Lurkers and Involvement.
I've been thinking that one might want to make a post, or post a survey, that attempts to determine how much folks engage with the contents on less wrong.
I'm going to assume that there are far more lurkers than commenters, and far more commenters than posters, but I'm curious as to how many minutes, per day, folks spend on this site.
For myself, I'd estimate no more than 10 or 15 minutes but it might be much less than that. I generally only read the posts from the RSS feed, and only bother to check the comments on one in 5. Even then, if there's a lot of comments, I don't bother reading most of them.
One of the reasons I don't post is that I often find it takes me 20-30 minutes to put my words into a shape that I feel is up to the rather high standard of posting quality here, and I'm generally not willing to commit that much of my time to this site.
I think the question of how much of their time an average person thinks a site is worth to them is an important metric, and one we may wish to try to measure with an eye to increasing the average for this site.
Heck, that might even get me posting more often.
I've often had half-finished LW post ideas and crossed them off for a number of reasons, mostly they were too rough or undeveloped and I didn't feel expert enough. Other people might worry their post would be judged harshly, or feel overwhelmed, or worried about topicality, or they just want some community input before adding it.
So: this is a special sort of open thread. Please post your unfinished ideas and sketches for LW posts here as comments, if you would like constructive critique, assistance and checking from people with more expertise, etc. Just pile them in without worrying too much. Ideas can be as short as a single sentence or as long as a finished post. Both subject and presentation are on topic in replies. Bad ideas should be mined for whatever good can be found in them. Good ideas should be poked with challenges to make them stronger. No being nasty!