Hmm. It seems like we’ve indeed identified the two cruxes.
Regarding the benefits: I don’t see why numbered list titles would help a reader make good decisions about whether to engage with a post? In particular, given that they could in any case use the title (whatever its form), the summary-type thing (which ideally there would be) and/or the first paragraph (if that’s different), the word count / scrolling to see how long it seems, and the karma and comments?
Regarding the extent to which numbered list titles grab attention in a way that isn’t correlated with what’s useful for the reader or where the reader can provide value: Maybe at some point I should look for empirical evidence, or at least better theorising, regarding this. Currently I think we just have different intuitions/anecdata.
In particular, given that they could in any case use the title (whatever its form), the summary-type thing (which ideally there would be) and/or the first paragraph (if that’s different), the word count / scrolling to see how long it seems, and the karma and comments?
Maybe I’m missing something, but I feel like this is an always-general argument against all informative title names?
Maybe at some point I should look for empirical evidence, or at least better theorising, regarding this. Currently I think we just have different intuitions/anecdata.
I agree that we have different intuitions and empirical data may help resolve this.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I feel like this is an always-general argument against all informative title names?
I don’t think so—I think it’s quite clear how it’s easier for a reader to make good choices about whether to read this post if it’s called “Some history topics it might be very valuable to investigate” than if it was called (for example) “Topics” or “History stuff” or “What you can do with history”. But I just don’t immediately see why changing it from the current title to “10 history topics it might be very valuable to investigate” would help the reader make good choices?
It seems like whether it’s about history and whether it’s research topics is useful info, but whether it’s 3 or 10 or 20 isn’t very useful, especially given that I probably could’ve included roughly the same content under 3 topics or split it up into 20.
And then the word count / scrolling is relevant because, if the consideration is “how long will this take me?”, then word count / scrolling seems to address that better than reading one topic and multiplying by the stated number of topics. (The latter requires reading a topic before deciding, and the topics may actually differ in length.)
(Of course, there may be a reason I’m missing; I wouldn’t be that surprised if you said one sentence and then I went “Oh yeah, fair point, I should’ve thought of that.”)
Hmm. It seems like we’ve indeed identified the two cruxes.
Regarding the benefits: I don’t see why numbered list titles would help a reader make good decisions about whether to engage with a post? In particular, given that they could in any case use the title (whatever its form), the summary-type thing (which ideally there would be) and/or the first paragraph (if that’s different), the word count / scrolling to see how long it seems, and the karma and comments?
Regarding the extent to which numbered list titles grab attention in a way that isn’t correlated with what’s useful for the reader or where the reader can provide value: Maybe at some point I should look for empirical evidence, or at least better theorising, regarding this. Currently I think we just have different intuitions/anecdata.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I feel like this is an always-general argument against all informative title names?
I agree that we have different intuitions and empirical data may help resolve this.
I don’t think so—I think it’s quite clear how it’s easier for a reader to make good choices about whether to read this post if it’s called “Some history topics it might be very valuable to investigate” than if it was called (for example) “Topics” or “History stuff” or “What you can do with history”. But I just don’t immediately see why changing it from the current title to “10 history topics it might be very valuable to investigate” would help the reader make good choices?
It seems like whether it’s about history and whether it’s research topics is useful info, but whether it’s 3 or 10 or 20 isn’t very useful, especially given that I probably could’ve included roughly the same content under 3 topics or split it up into 20.
And then the word count / scrolling is relevant because, if the consideration is “how long will this take me?”, then word count / scrolling seems to address that better than reading one topic and multiplying by the stated number of topics. (The latter requires reading a topic before deciding, and the topics may actually differ in length.)
(Of course, there may be a reason I’m missing; I wouldn’t be that surprised if you said one sentence and then I went “Oh yeah, fair point, I should’ve thought of that.”)