Meta post: Did something go wrong?

post by Elo · 2015-08-31T22:58:54.562Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 23 comments

There is a post at this link: http://lesswrong.com/lw/mp3/proper_posture_for_mental_arts/

 

It does not appear in my discussion feed.  See the timestamps in the pictures below:

 

and:

 

It's currently 0900 local time on the 1/9/15.  The only reason that I can think of this being wrong is that its a timezone publishing effect.  But I don't know how, or what to do about it...

It also does not appear in an incognito window view of the discussion.

 

Now what?

23 comments

Comments sorted by top scores.

comment by Diadem · 2015-09-01T09:11:21.111Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

O wow.

I've been following Lesswrong for months now, and only because of this post did I found out that there's more posts hidden under 'main' than just the promoted ones. So Thanks Elo!

I now wonder if there are any other hidden site features I don't know about.

I have to say this is not very good design. Why would you hide posts in such a non-obvious way. It's also rather inconsistent. The discussion page opens an overview page of newest posts, while the main page shows only a subset of newest posts, and shows the full content instead of an overview. There is apparently a way to get both main and discussion on a single page (see the links Vaniver and ike posted), but then for some reason the overview page is formatted completely differently.

Replies from: drethelin, entirelyuseless
comment by drethelin · 2015-09-01T21:28:25.133Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

useful feature: the little envelope below comments and posts allows you to follow a post and receive future comments on it in your inbox

comment by entirelyuseless · 2015-09-01T13:08:14.047Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I agree that this is not a good design, and even when you use the link which gives both main and discussion, I dislike the format compared with the normal discussion page.

I now read all articles (from both main and discussion) using an rss feed, but it would be better if there were a link at the top to "all posts", formatted in the style of the discussion page.

comment by Vaniver · 2015-09-01T00:01:14.460Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Less Wrong has two subreddits: Main and Discussion. Val's post on Proper Posture for Mental Arts is in Main. Votes on posts in Main are worth 10 times as much karma as votes on posts in Discussion, because of the higher standards for posts there.

You can see a unified lists of posts from both subreddits here.

Replies from: Elo
comment by Elo · 2015-09-01T01:50:50.732Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

When I click main it defaults to "promoted", you linked in this comment to main/all which caught the post. I wonder if anyone else has the problem of missing posts like this. There is no way I could have found this post if I didn't try really hard to work out where it was. After 10 mins I decided to screenshot and ask someone..

Is there something that can be done about these posts being lost/not-easy to find?

My usual process is:

  1. www.lesswrong.com
  2. -discusssion
  3. (sometimes click >main)
  4. sometimes autocomplete to http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/new/

I can easily change what I do to also check Main/notpromotedbutnormalmainposts. But I wonder if anyone else misses things and can be helped like this?

Replies from: Vaniver, ike, Irgy, Richard_Kennaway
comment by Vaniver · 2015-09-01T13:35:04.777Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I wonder if anyone else misses things

Yes. The current setup is not ideal.

Replies from: OrphanWilde
comment by OrphanWilde · 2015-09-01T15:17:19.409Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

It's a half-tier between discussion and main attempting to alleviate scaling issues.

A better solution would just be to implement a full tier between discussion and main, or to create a new tier above main. Sample proposal (I'm not going to do this, so I don't expect anybody else to do this, this is just an example structure):

Discussion remains as-is. Main is consolidated into a single tier. Promoted is created as a tier above Main, with some multiple of the karma values, but requires a buy-in of, say, 500, or maybe 1000 Karma Points for each post placed there, and automatically demote any post in Promoted which gets below -10 Karma and stays there for a full day. Default users who aren't logged in to Promoted as the new "main" page. Additionally, create a new members-only "Social" board where meet-ups and off-topic conversation can be engaged in; Posts and comments there can be upvoted and downvoted, but have no Karma value.

Replies from: Elo
comment by Elo · 2015-09-02T00:03:25.738Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I don't know how do judge if that's going to work. I would say a buy-in of 300 is probably enough.

I think a full tier would work; what we really need is a link to the two areas, also clear explanation of what they are.

comment by ike · 2015-09-01T02:21:25.794Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Try http://lesswrong.com/r/all/new/

Replies from: tim
comment by tim · 2015-09-01T03:11:53.978Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Is this a link that is supposed to be readily accessible? A quick search through the source of this page doesn't turn up any hits for "all/new" outside your post here and it's corresponding entry in the recent comments section.

Maybe this obvious to regular users of reddit, but I had no idea you could filter lists of posts with the /r/ syntax.

Replies from: ike
comment by ike · 2015-09-01T03:40:21.949Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

See http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/FAQ

Replies from: tim
comment by tim · 2015-09-01T03:50:08.115Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

So, no?

Replies from: ike
comment by ike · 2015-09-01T03:51:48.958Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

The FAQ links to that page. So presumably it's not terribly unsupported.

Replies from: tim
comment by tim · 2015-09-01T04:00:57.875Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I guess...

But I would never think to navigate to the FAQ of a site and scroll through several hundred lines of completely unrelated text to find an instance of the link which allows me to then view a comprehensive collection of new content from said site.

Replies from: Elo
comment by Elo · 2015-09-01T04:30:29.979Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Thank you!

Shows that I am not the only village idiot here!

Who do I contact to go about fixing this thing?

Replies from: ike
comment by ike · 2015-09-01T10:27:00.971Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I suppose you can open an issue at https://github.com/tricycle/lesswrong-migrated

Replies from: Elo
comment by Elo · 2015-09-05T09:41:54.307Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

done, there are a lot of issues listed there but https://github.com/tricycle/lesswrong-migrated/issues/442

comment by Irgy · 2015-09-01T07:55:31.922Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I know about both links but still find it annoying that the default behavior for main is to list what to me seems like just an arbitrary subset of the posts, and I need to then click another button to get the rest of them. Unless there's some huge proportion of the reader-base who only care about "promoted" posts and don't want to see the others, the default ought to be to show everything. I'm sure there's people who miss a lot of content and don't even know they're missing it.

comment by Richard_Kennaway · 2015-09-01T07:30:24.227Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

On the Main page, there's a "New" tab at the top, which displays all posts in Main, newest first. That's the URL I have bookmarked, and if I happen to come in via lesswrong.com, that's where I go first. I'm theoretically aware that there's a URL to everything all mixed together, but I've always preferred to read Main(new) and Discussion separately.

comment by Houshalter · 2015-09-01T05:04:12.669Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Why is Lesswrong in comic sans?

Replies from: jam_brand
comment by jam_brand · 2015-09-01T06:05:04.358Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Explanation here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/mo0/open_thread_aug_24_aug_30/couo

Replies from: Pfft
comment by Pfft · 2015-09-01T15:57:14.345Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I feel this only raises more questions. :)

Replies from: Elo
comment by Elo · 2015-09-02T18:55:16.242Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

After a year in comic sans - everything is friendly and curvy and I don't know what normal is any more.

Also as an exercise in not hating things for no reasons. And avoiding bandwagons where they really really don't matter.

I saw a lot of hate towards comic sans; which I always thought was mostly innocent. Someone made the chrome addon; and I found it. And so I decided to see if I cared. Turns out I don't.