It's just... too big. I should have said it in the last thread, but I didn't want to look like a fuddy-duddy: I do not like this, I find it absolutely reprehensible, it makes me a lot disappointed and a little bit sick, and I'm not sure how alone I am in this because no other dissenting voices spoke up at all. But that's a weak sort of thing to say, so I'll make the fair-ish assumption that I'm completely alone in hating this new front page. In that regard I demur my objections in-general and raise a smaller one:
Does it have to take up the entire horizontal space? Would it be too much a sacrifice to halve its x and y dimensions?
Oh, you're not alone. I liked the previous layout much better; I didn't speak up because I haven't been reading Discussion much, but I totally don't see the need for this brain thingie.
"Rationality materials" leading to meetup stuff makes no sense to me.
Sequences need to be more promiment. They're the main value of this site really.
I'm not sure how alone I am in this because no other dissenting voices spoke up at all.
Can we encourage people to speak up if they are in informed disagreement with consensus, and trust the rationalist community to call them out if they are wrong?
There's no harm in having a minority opinion or getting called out for being incorrect, but we definitely want to hear about arguments that might make us change our minds, or a valuable additional data point of an observer's assessment of the evidence.
As long as we don't hesitate to justify the consensus, it seems like more dissent is good, not bad.
I'm glad that this change happened, but I do have a few nitpicks.
This may only be true for me, but the repeated "community" in "Curated community blog" and "A community discussion board", especially right next to each other in the graphic, is grating to read. Also, as John Maxwell IV mentioned, the edited rationality materials link is only applicable to a small subset of readers, and definitely not relevant for newcomers to the site (which is important so as to raise the sanity waterline). Initially, I actually thought that the edited rationality materials link was going to lead me to the main sequences or an index of the sequences.
See discussion here: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/bbw/collaborative_project_new_rationality_materials/
I'm looking forward to shifting the link to the page that post discusses.
Thanks a lot for doing this!
Could we improve the edited rationality materials link? Maybe it could link to the sequences, or a page with a name like "a field guide to the less wrong archives"? I don't think it's current target is very relevant to anyone but meetup group leaders.
For what it's worth, I think our presentation of the sequences could also be improved a fair amount.
I recently proposed having a contest to rewrite the copy on the homepage on the wiki, but no one responded. Maybe this is a good place to ask?
Could we improve the edited rationality materials link? Maybe it could link to the sequences, or a page with a name like "a field guide to the less wrong archives"?
I agree that this is the wrong place for this link to go; instead of the sequences, though, what about the about page? That's a much more gentle introduction than just the sequences index.
Or, alternatively, what about a new wiki page (much like the "field guide" you alluded to) with an a brief overview of LW topics and links to excellent articles by a variety of LW writers? There's so much amazing content on this site that we could be showing off to new readers, and a lot of it isn't in the sequences. Come to think of it, would anyone be interested in collaborating to make such a page? It seems like it'd be a fun community project. Leave a comment or send me a message if you're interested.
I would. I'll make a new wiki page, then link to it in a discussion post so that anyone who is interested can collaborate.
I was thinking that the page should look something like this. How similar is this blueprint to what you had in mind?
Edit: Discussion post link.
This is a poll to vote on whether we should emphasize linear, completionist reading of the sequences, or a "browse around and see what you like" approach that references sequence guides/summaries and emphasizes reading about the bugs your particular brain seems to suffer from.
Note that the next/previous links will stay in place regardless of either proposal, so linear reading will always be a strong option.
I have argued somewhat that since the sequences are so badly organized, it's nearly impossible to understand them fully if they're not read in chronological order, and in that regard I think it's downright reprehensible to divide them into somewhat arbitrary "sequence" units, when the whole body of work is so interdependent.
It's been years since I've read some of this, but here are some posts that seem like they stand well on their own:
I haven't read the entire sequences; the portion I've actually read might actually be embarrassingly small if I tried to estimate it. It does seem pretty likely that there is stuff in there that has to be read in chronological order. But I think it's a bad idea to emphasize chronological order where it's nonessential.
You could think of me as something of a "concept collector". I really like reading about some new concept or argument that I can apply in lots of scenarios. Reversed stupidity not being intelligence is a good example. I don't always require a lot of reading to add a new concept to my collection; I remember I would frequently read the first four paragraphs or so of a sequence post, but lose interest because it seemed like the author was just emphasizing the same point over again. (Of course, my attention span is not the best either, so maybe there is some dishonesty here...)
Here's another list like mine:
http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/User:Academian#Abridged_entry_to_the_LessWrong_community
Even if the Sequences are linearly ordered, you can read them in any order, so linear ordering allows all readers to choose what they want.
On the other hand, if someone has decided to spend a lot of time reading it all, it is frustrating when the recommended reading order is not obvious. For example in the list of Sequences, major sequences are listed before minor sequences, but at the same time it is recommended to read "Map and Territory" (a minor sequence) first. So... why aren't these things just listed in the recommended reading order? The distinction between major and minor is either unnecessary, or could be shown e.g. using some icons near their titles.
The sequence articles have so many links to other articles that it's impossible for me to read one without spawning five distantly related ones from different topics or sequences. Even if I wanted to be linear... (has no control when it comes to links)
Which makes reading them awesome. But patchwork-y
This is a poll to classify sequence post wiki pages into two categories: "key posts" and "subsidiary posts". Categorization will be done based on judgment of wiki editors taking these factors into consideration:
Ah, I took "I drew this to Matt's attention privately" to mean some more personal form of communication (sometimes it seems like all the west coast (or at least SF Bay area) LWers all know each other IRL), andso this seemed like a reasonable place to offer public praise/reinforcement (given that I'm not in the bay area), both to you again for answering my original comment and to Matt for actually taking care of it. Sorry for any confusion; no other implication(s) were intended.
Seems like "Welcome to Less Wrong" should be above the image. Right now it looks weirdly separate from the rest of the page. It seems really huge, and like what's under it is sort of an afterthought.
But then again this could have something to do with it being new and different. Everybody's opinions here will become much more reliable in about a week or two when there's been time to get used to the new look.
Please use a browser-size tool, such as http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/ — or just experiment with different browser window sizes — to see how much of this page design will actually be visible "above the fold".
When I took Edward Tufte's graphics class one of the questions was about website design. He said the gold standard is the Google News website. Almost all signal and almost no noise. This design is not bad at all but it might work better as an "About" page than as the main page. The main page should be precisely what you were looking for when you entered whatever you put into the search engine when it referred you to the LessWrong main page.
Karma sink.