The EA forum, run by CEA, choosing to hide community posts from the front page just before news breaks that reflects badly on CEA and its parent organisation, is not a good look. I’m not suggesting that there is any foul play here but it would be a positive nice if some way to highlight this issue was found. CEA should be going be doing everything possible to reassure that they are maximizing transparency and accountability here.
I’d like to chime in here. I can see how you might think that there’s a coverup or the like, but the Online team (primarily Ben Clifford and I, with significant amounts of input from JP and others on the team) made the decision to run this test based on feedback we’d been hearing for a long time from a variety of people, and discussions we’d had internally (also for a long time). And I didn’t know about Owen’s actions or resignation until today. (Edited to add: no one on the Online team knew about this when we were deciding to go forward with the test.)
We do think it’s important for people in EA to hear this news, and we’re talking about how we might make sure that happens. I know I plan on sharing one or both of these posts in the upcoming Digest, and we expect one or both of the posts to stay at the top of the Community page for at least a few days. If the posts drift down, we’ll probably pin one somehow. We’re considering moving them out of the section, but we’re conflicted; we do endorse the separation of Community and other content, and keeping the test going, and moving them out would violate this. We’ll keep talking about it, but I figured I would let you know what our thoughts are at the moment.
I shared a quick update here — tl;dr: we’re temporarily expanding the Community section on the Frontpage from 3 posts to 5 to give the posts a bit more visibility. We plan on reverting back to 3 posts in a few days.
A suggestion I’m throwing out just for consideration: maybe create a specific section on the frontpage for statements from organizations. I don’t think there are that many organizations that want to make statements on the EA forum, but they usually seem pretty worth reading for people here. (Often: something bad happened, and here’s our official stance/explanation).
A downside could be that this means organizations can be more visible than individuals about community matters. That seems possibly bad (though also how it usually works in the broader world). But it seems worse for the forum moderators to arbitrarily decide if something is important enough to be displayed somehow.
A quick update: the posts have been drifting in and out of the 3 top Community posts that are shown on the Frontpage, so we’ve expanded the Community section on the Frontpage temporarily from 3 posts to 5 to give them (and other Community posts being shared right now) a bit more visibility. We plan on reverting back to 3 posts in a few days.
Thanks for the response. I think this position is completely reasonable, and I’ll repeat that I (currently) do not think there’s any cover-up or the like here. But I think at this point, we’ve both acknowledged that it would be easy to misconstrue actions as a coverup, which is also a problem IMO.
The EA forum, run by CEA, choosing to hide community posts from the front page just before news breaks that reflects badly on CEA and its parent organisation, is not a good look. I’m not suggesting that there is any foul play here but it would be a positive nice if some way to highlight this issue was found. CEA should be going be doing everything possible to reassure that they are maximizing transparency and accountability here.
I’d like to chime in here. I can see how you might think that there’s a coverup or the like, but the Online team (primarily Ben Clifford and I, with significant amounts of input from JP and others on the team) made the decision to run this test based on feedback we’d been hearing for a long time from a variety of people, and discussions we’d had internally (also for a long time). And I didn’t know about Owen’s actions or resignation until today. (Edited to add: no one on the Online team knew about this when we were deciding to go forward with the test.)
We do think it’s important for people in EA to hear this news, and we’re talking about how we might make sure that happens. I know I plan on sharing one or both of these posts in the upcoming Digest, and we expect one or both of the posts to stay at the top of the Community page for at least a few days. If the posts drift down, we’ll probably pin one somehow. We’re considering moving them out of the section, but we’re conflicted; we do endorse the separation of Community and other content, and keeping the test going, and moving them out would violate this. We’ll keep talking about it, but I figured I would let you know what our thoughts are at the moment.
19 hours later the posts have dropped off the front page
On mobile so can’t upload a screenshot, but I have one
I shared a quick update here — tl;dr: we’re temporarily expanding the Community section on the Frontpage from 3 posts to 5 to give the posts a bit more visibility. We plan on reverting back to 3 posts in a few days.
A suggestion I’m throwing out just for consideration: maybe create a specific section on the frontpage for statements from organizations. I don’t think there are that many organizations that want to make statements on the EA forum, but they usually seem pretty worth reading for people here. (Often: something bad happened, and here’s our official stance/explanation).
A downside could be that this means organizations can be more visible than individuals about community matters. That seems possibly bad (though also how it usually works in the broader world). But it seems worse for the forum moderators to arbitrarily decide if something is important enough to be displayed somehow.
A quick update: the posts have been drifting in and out of the 3 top Community posts that are shown on the Frontpage, so we’ve expanded the Community section on the Frontpage temporarily from 3 posts to 5 to give them (and other Community posts being shared right now) a bit more visibility. We plan on reverting back to 3 posts in a few days.
If the purpose is to keep it on the front page, why not just pin it?
This post is now again out of the front page.
I suggest removing the community tag from one of them and pinning it to the main section.
I agree with this.
Thanks for the response. I think this position is completely reasonable, and I’ll repeat that I (currently) do not think there’s any cover-up or the like here. But I think at this point, we’ve both acknowledged that it would be easy to misconstrue actions as a coverup, which is also a problem IMO.