You’ve written us quite the feature spec there. I’m not opposed to ambitious suggestions (at all! for real! though it is true that they’re less likely to happen), but I would find this one if it were written in the style of a user problem. I am un-embarassed to ask you for this extra product work because I know you’re a product manager. (That said, I’d understand if you didn’t want to spend any time on it without a stronger signal from us of how likely we are to act on it.)
Many EAs primarily experience EA online (both initially and as they progress on their EA journeys).
There are limited opportunities for people to practice EA principles online
The forum is visited by many people
The forum should be a place where people can actively practice EA principles
Specifically, it can be a place collaborative truthseeking happens, but it isn’t really a place for that. Instead, it’s more often a place to share the results of collaborative truthseeking
Truthseeking involves:
Being wrong
Saying dumb / naïve things
Making mistakes
Appearing less intelligent than you are
Asking questions of people
Challenging people (of higher status / position than you)
Saying you were wrong publicly
Not getting defensive and being open to criticism
The forum doesn’t feel like a place where people can do those things today without some degree of reputational / career harm (or unless they invest a lot of time in legibly explaining themselves / demonstrating they’ve updated)
There are poor incentives for people to help each other collaboratively truth-seek on the Forum today. The forum can sometimes feels competitive or critical, rather than collaborative and supportive
I’ve commented previously during the era of Forum competition posts, that it would be nice to recognize people helping each other
Edo makes the nice comment that the strategy session is one of the few forum posting events that’s not explicitly competitive
This is a current pratice users already (in the product question of are you replacing an existing practice or introducing a new one—it’s easier to replace a new practice because it’s more likely to be used).
1) There is already a strong culture of sharing your 101 google docs with a ever changing list of reviewers, commentors etc. I’m sure we’ve all seen at least 20-30 docs like these over time.
2) There are also some coordination attempts like the facebook group for editing & review
I think current solutions miss a lot of the value . I think the forum could do it better.
Better information flow & sharing
Less networking-walling (like paywalling but you’re limited by your network not ability to pay)
Lets more people see and give helpful comments
Lets more appropriate people give better comments (by incentivizing / rewarding help)
Explicitly build the forum as a place where people can feel comfortable exploring the world / being wrong together
Not OP but here are some “user problems” either I have or am pretty sure a bunch of people have:
Lots of latent, locked up insight/value in drafts
Implicitly high standards discourage posting these as normal posts, which is good for avg post quality and bad for total quality
Would want to collaborate on either an explicit idea or something tbd, but making this happen as is takes a bunch of effort
Reduces costs to getting and giving feedback
Currently afaik there’s no market where feedback buyers and sellers can meet—just ad hoc Google doc links
In principle you can imagine posts almost being written like a Wikipedia page: lots and lots of editors and commenters contributing a bit here and there
Here’s a post of mine that should be a public draft, for example. But as things stand I’d rather it be a shitty public post than a probably-perpetual private draft (if anyone wants to build on it, go to town!)
I’ve heard a new anecdote from someone who’s actively working on a AI research project who feels less connected to relevant people in their domain to get feedback on it.
(also would love to hear what doubts & hesitations you have / red-team this idea more—I think devil’s definitely in the details and there are lots of interesting MVP’s here)
hehe you know i like to give y’all some things to do! would be interested to know how likely you’d be to act on it, but also happy to expand since it’s not a big lift. Not linking to all the stuff I mention to save some time.
Here’s my hypothesis of the user problem :
Personal statement (my own case)
I often want to write a post, but struggle to get it over the line, and so it remains in a half baked state and not shared with people
I want to find the “early adopters” of my posts to give me lots of feedback when my personal circles may not have the right context and/or I don’t know who from my personal circles is available to look at a draft.
(there’s a big cognitive load / ugh field / aversion in general here e.g. whenever you have to go through a list of people to curate for e.g. inviting them to an event or asking people for favors.)
Sometimes it can be good to release things into the world even if they are low quality because then they’re out of your system and you can focus on other, more valuable ideas.
Personal Experiment: I’ve posted a draft on twitter and get some of this effect (where people not in my radar read and engage with stuff). This is mostly really good.
But, as might be obvious, it’s really not a good forum for sharing thoughts longer than 2 paragrapsh.
Sometimes I don’t know what posts or ideas will resonate with people, and it’s nice to find that out early. Also, I am better able to take feedback when I haven’t invested a bunch of time in polishing and editing a draft
I also just want to share a lot of thoughts that I don’t think are post-level quality but are also a bit more thought through than shortforms (without losing the benefit of in-line commenting, suggest mode—essentially, the UX of google docs)
Hi Vaidehi!
