All else equal, I have an extremely strong preference to avoid recommending funding to people who CH suspects with high probability to have committed sexual assault, or are violent, or abuse EA resources/power for personal gain, or are terrible to their employees, etc.
I think funding is one of the very few levers EAs in practice have to enforce basic decency norms (others include public declarations of norms, stern talking-tos, Forum bans, bans from CEA events, spreading rumors along whisper networks, public callouts, police reports, etc).
And on a personal level, I’d feel terrible if I knew I repeatedly recommended funding to people who end up being pretty harmful, and I’d feel betrayed if other EAs allowed me to repeatedly make unforced errors in that direction out of a confused sense of propriety.
I’m in general pretty confused about what the community want out of the Community Health team. It seems like people want to hold CH accountable for not taking sufficiently strong actions against problematic actors, and then also hobble what little power they do have. Seems strange to me.
I agree that this is very valuable. I would want them to be explicit about this role, and be clear to community builders talking to them that they should treat them as if talking to a funder.
To be clear, in the cases where I have felt uncomfortable it was not “X is engaging in sketchy behaviour, and we recommend not giving them funding” (my understanding is that this happens fairly often, and I am glad for it. CHT is providing a very valuable function here, which otherwise would be hard to coordinate. If anything, I would want them to be more brazen and ready to recommend against people based on less evidence than they do now).
Is more cases like “CHT staff thinks that this subcommunity would work better without central coordination, and this staff is going to recommend against funding any coordinators going forward” or “CHT is pressuring me to make a certain choice such as not banning a community member I consider problematic, and I am afraid that if I don’t comply I won’t get renewed” (I’ve learned of situations like these happen at least thrice).
It is difficult to orient yourself towards someone who you are not sure whether your should treat as your boss or as neutral third party mediator. This is stressing for community builders.
All else equal, I have an extremely strong preference to avoid recommending funding to people who CH suspects with high probability to have committed sexual assault, or are violent, or abuse EA resources/power for personal gain, or are terrible to their employees, etc.
I think funding is one of the very few levers EAs in practice have to enforce basic decency norms (others include public declarations of norms, stern talking-tos, Forum bans, bans from CEA events, spreading rumors along whisper networks, public callouts, police reports, etc).
And on a personal level, I’d feel terrible if I knew I repeatedly recommended funding to people who end up being pretty harmful, and I’d feel betrayed if other EAs allowed me to repeatedly make unforced errors in that direction out of a confused sense of propriety.
I’m in general pretty confused about what the community want out of the Community Health team. It seems like people want to hold CH accountable for not taking sufficiently strong actions against problematic actors, and then also hobble what little power they do have. Seems strange to me.
I agree that this is very valuable. I would want them to be explicit about this role, and be clear to community builders talking to them that they should treat them as if talking to a funder.
To be clear, in the cases where I have felt uncomfortable it was not “X is engaging in sketchy behaviour, and we recommend not giving them funding” (my understanding is that this happens fairly often, and I am glad for it. CHT is providing a very valuable function here, which otherwise would be hard to coordinate. If anything, I would want them to be more brazen and ready to recommend against people based on less evidence than they do now).
Is more cases like “CHT staff thinks that this subcommunity would work better without central coordination, and this staff is going to recommend against funding any coordinators going forward” or “CHT is pressuring me to make a certain choice such as not banning a community member I consider problematic, and I am afraid that if I don’t comply I won’t get renewed” (I’ve learned of situations like these happen at least thrice).
It is difficult to orient yourself towards someone who you are not sure whether your should treat as your boss or as neutral third party mediator. This is stressing for community builders.