While the new editor is nicer in many ways, there appears to be no way to format the size of images or insert tables. This makes the new forum noticeably weaker than the old forum, where we at least had an HTML editor to allow us to fine-tune these things. It would be great to bring back an HTML editor, or at least be able to create tables and format the size and position of images.
Thanks for the hard work to put this together. I really like a lot of the features. The posting experience—especially when copying from a Word doc—seems great and that alone is a huge win!
Significant comments:
Maybe this is just me, but the typography/layout of the pages triggers something in my mind that makes it hard to focus on the text, especially relative to EA Forum 1.0. I’m not a typography/layout expert, but I hypothesize that maybe the text is too big, the line spacing is off (too much space between lines relative to space between paragraphs), and there appears to be a lack of indentation for bullets (e.g., here). …I am starting to warm up a bit to it, though.
I’m unsure how much “thumbs on the scale” moderators should put on posts when we already have a fairly well-functioning karma system. I guess we’ll see how this unfolds, but I encourage a lighter touch. Lesswrong right now is all “curated content” by default, which really annoys me.
I like the way the front page of the EA Forum 2.0 is laid out a lot better than LW 2.0 (notably the lack of sequences and curated content at the top taking up space). I’m unsure if this will be changed though?
I do think making use of a sidebar, like in EA Forum 1.0, is pretty useful, even if it isn’t a modern web practice. I think that some focuses on overly modern design (e.g., the typography and layout) are coming at the cost of actual usability.
I’m a bit worried about how posts starting at 0 upvotes will be seen and upvoted if most views focus on “hiding low upvote posts” or are curated by default. There is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem here.
There doesn’t seem to be a way to delete your posts (e.g., this one).
The front page loads more slowly than is ideal, especially compared to EA Forum 1.0.
Hi Peter, thanks for the feedback! To respond to the things that others haven’t already responded to:
We hope to keep working on the typography to improve things.
We are definitely aiming for a lighter touch to moderation than on LW: we’ve deleted the “curated” section, and we want karma to sort out what ends up on the Frontpage. The main moderation decisions we’ll be taking are policing the Community/Frontpage distinction, commenting to encourage good discourse norms, and sending messages to people where they could improve their discourse. The norms we’re trying to promote are set out in the moderation policy, and are focused on tone/style etc. We’d love people to help us out by enforcing good norms, and by checking that we’re following the policy. The main reason that we want to be a little more active is to provide users with more positive feedback, and fewer difficult responses, so that they’re encouraged to engage more. I don’t think the current Forum is particularly bad at this, but I would like to see another nudge in that direction. I’d be interested how that sounds to you?
I would like to see a sidebar eventually. Currently we want to focus on rebuilding in some elements from LW (like sequences, and their map of local groups), but this is on our long-list
Although we’ve removed curated, we are aiming to reintroduce the sequences feature (NB these are significantly less obtrusive once you’re logged in). The reasoning behind this is that we expect some new people to come to the Forum, and we think it’s good that they are initially sent to more introductory material. We also think that it’s valuable to have some set of common knowledge for the community. This is a way to cement intellectual progress: rather than rebuilding the same wall, there can be an (expanding) set of core ideas which we can build on. Users will be able to create their own sequences, and we are consulting about what sort of things should be in the core sequences, which are most visible. We want the core sequences to be representative of the community.
New question—is there a better way to get notified of new comments? I noticed the bell in the top right but it is very unobtrusive (way out in the corner and monochromatic). It would be nice if it lit up red or something (like FB or Reddit) and was a little closer to the main visual path on the page. Also, it would be nice to get email notifications (and this probably would encourage the stickiness of the site).
We are working on email notifications, and will probably push email subscriptions to curated posts on LessWrong in the next week. I expect comment-subscription emails should follow in the next 1-2 weeks.
A couple quick responses to some of the more straightforward comments:
A lot of the typography is just a first pass “try to give it different fonts than LW”. I expect that will improve as more time is put into it.
I believe on EA Forum, posts should start with a strong-upvote from their author (starting at 1 karma, and quickly rising to around 3 as they gain some karma and then slowly increasing from there). (This is how LW does it and AFAICT EA forum was keeping that)
You can’t delete posts at the moment but you can move them to your drafts.
Apologies for the loading speed, which we’re continuing to improve (on both EA and LW forums).
FWIW I talked with three friends and they all agreed with me that EA Forum 1.0 is “easier to read” (for whatever that means) than LW 2.0 (which I take to be a close proxy for EA Forum 2.0, given that these people are not in the Beta). After reading some posts here for 20 minutes and posts there for 20 minutes, I still find myself able to focus a lot more easily on posts in the EA Forum 1.0. I’m curious if you’ve heard this from anyone else?
In the old forum, I could push a button when adding a comment on mobile and it would give me markup options (bold, quote, link, etc). Now that’s been replaced by moderation guidelines. Where do I find markup options?
While the new editor is nicer in many ways, there appears to be no way to format the size of images or insert tables. This makes the new forum noticeably weaker than the old forum, where we at least had an HTML editor to allow us to fine-tune these things. It would be great to bring back an HTML editor, or at least be able to create tables and format the size and position of images.
