Regarding making it less intimidating to post. I remember reading somewhere on the forum that one suggested solution if you have a more casual post is to ask moderators to classify it as a “Personal Blogpost” (or to write that you want your post to be classified as such in the post). Instead of this, there could be a checkbox “I want this to be a Personal Blogpost” with an explanation what that means. Posts that are classified this way do not appear in the front page and can only be seen by clicking on “All posts”.[1]
I don’t think this would solve much but it is a low-touch change. Despite being aware of this, I myself have been hesitant to post some of my casual thoughts on the forum. I think it’s because it’s not obvious when something is classified as a personal blogpost and what does that mean. I’m afraid that my “I worked on this for three months, here are my conclusions” posts will lose legitimacy if I start making “I thought about this for 15 min” posts. It’s a bit weird that we are trying to use the same website for both of these.
Also, this post is slightly relevant for this topic.
BTW, it’s inconvenient that I can only see them amongst all the other posts, and I’d like it to be possible to filter for them in “All Posts” page so I could see what I missed by looking at the front page.
LessWrong has a “Moderators may promote [to the frontpage]” checkbox (defaults to checked), which allows you to keep your post on your personal blog. We removed it because it was confusing and we have a different view of personal blogs than LessWrong does. I could imagine trying to make personal blogs more of a thing and reenabling that checkbox (with a better name).
Regarding making it less intimidating to post. I remember reading somewhere on the forum that one suggested solution if you have a more casual post is to ask moderators to classify it as a “Personal Blogpost” (or to write that you want your post to be classified as such in the post). Instead of this, there could be a checkbox “I want this to be a Personal Blogpost” with an explanation what that means. Posts that are classified this way do not appear in the front page and can only be seen by clicking on “All posts”.[1]
I don’t think this would solve much but it is a low-touch change. Despite being aware of this, I myself have been hesitant to post some of my casual thoughts on the forum. I think it’s because it’s not obvious when something is classified as a personal blogpost and what does that mean. I’m afraid that my “I worked on this for three months, here are my conclusions” posts will lose legitimacy if I start making “I thought about this for 15 min” posts. It’s a bit weird that we are trying to use the same website for both of these.
Also, this post is slightly relevant for this topic.
BTW, it’s inconvenient that I can only see them amongst all the other posts, and I’d like it to be possible to filter for them in “All Posts” page so I could see what I missed by looking at the front page.
LessWrong has a “Moderators may promote [to the frontpage]” checkbox (defaults to checked), which allows you to keep your post on your personal blog. We removed it because it was confusing and we have a different view of personal blogs than LessWrong does. I could imagine trying to make personal blogs more of a thing and reenabling that checkbox (with a better name).
Does the shortform feature currently being tested by LessWrong seem like it addresses that?
hmm, I think it does! :)