I looked through this list to see which ideas might already exist, or be immediately feasible without building anything new. This caught my eye:
A vetting system for project ideas
What features would this system have that “posting a Google Doc on the EA Forum” doesn’t have? Doing so allows you to choose who can or can’t see it, present your idea in as much detail as you’d like, see how much the EA community likes it in general, get feedback from experts, etc. Would it be helpful to have a centralized space only for project ideas?
(There are, of course, project-management apps that are much better than Google Docs for actually implementing projects, but I’m not aware of any specialized software just for getting feedback on an initial idea.)
CEA is trying to make the Forum the best place to post EA content, in the sense that this is generally where you’ll find the most readers and get the best feedback. We’d hope that “EA projects” are exactly the kind of thing that get posted here, so if there’s a way in which we could add features to the Forum which would make that easier, we’d be interested in hearing about it!
I agree that the forum does already provide this function to get written feedback, however I’m not sure the written feedback makes it clear whether there is approval or lack of approval in general. Up and down voting helps, but I wouldn’t want to construe a bunch of upvotes as widespread approval to start a project, nor the downvotes as suggesting I’m triggering some terrible unilateralist curse! My thought was not fully formed, but I was thinking a bit more of a rating system, where someone could have a pretty rough idea, gets it checked it over with a few EAs and if it is approved, then they flesh the idea out a bit, and then it gets checked over by more people with more experience. Ideally in a way where people don’t feel uncomfortable sharing their ideas, and people feel okay about checking a box that says “This is likely to hasten catastrophe, don’t do it!”. I’ve been in a position where I’ve thought of starting a project, didn’t feel all that comfortable asking for feedback on the forum or reaching out widely until I had befriended many EAs so I could quietly talk it over with them, and I guess that others might be in the same boat (Although that might be more about me, than about the systems we have in place!).
I’m not quite sure what forum features could be added to help that, or whether there is a market for that beyond me!
I looked through this list to see which ideas might already exist, or be immediately feasible without building anything new. This caught my eye:
What features would this system have that “posting a Google Doc on the EA Forum” doesn’t have? Doing so allows you to choose who can or can’t see it, present your idea in as much detail as you’d like, see how much the EA community likes it in general, get feedback from experts, etc. Would it be helpful to have a centralized space only for project ideas?
(There are, of course, project-management apps that are much better than Google Docs for actually implementing projects, but I’m not aware of any specialized software just for getting feedback on an initial idea.)
CEA is trying to make the Forum the best place to post EA content, in the sense that this is generally where you’ll find the most readers and get the best feedback. We’d hope that “EA projects” are exactly the kind of thing that get posted here, so if there’s a way in which we could add features to the Forum which would make that easier, we’d be interested in hearing about it!
I agree that the forum does already provide this function to get written feedback, however I’m not sure the written feedback makes it clear whether there is approval or lack of approval in general. Up and down voting helps, but I wouldn’t want to construe a bunch of upvotes as widespread approval to start a project, nor the downvotes as suggesting I’m triggering some terrible unilateralist curse! My thought was not fully formed, but I was thinking a bit more of a rating system, where someone could have a pretty rough idea, gets it checked it over with a few EAs and if it is approved, then they flesh the idea out a bit, and then it gets checked over by more people with more experience. Ideally in a way where people don’t feel uncomfortable sharing their ideas, and people feel okay about checking a box that says “This is likely to hasten catastrophe, don’t do it!”. I’ve been in a position where I’ve thought of starting a project, didn’t feel all that comfortable asking for feedback on the forum or reaching out widely until I had befriended many EAs so I could quietly talk it over with them, and I guess that others might be in the same boat (Although that might be more about me, than about the systems we have in place!).
I’m not quite sure what forum features could be added to help that, or whether there is a market for that beyond me!