Thanks for the hard work to put this together. I really like a lot of the features. The posting experience—especially when copying from a Word doc—seems great and that alone is a huge win!
Significant comments:
Maybe this is just me, but the typography/layout of the pages triggers something in my mind that makes it hard to focus on the text, especially relative to EA Forum 1.0. I’m not a typography/layout expert, but I hypothesize that maybe the text is too big, the line spacing is off (too much space between lines relative to space between paragraphs), and there appears to be a lack of indentation for bullets (e.g., here). …I am starting to warm up a bit to it, though.
I’m unsure how much “thumbs on the scale” moderators should put on posts when we already have a fairly well-functioning karma system. I guess we’ll see how this unfolds, but I encourage a lighter touch. Lesswrong right now is all “curated content” by default, which really annoys me.
I like the way the front page of the EA Forum 2.0 is laid out a lot better than LW 2.0 (notably the lack of sequences and curated content at the top taking up space). I’m unsure if this will be changed though?
I do think making use of a sidebar, like in EA Forum 1.0, is pretty useful, even if it isn’t a modern web practice. I think that some focuses on overly modern design (e.g., the typography and layout) are coming at the cost of actual usability.
I’m a bit worried about how posts starting at 0 upvotes will be seen and upvoted if most views focus on “hiding low upvote posts” or are curated by default. There is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem here.
There doesn’t seem to be a way to delete your posts (e.g., this one).
The front page loads more slowly than is ideal, especially compared to EA Forum 1.0.
Trivial comments:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/meta appears broken
Ctrl + K doesn’t open the link maker
Hi Peter, thanks for the feedback! To respond to the things that others haven’t already responded to:
We hope to keep working on the typography to improve things.
We are definitely aiming for a lighter touch to moderation than on LW: we’ve deleted the “curated” section, and we want karma to sort out what ends up on the Frontpage. The main moderation decisions we’ll be taking are policing the Community/Frontpage distinction, commenting to encourage good discourse norms, and sending messages to people where they could improve their discourse. The norms we’re trying to promote are set out in the moderation policy, and are focused on tone/style etc. We’d love people to help us out by enforcing good norms, and by checking that we’re following the policy. The main reason that we want to be a little more active is to provide users with more positive feedback, and fewer difficult responses, so that they’re encouraged to engage more. I don’t think the current Forum is particularly bad at this, but I would like to see another nudge in that direction. I’d be interested how that sounds to you?
I would like to see a sidebar eventually. Currently we want to focus on rebuilding in some elements from LW (like sequences, and their map of local groups), but this is on our long-list
Although we’ve removed curated, we are aiming to reintroduce the sequences feature (NB these are significantly less obtrusive once you’re logged in). The reasoning behind this is that we expect some new people to come to the Forum, and we think it’s good that they are initially sent to more introductory material. We also think that it’s valuable to have some set of common knowledge for the community. This is a way to cement intellectual progress: rather than rebuilding the same wall, there can be an (expanding) set of core ideas which we can build on. Users will be able to create their own sequences, and we are consulting about what sort of things should be in the core sequences, which are most visible. We want the core sequences to be representative of the community.
Bug report has been filed for Ctrl + K
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/meta isn’t intended to be a link (we’ve called this subforum “Community” rather than “meta” (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/community)). I’m guessing you’re referring to the sidebar link, which I’ll ask that we remove.
Thanks, this is helpful. Things I know about:
We do expect to later have sequences near the top.
Deleting posts: does the “save as draft” option work for that?
Thanks Julia. Looks like “save as draft” worked.
New question—is there a better way to get notified of new comments? I noticed the bell in the top right but it is very unobtrusive (way out in the corner and monochromatic). It would be nice if it lit up red or something (like FB or Reddit) and was a little closer to the main visual path on the page. Also, it would be nice to get email notifications (and this probably would encourage the stickiness of the site).
We are working on email notifications, and will probably push email subscriptions to curated posts on LessWrong in the next week. I expect comment-subscription emails should follow in the next 1-2 weeks.
A couple quick responses to some of the more straightforward comments:
A lot of the typography is just a first pass “try to give it different fonts than LW”. I expect that will improve as more time is put into it.
I believe on EA Forum, posts should start with a strong-upvote from their author (starting at 1 karma, and quickly rising to around 3 as they gain some karma and then slowly increasing from there). (This is how LW does it and AFAICT EA forum was keeping that)
You can’t delete posts at the moment but you can move them to your drafts.
Apologies for the loading speed, which we’re continuing to improve (on both EA and LW forums).
Thanks Raemon!
FWIW I talked with three friends and they all agreed with me that EA Forum 1.0 is “easier to read” (for whatever that means) than LW 2.0 (which I take to be a close proxy for EA Forum 2.0, given that these people are not in the Beta). After reading some posts here for 20 minutes and posts there for 20 minutes, I still find myself able to focus a lot more easily on posts in the EA Forum 1.0. I’m curious if you’ve heard this from anyone else?
In the old forum, I could push a button when adding a comment on mobile and it would give me markup options (bold, quote, link, etc). Now that’s been replaced by moderation guidelines. Where do I find markup options?