Proposed rewrites can be found here. Please suggest specific improvements in the comments!
Although long-time Less Wrong users don't pay much attention to the home page, about page, and FAQ, I suspect new users pay lots of attention to them. A few times, elsewhere on the internet, I've seen people describe their impression of Less Wrong that seemed primarily gleaned from these pages--they made generalizations about Less Wrong that didn't seem true to me, but might appear to be true if all one did was read the about page and FAQ.
The about page, in particular, is called out to every new visitor. Try visiting Less Wrong in incognito mode or private browsing (i.e. without your current cookies) to see what I'm referring to.
But the current set of "newcomer pages" isn't very good, in my opinion:
- Text is duplicated between the home page and the about page. There's plenty to say and link to without repeating ourselves.
- The first paragraph of the home page text has four links to Wikipedia articles and none to Less Wrong posts. These may be very good Wikipedia articles, but I tend to think that linking to actual Less Wrong posts is generally a better way to communicate what kind of site Less Wrong is than linking to Wikipedia.
- The home page text also makes references to the blog, discussion section, and meetups, which are already highlighted plenty in the brain image.
- I think the primary purpose of the about page should be to describe and link to lots of interesting Less Wrong posts. I think reading posts is probably best way to figure out what Less Wrong is about. If the smorgasboard of posts linked to from the about page is sufficiently varied and high-quality, I think that most users will be able to find at least a couple posts they really like. Right now this purpose isn't given much real estate. There is a sentence starting with the words "If you want a sampling of the content on the main blog...", but this sentence does little to describe the posts it links to aside from providing a few related keywords.
- There's also a lot of instruction on the about page regarding how to do basic stuff like create posts. Facebook and Youtube don't seem to think it's necessary to provide instructions on how to do basic stuff, so I don't think we need it either. (Just in case, though, it's mostly still all there in my rewrite of the FAQ.)
- Some of the answers in the FAQ make us look very close-minded (when in fact we're only a little close-minded). See Why is almost everyone here an atheist? and Why do you all agree on so much? Am I joining a cult?. I think it's possible to answer these questions in a way that's less obnoxious and gives a more accurate impression of what LW is like: 1, 2.
- I tried to link to various posts that are explicitly targeted at newcomers, like "What I've Learned from Less Wrong" and "What is Bayesianism?", but weren't being shown on the existing newcomer pages.
- I put a lot more stuff in the FAQ, on the theory that a long FAQ doesn't hurt much since folks can just read the answers to the questions that interest them.
- I deliberately avoided looking at the existing pages at first when writing my alternatives, to avoid contamination. My thinking was that being different for its own sake was good if we could reliably figure out which version was better in each case (e.g. overcome status quo bias). Please comment on nitty-gritty differences between the two versions, e.g. if you think I left an important sentence from the originals out or if one of the posts I linked to seems rather weak.
I certainly don't claim to speak for all Less Wrong users. If you have any thoughts, please comment here, send me a private message, or log in to the wiki and edit the candidate pages directly.
I'm especially interested in getting feedback on the FAQ, because I took the liberty of codifying some social norms that were previously implicit: see the section Site Etiquette and Social Norms, especially the bits about Discussion vs Main, politics, and "if you never get voted down, you're not posting enough".
If you think I codified the social norms incorrectly, or you've been thinking they really should be different, please comment! The FAQ seems like a good way to broadcast preferred norms, so I suspect this is an ideal thread to discuss them.
If you've got a suggested change that's nontrivial, I encourage you to create a poll for it here using comments as poll options or HonoreDB's system.
About Us - Building Interest
Linking to a bunch of posts is going to be TLDR - that's asking for way too much investment at that stage. Here's why:
I explained how to hook the users in Getting Their Attention and here I explain what I needed to know, as a new user, before I could move from being hooked to actually joining:
Relying on links outside the about us page to tell the reader what it's about is asking for too large of a time investment at that point. They're not trying to read ten posts on the about us page, they're coming to the about us page to try and figure out WHETHER to read ten posts.