You’ve written us quite the feature spec there. I’m not opposed to ambitious suggestions (at all! for real! though it is true that they’re less likely to happen), but I would find this one if it were written in the style of a user problem. I am un-embarassed to ask you for this extra product work because I know you’re a product manager. (That said, I’d understand if you didn’t want to spend any time on it without a stronger signal from us of how likely we are to act on it.)
Broader statement / use case I could imagine
All claims you could disagree with.
Many EAs primarily experience EA online (both initially and as they progress on their EA journeys).
There are limited opportunities for people to practice EA principles online
The forum is visited by many people
The forum should be a place where people can actively practice EA principles
Specifically, it can be a place collaborative truthseeking happens, but it isn’t really a place for that. Instead, it’s more often a place to share the results of collaborative truthseeking
Truthseeking involves:
Being wrong
Saying dumb / naïve things
Making mistakes
Appearing less intelligent than you are
Asking questions of people
Challenging people (of higher status / position than you)
Saying you were wrong publicly
Not getting defensive and being open to criticism
The forum doesn’t feel like a place where people can do those things today without some degree of reputational / career harm (or unless they invest a lot of time in legibly explaining themselves / demonstrating they’ve updated)
There are poor incentives for people to help each other collaboratively truth-seek on the Forum today. The forum can sometimes feels competitive or critical, rather than collaborative and supportive
I’ve commented previously during the era of Forum competition posts, that it would be nice to recognize people helping each other
Edo makes the nice comment that the strategy session is one of the few forum posting events that’s not explicitly competitive
Nathan proposes Community posts: The Forum needs a way to work in public which is somewhat similar in terms of changing incentives towards collaborative truthseeking
This is a current pratice users already (in the product question of are you replacing an existing practice or introducing a new one—it’s easier to replace a new practice because it’s more likely to be used).
1) There is already a strong culture of sharing your 101 google docs with a ever changing list of reviewers, commentors etc. I’m sure we’ve all seen at least 20-30 docs like these over time.
2) There are also some coordination attempts like the facebook group for editing & review
I think current solutions miss a lot of the value . I think the forum could do it better.
Better information flow & sharing
Less networking-walling (like paywalling but you’re limited by your network not ability to pay)
Lets more people see and give helpful comments
Lets more appropriate people give better comments (by incentivizing / rewarding help)
Explicitly build the forum as a place where people can feel comfortable exploring the world / being wrong together
Not OP but here are some “user problems” either I have or am pretty sure a bunch of people have:
Lots of latent, locked up insight/value in drafts
Implicitly high standards discourage posting these as normal posts, which is good for avg post quality and bad for total quality
Would want to collaborate on either an explicit idea or something tbd, but making this happen as is takes a bunch of effort
Reduces costs to getting and giving feedback
Currently afaik there’s no market where feedback buyers and sellers can meet—just ad hoc Google doc links
In principle you can imagine posts almost being written like a Wikipedia page: lots and lots of editors and commenters contributing a bit here and there
Here’s a post of mine that should be a public draft, for example. But as things stand I’d rather it be a shitty public post than a probably-perpetual private draft (if anyone wants to build on it, go to town!)
+1 to all of this also.
I’ve heard a new anecdote from someone who’s actively working on a AI research project who feels less connected to relevant people in their domain to get feedback on it.
(also would love to hear what doubts & hesitations you have / red-team this idea more—I think devil’s definitely in the details and there are lots of interesting MVP’s here)
hehe you know i like to give y’all some things to do! would be interested to know how likely you’d be to act on it, but also happy to expand since it’s not a big lift. Not linking to all the stuff I mention to save some time.
Here’s my hypothesis of the user problem :
Personal statement (my own case)
I often want to write a post, but struggle to get it over the line, and so it remains in a half baked state and not shared with people
I want to find the “early adopters” of my posts to give me lots of feedback when my personal circles may not have the right context and/or I don’t know who from my personal circles is available to look at a draft.
(there’s a big cognitive load / ugh field / aversion in general here e.g. whenever you have to go through a list of people to curate for e.g. inviting them to an event or asking people for favors.)
Sometimes it can be good to release things into the world even if they are low quality because then they’re out of your system and you can focus on other, more valuable ideas.
Personal Experiment: I’ve posted a draft on twitter and get some of this effect (where people not in my radar read and engage with stuff). This is mostly really good.
But, as might be obvious, it’s really not a good forum for sharing thoughts longer than 2 paragrapsh.
Sometimes I don’t know what posts or ideas will resonate with people, and it’s nice to find that out early. Also, I am better able to take feedback when I haven’t invested a bunch of time in polishing and editing a draft
I also just want to share a lot of thoughts that I don’t think are post-level quality but are also a bit more thought through than shortforms (without losing the benefit of in-line commenting, suggest mode—essentially, the UX of google docs)