+1 on saying something directly to GiveWell. info@givewellorg
Sometimes there’s a problem in EA where people have a concern and write it up publicly, but don’t flag it to the specific org or person they want to read it, and the org or person doesn’t see it for a while or at all.
If the facts are unclear, I think it’s good practice to fact-check with the organization before writing publicly. But if the author doesn’t think that’s necessary or finds that too restrictive, I think they should at least ping the organization with “Here’s a link to something I wrote about your practices.”
I sent info@givewell a link to this thread after not seeing a quick answer from the original poster, and got an auto-response that “We’ll make every effort to respond promptly, but it may take up to three business days to hear back from us during this busy time.” I assume that is a holiday / end of tax year reference, which is totally understandable!
Thanks for pointing this out! My approach in the past has been to write things publicly, I hadn’t really considered contacting the relevant organisations first which in hindsight seems really really stupid of me (I wrote the “Why did CEA buy Wytham Abbey” post). I will now aim to do so in the future. One benefit of asking things publicly is to get theories from other people. But I always felt scared that my public questions might come across as too “attacking”, so I don’t think that benefit is worth the potential negative impact now.
+1 on saying something directly to GiveWell. info@givewellorg
Sometimes there’s a problem in EA where people have a concern and write it up publicly, but don’t flag it to the specific org or person they want to read it, and the org or person doesn’t see it for a while or at all.
If the facts are unclear, I think it’s good practice to fact-check with the organization before writing publicly. But if the author doesn’t think that’s necessary or finds that too restrictive, I think they should at least ping the organization with “Here’s a link to something I wrote about your practices.”
I sent info@givewell a link to this thread after not seeing a quick answer from the original poster, and got an auto-response that “We’ll make every effort to respond promptly, but it may take up to three business days to hear back from us during this busy time.” I assume that is a holiday / end of tax year reference, which is totally understandable!
Same here.
Thanks for pointing this out! My approach in the past has been to write things publicly, I hadn’t really considered contacting the relevant organisations first which in hindsight seems really really stupid of me (I wrote the “Why did CEA buy Wytham Abbey” post). I will now aim to do so in the future. One benefit of asking things publicly is to get theories from other people. But I always felt scared that my public questions might come across as too “attacking”, so I don’t think that benefit is worth the potential negative impact now.