I’m still fuzzy on the relationship between the EA Facebook group and the EA forum. Are we supposed to move most or all the discussion that was going on in the FB group here? Will the FB be shut down, and if not what will is be used for?
I think the format of the forum will present a higher barrier to low-key discussion than the FB group, e.g. I’d guess people are much less likely to post an EA related new article if they don’t have too much to add to it. This is primarily because the forum looks like a blog. Is FB style posting encouraged?
If this has all been described somewhere. Could someone point me toward it?
Facebook is a terrible medium for discussion, so I hope everyone, or at least all the cool people, come over here and we have an active community. I don’t know if this will happen. I think this forum would be a good place for links with discussion and not just blog posts.
There’s a long comment on this topic by Ryan Carey on the FB group here—basically the policy is carefully curated content of a pretty generalist nature for the first month, so that the forum will be as inclusive as possible to begin with. Then after that first month it gets thrown relatively open.
I also imagine this forum as a place of links and rapid-fire discussion in addition to the longer stuff, and in a few weeks time we’ll get to see if that mode of posting becomes popular.
I concur with pappabuhry. Additionally, our minds might be running the schema that because this forum looks like a bit like Less Wrong, and has an almost identical platform, maybe it makes sense to use it like Less Wrong.
However, Less Wrong is part of an online rationalist culture that is distinct from effective altruism. Additionally, Less Wrong launched with traditions of discussion that had been on Overcoming Bias for years already. While lots of users here originated on Less Wrong, I believe they’re the ones who are open to discussions with a a different feel. So, how this forum as a whole prefers discussions will form as individual users try new discussions at any level, and what establishes itself.
I believe the policy for the first couple of months of being open and inclusive with subtle moderation is a good approach for cultivating an agora.
I’ve chatted to Ryan about this, and the idea is that the forum is the place for people’s writings on and discussion of EA, whereas the projects on http://effectivealtruismhub.com/ are for other things. For instance the EA Profiles are the place for information about people—e.g. showing more about who the people writing here are, and (we plan) linking to those writings. So in that sense they should be nicely complementary.
I think the problem with that is the platform here is much better than FB. I think it would be better to have both “main” and “discussion” on this site.
One possible side benefit is that it can include the (few) people who don’t have FB. I know at least one person who does not have FB, wants to use the EA group but doesn’t want to get addicted to FB.
Hey Jess. Good questions. Obviously, the relationship between these is mostly decided by the community, rather than by one individual, and will emerge gradually over some number of weeks.
That said, I think it’s good for most substantive discussion to move here. Here should also have some blog-length posts that are lighter and fun to read.
Since most people are using the same names on Facebook as here, there are some advantages to keeping it open. It’s a kind of bridge between internet and real world. It helps people to put faces to the names of people they’re interacting with, which should increase willingness to meet or collaborate. As for what goes there, I think the stuff that goes there will include:
some links (e.g. Elon Musk made a bunch more dough of this nasa deal)
practical real-world stuff will go there, (e.g. “I’m going to X city, does anyone have a room to offer there”)
specific topics (similar to the Open Threads. There should be enough minor EA discussion to go around)
I’m kicking around a rough guidline in my head. Somethnig like “post it to the forum if it’s at least three of ‘fun to read’, ‘substantial’, ‘relevant’ and ‘reasoned’. If it’s two of those things, then an open thread or facebook is more suitable. If it’s only one of those things, then it’s no good.
Tom and I are thinking of ways to tie-in with the Hub. I think that the Hub could use the Forum to run a survey, whereas the Forum could use the Hub’s map to identify people who might want to attend a meetup.
Feedback helps, especially on the FB/Forum border. Anyway, I’ll bundle these thoughts into my next update post.
(1) I don’t think minor posts like “Here’s an interesting article. Anyone have thoughts?” fit very well in the open thread. The open threads are kind of unruly, and it’s hard to find anything in there. In particular, it’s not clear when something new has been added.
One possibility is to create a second tier of posts which do not appear on the main page unless you specifically select it. Call it “minor posts” or “status updates” or whatever. (Didn’t LessWrong have something like this?) These would have essentially no barrier to entry and could consist of single link. However, the threaded comment sections would be a lot more useful than FB.