Also, saying this on the about us page is a bad idea "Less Wrong makes heavy use of previously introduced topics for leverage" - you're telling them "You have to invest all of this in order to even get started". What they're trying to do is to figure out WHETHER to invest. To put the horse before the cart, we have to put the benefit before the cost.
Now, you COULD choose to target a different audience - you could target people who aren't rationalists, but is an about us page with links on it going to interest them in rationality if they're not already the type to be interested? No. If you want to target that audience, you'll have to do something pretty spectacular. Actually, it would be awesomely fun to try and figure out how to do that. I'd be happy to brainstorm with you about that, anytime. But that's a project. Unless you've discovered a method that's proven to work, I think the best approach is to target the audience who is already on a similar wavelength. People who are already rationalists, or who have similar interests with the current batch of LessWrong users and want to continue to develop in a similar direction.
So, as a person who was already a rationalist, what I needed was to know on the about us page in order for me to make an investment was that there were people like me doing things that I wanted to do with other people like me. If it were me writing the about page, that's what my main focus would be. It does get more specific though:
Specific things I needed to know before I was interested in joining:
How you define "rationalist". That's what finally inspired me to join. I had to realize that there was a community of people gathered around a theme of rationality, and that they do rationality the way that I do. I needed to have that "Wow, a community with people like me!" experience.
It is a community blog (you may want to hint at what that is in case people are new to the concept). I was excited by the idea of maybe finally having an outlet for my ideas. I also wanted to know what the purpose of the blog is and what LessWrong aims to do with it. Action words.
I was excited by the idea of having intelligent people give me real, honest, rational critiques on my perspectives. I didn't know this at first, but the discussion forum has an attitude that's a little bit like the serious style of a peer-reviewed journal, it's not your usual casual internet forum. What people DO with the forum, the purposes that are typically served with it, would be nice to know here. Same thing with the blog. For me, the purposes I was hoping they'd serve were to be an outlet for good ideas that didn't have any place to go and that they'd be a place where I could be groomed by intelligent people, who would see flaws that I wouldn't notice. Those were the two main activities I wanted when I joined.
Tell them how big the group is. It's hard to believe there's actually a community of rationalists that numbers in the thousands. It's exciting to hear "There's this group of people like you and they're big!" But the number of users isn't anywhere to be seen and trying to get that out of Google is like nailing jello to a tree (really fun exercise, but not as useful as a fact).
What the community is like. I think this needs to have two versions: A gist, for the "about us" section, that explains what things LessWrong members have in common, and what topics they're most interested in discussing, geared for making people feel like they relate to the group. And a new user orientation, on a different page. I describe this in a different comment. Seeing that gist of the culture is really important if you want people to have those recognition experiences where they're like "People like me have gathered! I want to join!"
What the buzz about "sequences" is all about. We could use a little history: This guy Eliezer decided to explain rationality to people so he wrote these pieces of writing called sequences. The sequences are fascinating, challenging, informative, and hilarious. They were interesting enough that they actually began to gain popularity. Lots of people gathered around a theme of rationality and overcoming their biases.
I still don't have the history of how this started all straight in my head. A crash course in how this phenomenon of people gathering around the theme of rationality happened would be nice. A quick blow-by-blow in chronological order is all I need in an about page. However, I think the first thing to put there is a description that tells people what the group is like and what purposes the group serves, so they get the opportunity to have that "People like me doing stuff I want to do!" experience.
Hm. When I read the internet, I tend to click on links that look interesting. The idea of my about page rewrite was to provide a bunch of links and try to make them seem interesting, so that people reading the about page would click on at least a few. I don't see this as asking for "investment".
I'm glad you're excited about this project, but I skimmed over your posts and it looks like they're long on philosophizing and short on string s... (read more)