It sounds like maybe a low-touch / low-effort way of resolving this issue would be a more robust tagging system for posts? So that you could just tag your post “careers” “biosecurity” for other people to easily find it? And anyone interested in biosecurity could browse (or even subscribe to) the “biosecurity” tag?
I do think lost content is a big issue, especially given that it seems surprisingly difficult to find EA Forum content via online search.
I’ve been searching for EA articles on some issues lately and discovered so many old posts that were made even before I knew about the EA forum, but are just as relevant today. If volunteers would add tags for old posts, they could be rediscovered by newer EAs and I think there is a lot of value in that. And I think you could easily find volunteers for this task because they would learn a lot about EA when browsing and tagging old posts.
Another option is to use topic modeling software to automatically infer & assign tags. I might be interested in working on this. An advantage of using software is that it doesn’t require continuous volunteer commitment.
A recommendation system which displays related posts could also be helpful for discovery.
it wouldn’t need to be a continuous volunteers commitment, they would only be needed for old posts, authors would be encouraged to add tags for new posts themselves.
People often assume that tagging is strictly better than sub-forums because it is more flexible, but categories have advantages too. For one, it is easier to filter them out, since there are less categories. Additionally, if you visit one category, then another, you are less likely to see duplicate posts.
But I think first and foremost it is important to be “low touch”—my guess is that the population of EA Forum readers who wants subforums is a minority and hopefully they can be satisfied enough by growing to use tags while the majority* who like the forum as-is won’t have to see a big change.
“low touch” also helps minimize needed dev time—tags and browsing do not seem nearly as difficult to implement.
When you consider more relevant costs that I mention in addition to the benefits, does that change how you think of tags as a solution? Or maybe you thought of these already?
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*though again, guessing here—I don’t have actual user data.
I think tags might be helpful, but would probably be used by very few people and still miss out the most important reasons for having a different structure.
Another thing to think about is that the forum as it currently is might be favoured by people who use it, but may miss out on the counterfactual people who would use an actual forum if it existed or bounce upon impact with this forum.
It sounds like maybe a low-touch / low-effort way of resolving this issue would be a more robust tagging system for posts? So that you could just tag your post “careers” “biosecurity” for other people to easily find it? And anyone interested in biosecurity could browse (or even subscribe to) the “biosecurity” tag?
I do think lost content is a big issue, especially given that it seems surprisingly difficult to find EA Forum content via online search.
Reminds me of the discussion in this piece (which was ironically hard to find).
I’ve been searching for EA articles on some issues lately and discovered so many old posts that were made even before I knew about the EA forum, but are just as relevant today. If volunteers would add tags for old posts, they could be rediscovered by newer EAs and I think there is a lot of value in that. And I think you could easily find volunteers for this task because they would learn a lot about EA when browsing and tagging old posts.
Another option is to use topic modeling software to automatically infer & assign tags. I might be interested in working on this. An advantage of using software is that it doesn’t require continuous volunteer commitment.
A recommendation system which displays related posts could also be helpful for discovery.
it wouldn’t need to be a continuous volunteers commitment, they would only be needed for old posts, authors would be encouraged to add tags for new posts themselves.
As a data point, I would commit to tagging old posts for at least 1 hour if other people were also doing it or expressed interest in it happening.
People often assume that tagging is strictly better than sub-forums because it is more flexible, but categories have advantages too. For one, it is easier to filter them out, since there are less categories. Additionally, if you visit one category, then another, you are less likely to see duplicate posts.
I’m thinking clicking on a tag would show you only posts with that tag, which would basically be a subforum of sorts.
Functionally it would be similar, but from a user point of view it would probably be quite a different experience.
From my own usage I have rarely used tags on blogs or news feeds but have often interacted with different sub-forums.
But I think first and foremost it is important to be “low touch”—my guess is that the population of EA Forum readers who wants subforums is a minority and hopefully they can be satisfied enough by growing to use tags while the majority* who like the forum as-is won’t have to see a big change.
“low touch” also helps minimize needed dev time—tags and browsing do not seem nearly as difficult to implement.
When you consider more relevant costs that I mention in addition to the benefits, does that change how you think of tags as a solution? Or maybe you thought of these already?
~~
*though again, guessing here—I don’t have actual user data.
I think tags might be helpful, but would probably be used by very few people and still miss out the most important reasons for having a different structure.
Another thing to think about is that the forum as it currently is might be favoured by people who use it, but may miss out on the counterfactual people who would use an actual forum if it existed or bounce upon impact with this forum.