(2) I’ve talked to at least a couple of other people who think EAs need a place to talk that’s more casual in the specific sense that comments aren’t saved for all eternity on the internet. (Or, at the very least, aren’t indexed by search engines.) Right now there is a significant friction associated with the fact that each time you click submit you have to make sure you’re comfortable with your name being attached to your comment forever.
It might make sense to combine (1) and (2) (or not).
(1) I don’t think minor posts like “Here’s an interesting article. Anyone have thoughts?” fit very well in the open thread. In particular, it’s not clear when something new has been added. One possibility is to create a second tier of posts which do not appear on the main page unless you specifically select it.
I agree that the links might not fit well in an open thread. An alternative might be to bundle up a bunch of links into a “links for November” type thread like State Star Codex. Then, people can put more links in the comments if appropriate.
However, learn against improving discussion by subdividing discussion fora. The main/discussion distinction was one of LessWrong’s most unpopular features. In the effective altruism community, we already have a subreddit, many facebook groups, many personal blogs, many Twitters, many Tumblrs, LessWrong, here and many other online locations. Moreover, given limited programmer resources, we’re not currently looking for new features. Having said that, I’ll look into the feasibility highlighting new comments because that seems like it would be useful.
(2) I’ve talked to at least a couple of other people who think EAs need a place to talk that’s more casual in the specific sense that comments aren’t saved for all eternity on the internet. (Or, at the very least, aren’t indexed by search engines.)
A private Facebook group is best for this. There’s no straightforward way to prevent public pages from being indexed by sites like archive.today.
I feel like a lot of potential is lost if we don’t encourage asking questions and making smaller contributions (like on fb and the open thread) on the forum. I do understand that these kinds of posts don’t fit into the main section of the forum. But what’s the reasoning behind not having any subforums? I often think of issues I would post in subforums of this site, which I wouldn’t bring up facebook (because 100s or 1000s will read it) and that doesn’t fit into Main.
An open thread is a nice step in the right direction. It does have significant disadvantages to subforum(s) though in my estimation:
No headlines for posts, so it’s not scanable
You have to see the full post rather than the headline only
It’s not that visible and the headline “open thread” doesn’t really intrigue me as much as other posts.
Also, I feel like topic-specific subforums would generally lower the barrier for people to post something. I guess I have this intuition because the posts won’t be seen by (as many) people who are not interested in your post’s topic.
Good suggestion! This would solve the headline issue, though the issue that you don’t have a list of simply headlines in front of you would still be unsolved.
Perhaps there’s an easy way of having the headlines of all the comments appear in the OP of the open thread? The person that opens the thread could manually add them of course, but that involves work.
I’d also prefer subforums, but split by subject matter rather than level of depth.
I see the main value of them in making it easier for people to navigate old discussions when they’re interested in specific topics (I found this a big problem with LessWrong). Since I think they’re mostly an indexing tool, I’m not sure how this would have a significant effect on critical mass—though I could be wrong on that.
This seems like a good idea. I second the point that they could be easy to navigate. Which means it may become similar to subforum s, but with the advantage that there’s still a place where all posts are listed.
Does anyone know a site that has implemented this in a useful way?
EDIT: To qualify, there’s lots of sites using tags of course. I’m referring a system where you have a ‘reasonably small set of tags’ as Owen suggests and those are very visible. E.g. they are displayed on the main page as the ‘official tags’
Hey Soeren, I agree that retaining small contributions is an important challenge. I also agree that the open threads as they currently stand, probably don’t fully meet that challenge. Since the first open thread was so popular, we could break pieces off it by 1) putting the meatier posts as articles instead of open thread comment or 2) having topic-specific open threads e.g. “Career advice thread”, “Far future discussion thread”. I think it’ sgood to keep thinking about this.
I’m still fuzzy on the relationship between the EA Facebook group and the EA forum. Are we supposed to move most or all the discussion that was going on in the FB group here? Will the FB be shut down, and if not what will is be used for?
I think the format of the forum will present a higher barrier to low-key discussion than the FB group, e.g. I’d guess people are much less likely to post an EA related new article if they don’t have too much to add to it. This is primarily because the forum looks like a blog. Is FB style posting encouraged?
