This might not be a valid concern, but I wonder as the number of Forum users grows if there will be so many posts that most of them can only be on the front page for a very short amount of time. Most posts would then slip under the radar and get very little attention (at least compared to now). This may put people off engaging—although I guess this would then mean you’d settle at some sort of equilibrium.
Lots of very short posts could exacerbate this concern. Maybe the forum has to adapt as it grows. Various sub-groups, like Reddit has, could help allow more posts get attention from those who are interested in them.
I agree. While I appreciate the push to lower the barriers to posting for those who feel intimidated, the flipside of this is that it’s pretty demotivating when a post that reflects five months and hundreds of hours of work is on the front page for less than a day. I feel like there’s something wrong with the system when I can spend five minutes putting together a linkpost instead and earn a greater level of engagement.
Yeah I feel the same way, I wonder if there’s a good fix for that. Given the current setup, long effortposts are usually only of interest to a small % of people, so they don’t get as many upvotes.
But as long as a large fraction of this small % of people sees the post, this is not a big problem, no? I imagine that this is for example true for EAs interested in improving institutions and the landscape analysis of institutional improvements.
I agree with this concern, and that splitting is a possibility. But in the meantime, given current traffic, it could be worth considering making the frontpage a little denser, to fit like 50% more posts...
The tags feature can be good for this. I’ve negatively weighted some tags so that I only see the very top posts on those topics, and positively weighted other tags so I’ll see posts on those topics for longer.
I think this discussion will become important in the future. On the one hand, I struggle a little bit to notice every post that is interesting for me. On the other hand, there is the danger that the EA movement starts to fragment if the forum is splitted. Longtermists could read only longtermist stuff, people interested in animal suffering read only posts on animal advocacy etc.
This might not be a valid concern, but I wonder as the number of Forum users grows if there will be so many posts that most of them can only be on the front page for a very short amount of time. Most posts would then slip under the radar and get very little attention (at least compared to now). This may put people off engaging—although I guess this would then mean you’d settle at some sort of equilibrium.
Lots of very short posts could exacerbate this concern. Maybe the forum has to adapt as it grows. Various sub-groups, like Reddit has, could help allow more posts get attention from those who are interested in them.
I agree. While I appreciate the push to lower the barriers to posting for those who feel intimidated, the flipside of this is that it’s pretty demotivating when a post that reflects five months and hundreds of hours of work is on the front page for less than a day. I feel like there’s something wrong with the system when I can spend five minutes putting together a linkpost instead and earn a greater level of engagement.
Yeah I feel the same way, I wonder if there’s a good fix for that. Given the current setup, long effortposts are usually only of interest to a small % of people, so they don’t get as many upvotes.
But as long as a large fraction of this small % of people sees the post, this is not a big problem, no? I imagine that this is for example true for EAs interested in improving institutions and the landscape analysis of institutional improvements.
I agree with this concern, and that splitting is a possibility. But in the meantime, given current traffic, it could be worth considering making the frontpage a little denser, to fit like 50% more posts...
The tags feature can be good for this. I’ve negatively weighted some tags so that I only see the very top posts on those topics, and positively weighted other tags so I’ll see posts on those topics for longer.
I think this discussion will become important in the future. On the one hand, I struggle a little bit to notice every post that is interesting for me. On the other hand, there is the danger that the EA movement starts to fragment if the forum is splitted. Longtermists could read only longtermist stuff, people interested in animal suffering read only posts on animal advocacy etc.