I now realize I had already seen that post. Perhaps my memory is faulty, or perhaps the distinction between Frontpage and Community is not one that sticks. A couple of comments:
In general, I think it’s not a good sign if a central feature of a website isn’t self-explanatory, but instead requires the reading of a detailed explanation. Moreover, in this case the explanation is buried in a post that new users are unlikely to encounter (and at least some old users are apt to forget). But, more fundamentally, I just don’t see a compelling reason for categorizing posts in this complicated manner to begin with. Why not just have a “curated” category to promote posts that stand out in the relevant dimensions, like LessWrong does? Or dispense with the idea of “promoted” posts altogether, and let the karma system do the work. Keep it simple, stupid.
Regarding the categories: We’ve been thinking for a while about whether they should remain on the Forum. We hoped early on that they would improve the reading experience for people who were primarily interested in research rather than community topics (or vice versa), but we’re unsure of the extent to which this has happened.
For now, these are internal conversations, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we made a decision on this soon after an upcoming feature (tagging posts) becomes available to users (no date on this yet). It’s possible that using tags like “research”, “events”, or “community culture” will obsolete the broader categories we currently have, in which case the distinction could disappear; it’s also possible that we’ll find ways to make use of broader category pages that aren’t covered by tags.
Note this post on the Community / Frontpage distinction.
I agree that the term ‘Community Favorites’ is confusing as well 😵
I now realize I had already seen that post. Perhaps my memory is faulty, or perhaps the distinction between Frontpage and Community is not one that sticks. A couple of comments:
In general, I think it’s not a good sign if a central feature of a website isn’t self-explanatory, but instead requires the reading of a detailed explanation. Moreover, in this case the explanation is buried in a post that new users are unlikely to encounter (and at least some old users are apt to forget). But, more fundamentally, I just don’t see a compelling reason for categorizing posts in this complicated manner to begin with. Why not just have a “curated” category to promote posts that stand out in the relevant dimensions, like LessWrong does? Or dispense with the idea of “promoted” posts altogether, and let the karma system do the work. Keep it simple, stupid.
Regarding the categories: We’ve been thinking for a while about whether they should remain on the Forum. We hoped early on that they would improve the reading experience for people who were primarily interested in research rather than community topics (or vice versa), but we’re unsure of the extent to which this has happened.
For now, these are internal conversations, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we made a decision on this soon after an upcoming feature (tagging posts) becomes available to users (no date on this yet). It’s possible that using tags like “research”, “events”, or “community culture” will obsolete the broader categories we currently have, in which case the distinction could disappear; it’s also possible that we’ll find ways to make use of broader category pages that aren’t covered by tags.