I think that one is not Diego's. I was confused too, but the author's Wikipedia page shows no sign of them being the same person[1], and Diego said:

There are also writings I wish I had written

I agree it's a great post though!

[1] Also, not to be confused with David Wong the philosopher.

You need to give me a reason to trust you even for that one thing, or I will just go elsewhere.

I'm afraid I don't have anything to show in that regard (also, I want to remain anonymous), and I'm not gonna wait until this changes to publish the site (Actually, I'm not comfortable publishing the site in its current state, but I figured I should follow my own advice). I hope to get some endorsements from other people at some point, which should help a little.

I doubt this will be an issue though. I mean, if the content itself is really good, it will attract an audience.

Well one thing that put me off a bit is that the Gwern essay you excerpted is actually one of his that I don't agree with - but that presumably wont' affect the average reader.

I think a lot of people won't agree with the conclusion, but they don't have to as long as they think along the lines of "Yeah, there's a lot of stuff. I should be more picky with my content consumption. Now where do I start?"

Like, just having "Linux: Why it's so important" as a top-level heading alongside stuff like "Books" is a really terrible signal to send unless you only want to appeal to people who really like Richard Stallman.

Good point, though the problem is that it is that important. What I'm going to do is separate it a little, along with harmful, from the other three. And maybe add a short paragraph about the importance of technology in modern society.

For flat discussion I've been looking at Discourse.

The problem is that most of these software are a pain to get running. Originally I wanted to do everything myself and learn everything in the process, but it has been terribly unproductive and it took way too long to get where I am. That's why I'm asking for some technical assistance.

I think this is inevitable. If I want people to read something, I have to tell them that it is good. They can check for themselves if they like what they find and want to keep reading.

Was it so off-putting that it made you avoid the site? If yes, then what do you suggest? The site is designed to grab people's interest. If I start acting all humble, I think it would be worse at doing that.

Note that while I'm posting here first, the site is not specifically aimed at your average LWer. I want to capture a broader audience (and possibly make them LWers).

Also, I find the combination of a tiny default font and off-black text to be hard to read.

14px is a pretty standard size I believe (LW uses 13), and the contrast is good. I know there are people who would prefer if bigger fonts were used, but there are also those of us that dislike them. Given that, I went for an average size. I'll experiment with larger sizes, but I'm not promising anything.

There's a decent Maria Holic AMV with this song.

Fixed. Thanks.

Yeah, I'll see if I write something there. The problem is that I hate writing, so I tend to put quotes everywhere instead.

it might be a better idea to shift away from the first person personal in your writing.

I will. The portions I've written more recently already make use of the editorial We. I'll fix the rest as I find them.

I understand what you're saying, but there are several reasons why I still think a community would be a good thing. The first is that it will help with my job of selecting content. Currently the process involve myself spending way too much time on sites like Hacker News and Reddit, and having a discussion board where people can post content specifically for the inclusion on the main site would help immensely.

Secondly, one of the defining features of the community (hopefully) will be a high signal/noise ratio. The tentative name for it is "Silence" to emphasize that. The main site already features several essays that should help with having the right mentality when participating to keep S/N high.

The plan is to have the link to the community portion of the site buried in the Communication section, so that people will already have read a good amount of stuff before finding it, and also explicitly telling them to read that whole page before participating.

You said yourself that if LessWrong went offline you would end up procrastinating somewhere else. I think this is true to the extent that there are other things you can do, that you would also be able to justify to yourself the time spent doing. You would never spend as much time watching cat videos as you do reading LessWrong. The problem with sites like LW is that they often give you the illusion that you're getting your time's worth even when you're not. There are many of them, so you'd have to black out all websites like that at the same time, but it would probably be fine to keep the cat sites up.

What I'm trying to say is that, given that there are already several websites with the set of characteristics that are needed to make you procrastinate, having one more or one less won't make a difference. So no, I'm not too worried about that. Furthermore, my site features a lot of content that contain that same sentiment of yours. For example the Noise section under Journalism or Confessions of a recovering lifehacker.

Anyway, I haven't elaborated on what I mean by building a community because I have a lot in mind and I'm not sure what I'm going to tackle first. I despise actual social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and I have ideas to make better alternatives. I also want to make something for children, because children have a lot of time and it would be well spent reading my collection of essays. A social media site that covers a broader range of subjects while keeping a high S/N and a Rationality flavor is something that I would love to have so I don't have to suffer with Reddit and Metafilter, etc, etc. The one thing I want ASAP is the discussion board mentioned in the first paragraph.