One idea that just came up to me was making it easier to reap status benefits from the GWWC giving pledge, e.g. I feel kind of proud of seeing my name on this huge numbered list and being among the first ten thousand people to sign. Relatedly, Subreddits and Wikipedia Projects seem to actively use badges of honor to acknowledge things like being a donor, having helped with some task etc. Maybe we could have „Pledge“ badges.
Another idea: getting access to people one holds in high regard could also be something to think about. One could promote speakers coming to local groups, or generally promote networking within the community more.
Another thought that came up: Not being chosen for 80,000Hours‘ career coaching felt like it was a symptom of my relatively low value for the community (not saying there is room for improvement how they communicated that, was years ago). I imagine it feels similar for some others. Maybe having motivated volunteers taking up the rejected applicants would be a cheap way to signal „there are people in the community that value you being here and trying to work out an EA career path“?
I feel kind of proud of seeing my name on this huge numbered list and being among the first ten thousand people to sign.
That resonates with me.
And the mention of Wikipedia is interesting. When I was a pretty active Wikipedia editor, I indeed felt proud of and motivated by badge-type things (mainly “barnstars”, if I recall correctly), as well as by random people thanking me for contributions (either by clicking a button or by posting on my talk page).
I’d guess a lot of EAs have similar mindsets, motivational patterns, etc. to a lot of Wikipedia editors, so it does seem like it could be interesting to try to learn from how Wikipedia “recruits”, motivates, and retains editors.
Could you expand on what you mean by “Maybe we could have „Pledge“ badges”? E.g., where are you envisioning those badges being displayed? Are you envisioning them just being for taking the pledge, or also for other actions (e.g., recording donations, hitting some milestone in donations, being in the first 10,000 members, a badge another pledger can give you to say you helped them decide where to give...)?
(Your other ideas also seem potentially interesting, but I don’t have anything in particular to say about them :) )
Could you expand on what you mean by “Maybe we could have „Pledge“ badges”? E.g., where are you envisioning those badges being displayed?
I thought about people’s forum accounts. There are also the EA hub accounts, but I basically never open it, not sure about others. I’d probably do it similar to Wikipedia (e.g. here), just having a small icon for the pledge and when you hover on it “GivingWhatWeCan member since April 2nd, 2020”. I didn’t think about other ideas, e.g. being helpful for a person deciding on a donation! I like the idea. One worry that comes up is that it could get a bit cluttered. Also, something in me feels a bit awkward when proudly displaying something, like I could become the target of the bullies of my highschool for feeling “too cool”. The GWWC pledge is already so socially accepted as something cool that I don’t feel this in that case.
Yeah, I think this idea—and other things in the same neighbourhood—is worth considering.
One thing worth mentioning is that GWWC already have badges you can display on websites, as well as Facebook photo frames. (This is where I found them.) So I think the intervention here wouldn’t be creating them, but rather:
getting the EA Forum—and maybe other sites—to have a clearly visible option for putting a badge there if one is a GWWC member
normalising using them
E.g., by directly talking to a few people about using them, and making a public statement to let people know about the idea
maybe creating variants
I think it could be worth talking to people like Luke Freeman (who’s head of GWWC) and/or Aaron Gertler (the lead Forum moderator) about this.
Re: Make status easier accessible
One idea that just came up to me was making it easier to reap status benefits from the GWWC giving pledge, e.g. I feel kind of proud of seeing my name on this huge numbered list and being among the first ten thousand people to sign. Relatedly, Subreddits and Wikipedia Projects seem to actively use badges of honor to acknowledge things like being a donor, having helped with some task etc. Maybe we could have „Pledge“ badges.
Another idea: getting access to people one holds in high regard could also be something to think about. One could promote speakers coming to local groups, or generally promote networking within the community more.
Another thought that came up: Not being chosen for 80,000Hours‘ career coaching felt like it was a symptom of my relatively low value for the community (not saying there is room for improvement how they communicated that, was years ago). I imagine it feels similar for some others. Maybe having motivated volunteers taking up the rejected applicants would be a cheap way to signal „there are people in the community that value you being here and trying to work out an EA career path“?
That resonates with me.
And the mention of Wikipedia is interesting. When I was a pretty active Wikipedia editor, I indeed felt proud of and motivated by badge-type things (mainly “barnstars”, if I recall correctly), as well as by random people thanking me for contributions (either by clicking a button or by posting on my talk page).
I’d guess a lot of EAs have similar mindsets, motivational patterns, etc. to a lot of Wikipedia editors, so it does seem like it could be interesting to try to learn from how Wikipedia “recruits”, motivates, and retains editors.
Could you expand on what you mean by “Maybe we could have „Pledge“ badges”? E.g., where are you envisioning those badges being displayed? Are you envisioning them just being for taking the pledge, or also for other actions (e.g., recording donations, hitting some milestone in donations, being in the first 10,000 members, a badge another pledger can give you to say you helped them decide where to give...)?
(Your other ideas also seem potentially interesting, but I don’t have anything in particular to say about them :) )
I thought about people’s forum accounts. There are also the EA hub accounts, but I basically never open it, not sure about others. I’d probably do it similar to Wikipedia (e.g. here), just having a small icon for the pledge and when you hover on it “GivingWhatWeCan member since April 2nd, 2020”. I didn’t think about other ideas, e.g. being helpful for a person deciding on a donation! I like the idea. One worry that comes up is that it could get a bit cluttered. Also, something in me feels a bit awkward when proudly displaying something, like I could become the target of the bullies of my highschool for feeling “too cool”. The GWWC pledge is already so socially accepted as something cool that I don’t feel this in that case.
Yeah, I think this idea—and other things in the same neighbourhood—is worth considering.
One thing worth mentioning is that GWWC already have badges you can display on websites, as well as Facebook photo frames. (This is where I found them.) So I think the intervention here wouldn’t be creating them, but rather:
getting the EA Forum—and maybe other sites—to have a clearly visible option for putting a badge there if one is a GWWC member
normalising using them
E.g., by directly talking to a few people about using them, and making a public statement to let people know about the idea
maybe creating variants
I think it could be worth talking to people like Luke Freeman (who’s head of GWWC) and/or Aaron Gertler (the lead Forum moderator) about this.