I agree that the boundary between Community & non-Community posts is (and has always been) fuzzy
You can see some guidance I wrote in early 2023: Community vs. other[2] (a “test-yourself” quiz is also linked in the doc)
Note: I am no longer on the Online Team/an active moderator and don’t actually know what the official guidance is today.[3]
I also agree that this fuzziness is not a trivial issue, & it continues to bug me
when I go to the Frontpage, I relatively frequently see posts that I think should be “Community” that aren’t, or vice versa
However, the Community tag/distinction/section was not “a way to separate out FTX-scandal-related posts”, IMO
Fwiw, I was (also?) really worried about this change when I was working on it, both because I was concerned it would suppress useful criticism/reflection/etc., and because I wanted to make sure my decision-making wasn’t somehow secretly tainted by various biases.
I’m writing quickly here — not taking time to dig up my old docs or trying to really remember what was going on in early 2023[4], but I vaguely remember e.g. calling @Ben_West🔸 at some point when I was feeling particularly stressed, to double check that we endorsed how we were approaching the change
A lot of the thinking/earlier attempts had happened before the FTX collapse
“We’ve been hearing about the Forum fixating on certain discussions for over a year [as of Feb 2023]: this has been making a lot of people sad for a long time. [...]”
And we’d already down-weighted “community” posts for new & logged-out users (before the FTX collapse); IMO this was always a pretty hacky feature that had a bunch of flaws
The community tag itself had existed for a while before that
Just a quick clarification: I don’t think this was a “change to lower community engagement.” Adding the community section was a change, and it did (probably[1]) lower engagement with community posts, but that wasn’t the actual point (which is a distinction I think is worth making, although maybe some would say it’s the same). In my view, the point was to avoid suffocating other discussions and to make the Forum feel less on-edge/anxiety-inducing (which we were hearing was at least some people’s experience). In case it helps, this outlines our (or at least my) thinking about it.
I would like to see more “Community” posts / discussions
I think the Community section overall is probably still (quite) positive (but tagging could probably be improved)
Off the top of the head, the two key things I’d probably look at /think about, if I were considering removing it (or doing something else), are (1) whether it seems like it’s really tanking engagement on Community posts, or preventing them from being written (I’d maybe chat to likely/potential authors about this, look at the numbers, etc.), and (2) how active users (i.e. readers) feel about the Community section[5]
In fact it looks like I can no longer add or remove the Community tag from posts. I’m still in the Slack; a few people sometimes flag questions about edge cases there.
I agree that separating out community posts was not just a reaction to the FTX situation. Early in CEA’s time running the Forum, the community section was an entirely different page, as you can see in this 2019 Wayback capture.
Replying quickly, speaking only for myself[1]:
I agree that the boundary between Community & non-Community posts is (and has always been) fuzzy
You can see some guidance I wrote in early 2023: Community vs. other[2] (a “test-yourself” quiz is also linked in the doc)
Note: I am no longer on the Online Team/an active moderator and don’t actually know what the official guidance is today.[3]
I also agree that this fuzziness is not a trivial issue, & it continues to bug me
when I go to the Frontpage, I relatively frequently see posts that I think should be “Community” that aren’t, or vice versa
However, the Community tag/distinction/section was not “a way to separate out FTX-scandal-related posts”, IMO
Fwiw, I was (also?) really worried about this change when I was working on it, both because I was concerned it would suppress useful criticism/reflection/etc., and because I wanted to make sure my decision-making wasn’t somehow secretly tainted by various biases.
I’m writing quickly here — not taking time to dig up my old docs or trying to really remember what was going on in early 2023[4], but I vaguely remember e.g. calling @Ben_West🔸 at some point when I was feeling particularly stressed, to double check that we endorsed how we were approaching the change
See also footnote 7 here, and footnote 2 here
More:
A lot of the thinking/earlier attempts had happened before the FTX collapse
“We’ve been hearing about the Forum fixating on certain discussions for over a year [as of Feb 2023]: this has been making a lot of people sad for a long time. [...]”
[from here]
And we’d already down-weighted “community” posts for new & logged-out users (before the FTX collapse); IMO this was always a pretty hacky feature that had a bunch of flaws
The community tag itself had existed for a while before that
And, quoting from myself here (from July 2023):
Just a quick clarification: I don’t think this was a “change to lower community engagement.” Adding the community section was a change, and it did (probably[1]) lower engagement with community posts, but that wasn’t the actual point (which is a distinction I think is worth making, although maybe some would say it’s the same). In my view, the point was to avoid suffocating other discussions and to make the Forum feel less on-edge/anxiety-inducing (which we were hearing was at least some people’s experience). In case it helps, this outlines our (or at least my) thinking about it.
(i.e. +1 to @Lorenzo Buonanno🔸 in the comments)
Quick takes on where things are today:
I would like to see more “Community” posts / discussions
I think the Community section overall is probably still (quite) positive (but tagging could probably be improved)
Off the top of the head, the two key things I’d probably look at /think about, if I were considering removing it (or doing something else), are (1) whether it seems like it’s really tanking engagement on Community posts, or preventing them from being written (I’d maybe chat to likely/potential authors about this, look at the numbers, etc.), and (2) how active users (i.e. readers) feel about the Community section[5]
I.e. I’m not speaking for the Online/Mod teams here, and didn’t run this comment by anyone.
(I vaguely remember making and linking a public version of this doc somewhere at some point, but couldn’t quickly find that.)
In fact it looks like I can no longer add or remove the Community tag from posts. I’m still in the Slack; a few people sometimes flag questions about edge cases there.
(...a lot!)
I’d guess that most people still prefer it. The change got a lot of support, both before and after (and this is rare).
I agree that separating out community posts was not just a reaction to the FTX situation. Early in CEA’s time running the Forum, the community section was an entirely different page, as you can see in this 2019 Wayback capture.