Talk:Sequences

The Sequences page is probably the most important page on the Wiki. As such, speed of user experience is more important than a vague urge for abstract symmetry or consistency. Where the original sequence guides are blog posts, we want users - especially new users - to visit those original sequence guides immediately. We don't want to send them to a Wiki page that forwards to the sequence guide and force them to click twice or read the same content over again. User interface studies show that requiring one more click results in a significant drop-off in participation, and this is very debilitating when it comes to the Sequences page. We want the user to click and see something interesting and attractive as fast as possible.

Hence I'm rolling back various edits that increase the number of user clicks. I designed the page the way it is for a reason. --Eliezer Yudkowsky 18:43, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Eliezer, that's causing problems. See the issue I've just moved from #215:

I've noticed that not all sequences have a page on the wiki. E.g. http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences#The_Quantum_Physics_Sequence links to http://lesswrong.com/lw/r5/the_quantum_physics_sequence/ instead of a wiki page. I assume this is because the LW post already lists the articles in the sequence. This is a problem though as the article navigation code assumes there is a wiki page for each sequence and uses that to build the list of articles in the sequence. The result is articles in sequences without a wiki page don't have the sequence listed in the article navigation links. E.g. http://lesswrong.com/lw/r9/quantum_mechanics_and_personal_identity/

--Matt 04:04, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

As I've said on the tracker, it's not really so:

There is a wiki page for quantum physics sequence, it's just not linked from the main sequences page, because the post that is linked has abstracts, while the wiki page doesn't (and probably shouldn't, since it'll be just a copy-paste of what's already available). Here it is: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_Quantum_Physics_Sequence

The same goes for fun theory sequence: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_Fun_Theory_Sequence

--Vladimir Nesov 08:26, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Wording

"Map and Territory contains some of the most important introductory posts and essays.

"If you don't read the sequences on Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions and Reductionism, nothing else on Less Wrong will make much sense."

This has bugged me somewhat since I first came here. "Map and Territory is 'introductory', suggesting that I'm best off reading it first, but at the same time it won't make much sense without MAMQ, but I should read it first for some reason anyway?". --Document 04:22, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Alternative formats

It wasn't til I'd already added links under each section heading that I noticed the "Alternative Formats" section at the bottom and discovered OneWhoFrogs's apparently more complete collection; sorry about that. I'd try to clean things up, but I'm up late and I'm hoping it's still closer to ideal accessibility than before than before. (Edit: another thing that should be done is making links to summary posts more prominent, and possibly linking this.) --Document 08:18, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm reverting all your edits, as they seem to be redundant (correct me if there's some material not included in the last section, I haven't actually checked; in that case, it should be added to the last section), and distort structure of the page (by interrupting the text that describes the sequences). --Vladimir Nesov 13:58, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Chronological Format

http://yudkowsky.net/rational/overcoming-bias notes that the posts may make more sense in chronological format, and for me, it seems like http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~andwhay/postlist.html offers a better starting point than the "map and territory" sequence (ie, just a bit more exciting to start reading). So, I suggest that this be mentioned as an alternative in the wiki page, possibly in the introduction after the bit about "the most systematic way..."

Communication sequence

Work in progress: User:Chriswaterguy #A communication sequence.

I don't know whether it should eventually be linked here, but it's possibly of interest to people besides myself. --Chriswaterguy (talk) 11:44, 8 December 2014 (AEDT)