If this has all been described somewhere. Could someone point me toward it?
Also, what’s the relationship between the EA forum and the EA hub? http://effectivealtruismhub.com/
Facebook is a terrible medium for discussion, so I hope everyone, or at least all the cool people, come over here and we have an active community. I don’t know if this will happen. I think this forum would be a good place for links with discussion and not just blog posts.
There’s a long comment on this topic by Ryan Carey on the FB group here—basically the policy is carefully curated content of a pretty generalist nature for the first month, so that the forum will be as inclusive as possible to begin with. Then after that first month it gets thrown relatively open.
I also imagine this forum as a place of links and rapid-fire discussion in addition to the longer stuff, and in a few weeks time we’ll get to see if that mode of posting becomes popular.
I concur with pappabuhry. Additionally, our minds might be running the schema that because this forum looks like a bit like Less Wrong, and has an almost identical platform, maybe it makes sense to use it like Less Wrong.
However, Less Wrong is part of an online rationalist culture that is distinct from effective altruism. Additionally, Less Wrong launched with traditions of discussion that had been on Overcoming Bias for years already. While lots of users here originated on Less Wrong, I believe they’re the ones who are open to discussions with a a different feel. So, how this forum as a whole prefers discussions will form as individual users try new discussions at any level, and what establishes itself.
I believe the policy for the first couple of months of being open and inclusive with subtle moderation is a good approach for cultivating an agora.
I’ve chatted to Ryan about this, and the idea is that the forum is the place for people’s writings on and discussion of EA, whereas the projects on http://effectivealtruismhub.com/ are for other things. For instance the EA Profiles are the place for information about people—e.g. showing more about who the people writing here are, and (we plan) linking to those writings. So in that sense they should be nicely complementary.
I thought the EA Facebook group was going to play “LW Discussion” to the EA Forum’s “LW Main”. Though the open thread does blur that line.
There’s also an EA Reddit for posting articles.
I think the problem with that is the platform here is much better than FB. I think it would be better to have both “main” and “discussion” on this site.
One possible side benefit is that it can include the (few) people who don’t have FB. I know at least one person who does not have FB, wants to use the EA group but doesn’t want to get addicted to FB.
Hey Jess. Good questions. Obviously, the relationship between these is mostly decided by the community, rather than by one individual, and will emerge gradually over some number of weeks.
That said, I think it’s good for most substantive discussion to move here. Here should also have some blog-length posts that are lighter and fun to read.
Since most people are using the same names on Facebook as here, there are some advantages to keeping it open. It’s a kind of bridge between internet and real world. It helps people to put faces to the names of people they’re interacting with, which should increase willingness to meet or collaborate. As for what goes there, I think the stuff that goes there will include:
some links (e.g. Elon Musk made a bunch more dough of this nasa deal)
practical real-world stuff will go there, (e.g. “I’m going to X city, does anyone have a room to offer there”)
specific topics (similar to the Open Threads. There should be enough minor EA discussion to go around)
I’m kicking around a rough guidline in my head. Somethnig like “post it to the forum if it’s at least three of ‘fun to read’, ‘substantial’, ‘relevant’ and ‘reasoned’. If it’s two of those things, then an open thread or facebook is more suitable. If it’s only one of those things, then it’s no good.
Tom and I are thinking of ways to tie-in with the Hub. I think that the Hub could use the Forum to run a survey, whereas the Forum could use the Hub’s map to identify people who might want to attend a meetup.
Feedback helps, especially on the FB/Forum border. Anyway, I’ll bundle these thoughts into my next update post.
Thanks for info Ryan. A couple of points:
(1) I don’t think minor posts like “Here’s an interesting article. Anyone have thoughts?” fit very well in the open thread. The open threads are kind of unruly, and it’s hard to find anything in there. In particular, it’s not clear when something new has been added.
One possibility is to create a second tier of posts which do not appear on the main page unless you specifically select it. Call it “minor posts” or “status updates” or whatever. (Didn’t LessWrong have something like this?) These would have essentially no barrier to entry and could consist of single link. However, the threaded comment sections would be a lot more useful than FB.
