leave a comment saying "hi, I'm thinking about writing something about X -- is there anything I ought to be reading first?"

I imagine that some of this task will be handled by the wiki or the tags assigned to each post.

That being said, I have little problem with someone talking about a topic that was broached seventy times previously as long as it either adds a new perspective or is a decent summary or launching point for people not there during the past discussions.

That being said, having "little problem with" may mean I will not read it because I consider the topic saturated.

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