Forum team update: Shortform is now called “Quick takes”, has a section on the Frontpage, and changed in some other smaller ways.
Here’s what’s new:
Shortform is now called “Quick takes” (Shortform was confusing to many people)
There’s a section for Quick takes on the Frontpage to improve visibility (you can still post Quick takes that don’t show up on the Frontpage; just deselect the “Frontpage” tag). Those will only show up in the separate view
Some other design changes to make things clearer and easier to use:
There’s an input field in the section on the Frontpage, so you can add a Quick take there directly
Improvements to the page where all of an author’s Quick takes are shown
Other visual changes to the Quick takes and the creation flow
Rationale/context:
In some cases, Forum users want to share (and read) less polished ideas or other content that doesn’t seem like a full post on the Forum. Shortform was designed years back to fill this gap, but the Shortform feature was tucked away, hard to read, and had a name that most users didn’t understand.
Over the past few months, we’ve been exploring ways to encourage lower-barrier discussions, culminating in this latest version of Quick takes.
As always, we’d love feedback on these changes. You can comment on my Quick take (or email us if you prefer). We’ll also monitor how this feature gets used and improve it over time.
Feedback on a minor pain point for me. When I’m looking at quick takes on the front page and want to go to the permalink for the relevant take (e.g. to see all the discussion under it), I often look around for a big title to click on for a while before remembering that I’m supposed to click on the icon on the top right, which is small, doesn’t stand out much, and feels too me like it’s somehow violating an implicit expectation I have for where to find this for this kind of content.
I have no clue whether this is just me, whether this is worth addressing, or what a good solution would be. (It does make sense to me that quick takes don’t have big titles like a normal top level post would.)
Forum team update: Shortform is now called “Quick takes”, has a section on the Frontpage, and changed in some other smaller ways.
Here’s what’s new:
Shortform is now called “Quick takes” (Shortform was confusing to many people)
There’s a section for Quick takes on the Frontpage to improve visibility (you can still post Quick takes that don’t show up on the Frontpage; just deselect the “Frontpage” tag). Those will only show up in the separate view
Some other design changes to make things clearer and easier to use:
There’s an input field in the section on the Frontpage, so you can add a Quick take there directly
Improvements to the page where all of an author’s Quick takes are shown
Other visual changes to the Quick takes and the creation flow
Rationale/context:
In some cases, Forum users want to share (and read) less polished ideas or other content that doesn’t seem like a full post on the Forum. Shortform was designed years back to fill this gap, but the Shortform feature was tucked away, hard to read, and had a name that most users didn’t understand.
Over the past few months, we’ve been exploring ways to encourage lower-barrier discussions, culminating in this latest version of Quick takes.
As always, we’d love feedback on these changes. You can comment on my Quick take (or email us if you prefer). We’ll also monitor how this feature gets used and improve it over time.
This seems like an improvement to me. Thanks!
Feedback on a minor pain point for me. When I’m looking at quick takes on the front page and want to go to the permalink for the relevant take (e.g. to see all the discussion under it), I often look around for a big title to click on for a while before remembering that I’m supposed to click on the icon on the top right, which is small, doesn’t stand out much, and feels too me like it’s somehow violating an implicit expectation I have for where to find this for this kind of content.
I have no clue whether this is just me, whether this is worth addressing, or what a good solution would be. (It does make sense to me that quick takes don’t have big titles like a normal top level post would.)
The top right is a divergence from lesswrong, right? it used to be clicking the timestamp would permalink, and I think lesswrong is still that way.
This is a good design because it’s quite standard across a few websites (social media and fora) that timestamps are links to permalinks.
I love this, and all the recent tweaks and small changes! Thank you so much!