We’ve invested a fair amount of team resources into changes to improve the new user experience over the past two years, such as the big redesign, adding the “Best of” page that you mentioned, and an improved onboarding flow for new user accounts. I agree that new users do sometimes still find the home page overwhelming, but I think that, on the margin, improving the new user experience is not currently the best use of our team’s resources (outside of specifically the new author experience).
Thank you for sharing, and apologies for making you feel uncomfortable. If it helps, users can hide themselves from the “People directory” by checking a box in their account settings (under “privacy”). I will say that I don’t view the “People directory” as any sort of definitive list, since literally anyone can make an account (for example there are lots of spam accounts listed, and we haven’t prioritized removing them). Forum user accounts have always been publicly searchable — the directory is just a view on top of the same data, intended to make it easier for, say, hiring managers to find people with relevant interests.
Thanks for the feedback!
We’ve invested a fair amount of team resources into changes to improve the new user experience over the past two years, such as the big redesign, adding the “Best of” page that you mentioned, and an improved onboarding flow for new user accounts. I agree that new users do sometimes still find the home page overwhelming, but I think that, on the margin, improving the new user experience is not currently the best use of our team’s resources (outside of specifically the new author experience).
Thank you for sharing, and apologies for making you feel uncomfortable. If it helps, users can hide themselves from the “People directory” by checking a box in their account settings (under “privacy”). I will say that I don’t view the “People directory” as any sort of definitive list, since literally anyone can make an account (for example there are lots of spam accounts listed, and we haven’t prioritized removing them). Forum user accounts have always been publicly searchable — the directory is just a view on top of the same data, intended to make it easier for, say, hiring managers to find people with relevant interests.