This is similar to Peter_Hurford and MichaelDickens and SoerenMind comments above.
(2) I’ve talked to at least a couple of other people who think EAs need a place to talk that’s more casual in the specific sense that comments aren’t saved for all eternity on the internet. (Or, at the very least, aren’t indexed by search engines.) Right now there is a significant friction associated with the fact that each time you click submit you have to make sure you’re comfortable with your name being attached to your comment forever.
It might make sense to combine (1) and (2) (or not).
I agree that the links might not fit well in an open thread. An alternative might be to bundle up a bunch of links into a “links for November” type thread like State Star Codex. Then, people can put more links in the comments if appropriate.
However, learn against improving discussion by subdividing discussion fora. The main/discussion distinction was one of LessWrong’s most unpopular features. In the effective altruism community, we already have a subreddit, many facebook groups, many personal blogs, many Twitters, many Tumblrs, LessWrong, here and many other online locations. Moreover, given limited programmer resources, we’re not currently looking for new features. Having said that, I’ll look into the feasibility highlighting new comments because that seems like it would be useful.
A private Facebook group is best for this. There’s no straightforward way to prevent public pages from being indexed by sites like archive.today.
Very reasonable. Thanks Ryan.
I feel like a lot of potential is lost if we don’t encourage asking questions and making smaller contributions (like on fb and the open thread) on the forum. I do understand that these kinds of posts don’t fit into the main section of the forum. But what’s the reasoning behind not having any subforums? I often think of issues I would post in subforums of this site, which I wouldn’t bring up facebook (because 100s or 1000s will read it) and that doesn’t fit into Main.
An open thread is a nice step in the right direction. It does have significant disadvantages to subforum(s) though in my estimation:
No headlines for posts, so it’s not scanable
You have to see the full post rather than the headline only
It’s not that visible and the headline “open thread” doesn’t really intrigue me as much as other posts.
Also, I feel like topic-specific subforums would generally lower the barrier for people to post something. I guess I have this intuition because the posts won’t be seen by (as many) people who are not interested in your post’s topic.
By now I’ve read Ryan’s comment on subforums (https://www.facebook.com/groups/effective.altruists/permalink/743662675690092/?comment_id=744027525653607&offset=0&total_comments=14). In my estimation the lost potential outweighs the costs, so consider this a vote for subforums (or at least main/discussion). I’m happy to be convinced otherwise though.
[We Could Encourage Headlines in Open Threads]
Like above. Jacy does it.
[Encouragement and qualification ;)]
Good suggestion! This would solve the headline issue, though the issue that you don’t have a list of simply headlines in front of you would still be unsolved.
Perhaps there’s an easy way of having the headlines of all the comments appear in the OP of the open thread? The person that opens the thread could manually add them of course, but that involves work.
I’d also prefer subforums, but split by subject matter rather than level of depth.
I see the main value of them in making it easier for people to navigate old discussions when they’re interested in specific topics (I found this a big problem with LessWrong). Since I think they’re mostly an indexing tool, I’m not sure how this would have a significant effect on critical mass—though I could be wrong on that.
We could also make better use of tags.
Yes, if there were a reasonably small set of tags used consistently, and a way to navigate by them, that would work just as well.
The subforums approach essentially forces that indexing work up-front at the time of posting. Otherwise it’s pretty similar.
This seems like a good idea. I second the point that they could be easy to navigate. Which means it may become similar to subforum s, but with the advantage that there’s still a place where all posts are listed.
Does anyone know a site that has implemented this in a useful way?
EDIT: To qualify, there’s lots of sites using tags of course. I’m referring a system where you have a ‘reasonably small set of tags’ as Owen suggests and those are very visible. E.g. they are displayed on the main page as the ‘official tags’
I think that would be a good feature. Current tags aren’t very useful.
Hey Soeren, I agree that retaining small contributions is an important challenge. I also agree that the open threads as they currently stand, probably don’t fully meet that challenge. Since the first open thread was so popular, we could break pieces off it by 1) putting the meatier posts as articles instead of open thread comment or 2) having topic-specific open threads e.g. “Career advice thread”, “Far future discussion thread”. I think it’ sgood to keep thinking about this.
Regarding subforums, I’ve written more here.