This evening at midnight Eastern Daylight Time, this blog will begin to move to a new hosting site. For a smooth transition, please don’t comment from then until 2am EST. Added 26May: So do you think of the new format?
Wow. Missed the changes. I'll throw in my opinion about the layout.
I agree with the others that the sidebar layout isn't visually great. I'm noticing, though, that I'm experiencing a lot less reading fatigue due to the increased type size (and thus words per line.) I disagree with the people who want more of the screen "used" if they want to use it for words. (Solution, people, is shrink your window. Less empty space. There.)
Also, there are some people like me who read this site primarily on a mobile phone web browser (on the train, etc.), so if you end up changing the columns, I'd really appreciate it if you're aware about the order in which they'll appear when linearized. It sucks having to scroll past blogroll/menu to get to the content.
I'm mostly concerned about ruthlessly getting information from this site, so perhaps you're best off not having me as your web designer if your concern is making it friendly to newcomers. :)
I have to say that the sidebars to the right are outright horrible, consuming half of the available screenspace and making for a rather claustrophobic feel. (Which isn't helped by the fact that maybe a quarter of the screen already goes entirely unused.)
I'm slowly working my way through the OB archives, all the way from the beginning, by starting at the first post and following the "next" links. This stopped working today, since Eliezer's posts are now automatically redirecting to lesswrong.com. I can read the post in question there, but there is no "next" link to follow to get to the next OB post.
I understand the motivation for the redirect, but I thought I should mention it, since it makes it harder to read the archive.
I hope I can post to this one, unlike the typepad. I'll see in a second.
I would like the posts better if they took 2/3rds, rather than 1/2, of the page width. Also, looks like there's no preview button. Does anyone else miss that?
Z.M.Davis: Comments past 50 are back (they were always there, we'd just unhelpfully left the pagination links off), and all of the old content is still available at http://robinhanson.typepad.....
Change that crazy robots.txt, if you want anyone visiting this page from google! or a good searches.
Z. M. Davis,I think that when the robots.txt is revised, the pages will reappear on archive.org, but I don't expect it to have done a good job capturing extra comment pages.
"it looks to me like the comments past 50 were lost in the transition"
Yes. I ever so dearly hope that this only is temporary situation, and that the comments are not lost forever, for I remember some really valuable conversations that happened on later pages, that one would hope would remain in the public archives. Archive.org is blocked. I have at least managed to retrieve a particularly valuable old comment of mine via skillful application of google-fu.
Is there a full site feed available? (The sidebar link currently looks to only provide excerpts, which isn't much use for people using feed readers...)
I like this a lot. I especially like the text excerpts of recent comments along the sidebar. And really I think this works better as your personal blog -- I tend not to like group blogs very much unless I like all the authors equally well and their styles are similar; I don't think you and Eliezer are very similar and I'd much rather read you separately. Narrower text area not great, but eh, worth the trade-off. New logo looks a little bit too much like Amazon.com for me to like it.
Robin, I would suggest you wait until all of Eliezer's past posts have been tranferred to Less Wrong before prominently labeling this site as your personal blog. Otherwise folks viewing them will have the impression that he was all along a mere guest of yours, rather than a co-editor of equal status. (Signaling matters!)
The new format undoubtedly has its advantages, but one thing I'll miss is the punctuating rhetorical force of the author signature at the end of posts:
"-Posted by Robin Hanson at 6:00 am in _Signaling_, _Hypocrisy_"
"-Posted by Eliezer Yudkowsky at 3:57 pm in _Bayesian_, _Philosophy_"
These lines had a beautiful function, like "And Thus Spake the Great So-and-So".
Wow. Missed the changes. I'll throw in my opinion about the layout.
I agree with the others that the sidebar layout isn't visually great. I'm noticing, though, that I'm experiencing a lot less reading fatigue due to the increased type size (and thus words per line.) I disagree with the people who want more of the screen "used" if they want to use it for words. (Solution, people, is shrink your window. Less empty space. There.)
Also, there are some people like me who read this site primarily on a mobile phone web browser (on the train, etc.), so if you end up changing the columns, I'd really appreciate it if you're aware about the order in which they'll appear when linearized. It sucks having to scroll past blogroll/menu to get to the content.
I'm mostly concerned about ruthlessly getting information from this site, so perhaps you're best off not having me as your web designer if your concern is making it friendly to newcomers. :)
Karl Hasselström,
try the old site or the monthly archives.
I have to say that the sidebars to the right are outright horrible, consuming half of the available screenspace and making for a rather claustrophobic feel. (Which isn't helped by the fact that maybe a quarter of the screen already goes entirely unused.)
The top of the screen looks better, though.
I'm slowly working my way through the OB archives, all the way from the beginning, by starting at the first post and following the "next" links. This stopped working today, since Eliezer's posts are now automatically redirecting to lesswrong.com. I can read the post in question there, but there is no "next" link to follow to get to the next OB post.
I understand the motivation for the redirect, but I thought I should mention it, since it makes it harder to read the archive.
Chris - yup, my mistake, the feed seems to be working fine again.
I hope I can post to this one, unlike the typepad. I'll see in a second.
I would like the posts better if they took 2/3rds, rather than 1/2, of the page width. Also, looks like there's no preview button. Does anyone else miss that?
Z.M.Davis: Comments past 50 are back (they were always there, we'd just unhelpfully left the pagination links off), and all of the old content is still available at http://robinhanson.typepad.....
Change that crazy robots.txt, if you want anyone visiting this page from google! or a good searches.
Z. M. Davis,I think that when the robots.txt is revised, the pages will reappear on archive.org, but I don't expect it to have done a good job capturing extra comment pages.
Richard,
I am getting the full feed in Google Reader, don't you?
overcomingbias.com/feed/
PS: I like the change, and another person I discussed with likes it too.
"it looks to me like the comments past 50 were lost in the transition"
Yes. I ever so dearly hope that this only is temporary situation, and that the comments are not lost forever, for I remember some really valuable conversations that happened on later pages, that one would hope would remain in the public archives. Archive.org is blocked. I have at least managed to retrieve a particularly valuable old comment of mine via skillful application of google-fu.
>Added 26May: So do you think of the new format?
Not on a regular basis. But I thought of it for a minute when I first saw it.
Is there a full site feed available? (The sidebar link currently looks to only provide excerpts, which isn't much use for people using feed readers...)
I like this a lot. I especially like the text excerpts of recent comments along the sidebar. And really I think this works better as your personal blog -- I tend not to like group blogs very much unless I like all the authors equally well and their styles are similar; I don't think you and Eliezer are very similar and I'd much rather read you separately. Narrower text area not great, but eh, worth the trade-off. New logo looks a little bit too much like Amazon.com for me to like it.
Ditto to the other posters, the comments section is getting too squished to the left side.
Robin, I would suggest you wait until all of Eliezer's past posts have been tranferred to Less Wrong before prominently labeling this site as your personal blog. Otherwise folks viewing them will have the impression that he was all along a mere guest of yours, rather than a co-editor of equal status. (Signaling matters!)
The new format undoubtedly has its advantages, but one thing I'll miss is the punctuating rhetorical force of the author signature at the end of posts:
"-Posted by Robin Hanson at 6:00 am in _Signaling_, _Hypocrisy_"
"-Posted by Eliezer Yudkowsky at 3:57 pm in _Bayesian_, _Philosophy_"
These lines had a beautiful function, like "And Thus Spake the Great So-and-So".
Also... One of my preferred methods of navigating the site was the previous and next post buttons, which seem to have disappeared.