I remember that GWWC management asked us this in the pledgers’ Facebook group, and that a lot of us expressed unhappiness about it, saying that it’d be a big rebranding, change the organisation from the one they joined, be unproductively vague, and we’d “perceive it as a big loss”, etc. So I’m a bit surprised and disappointed to see the apparent determination to push this through regardless of our wishes. (I apologise if I’m wrong to perceive this, and there’s a chance that GWWC will stay focused on the global poor.)
OK that’s reassuring to hear, I think my impression that this was going to happen regardless came from this being reposted here without much discussion of all these negatives. I certainly appreciate the effort to make sure that members are happy with this.
I just wanted to give people some background. Sorry about the long lag-time, which I imagine was mostly to blame for the weird impression. The reason is I’ve been on sabbatical to finish my PhD.
Hi Arrowind, I’m sorry you feel we’re trying to push things through! I did indeed ask the members in the member facebook group for feedback, and also people on the members mailing list. I’ve collated those responses, and they were around evenly split for and against. That was somewhat more positive than I would have expected, given as Jess said, that if people were against a change they would be more likely to put effort in to tell us. It was also interesting that various of the members were quite strongly in favour, not just accepting of the change. The responses did solidify in our minds that we should definitely keep the branding/vision/mission as it is now, and that we needed to approach the question of whether and how this would be done with a great deal of consideration and discussion. I’d be very happy to chat more with you about it if you’re interested—maybe via skype?
Thanks for the reply. That’s interesting that there was an even split, though an unrepresentative response is as you say an issue. That could cut either way though as as someone said in reply to Jess, members may feel uncomfortable disagreeing with a proposal. Unless you press a lot of members for answers, including ones who aren’t very into the online community, it’s hard to tell what they’re comfortable with as a whole.
I would feel somewhat better if the branding/vision/mission kept a focus on the case for giving some of our money to help those in extreme poverty. I may send an email about having a Skype, or at least an email exchange.
As Jess Whittlestone said below, it is often the case that dissenters are much more likely to voice their dissent than agree-ers are to voice their agreement; so the comments on a Facebook group are not necessarily representative.
Edit: Also, if you ask pledgers what they think about the change, your audience necessarily excludes everyone who didn’t like how the pledge was written originally (because people who didn’t like the pledge didn’t sign it).
I think that depends strongly on the group. In some areas (programming, rationality, libertarianism, atheism) people love to disagree. In others (most charities, religions) people like agreeing. Indeed, in the origional article Eliezer discussed such communities. Given the frequency with which comments on this forum begin “Great Post!”, I think it’s credible that we might have a net pro-agreement bias.
I remember that GWWC management asked us this in the pledgers’ Facebook group, and that a lot of us expressed unhappiness about it, saying that it’d be a big rebranding, change the organisation from the one they joined, be unproductively vague, and we’d “perceive it as a big loss”, etc. So I’m a bit surprised and disappointed to see the apparent determination to push this through regardless of our wishes. (I apologise if I’m wrong to perceive this, and there’s a chance that GWWC will stay focused on the global poor.)
I wouldn’t see this as ‘determination to push this through’. It is very much still in the information gathering stage.
OK that’s reassuring to hear, I think my impression that this was going to happen regardless came from this being reposted here without much discussion of all these negatives. I certainly appreciate the effort to make sure that members are happy with this.
I just wanted to give people some background. Sorry about the long lag-time, which I imagine was mostly to blame for the weird impression. The reason is I’ve been on sabbatical to finish my PhD.
Hi Arrowind, I’m sorry you feel we’re trying to push things through! I did indeed ask the members in the member facebook group for feedback, and also people on the members mailing list. I’ve collated those responses, and they were around evenly split for and against. That was somewhat more positive than I would have expected, given as Jess said, that if people were against a change they would be more likely to put effort in to tell us. It was also interesting that various of the members were quite strongly in favour, not just accepting of the change. The responses did solidify in our minds that we should definitely keep the branding/vision/mission as it is now, and that we needed to approach the question of whether and how this would be done with a great deal of consideration and discussion.
I’d be very happy to chat more with you about it if you’re interested—maybe via skype?
Thanks for the reply. That’s interesting that there was an even split, though an unrepresentative response is as you say an issue. That could cut either way though as as someone said in reply to Jess, members may feel uncomfortable disagreeing with a proposal. Unless you press a lot of members for answers, including ones who aren’t very into the online community, it’s hard to tell what they’re comfortable with as a whole.
I would feel somewhat better if the branding/vision/mission kept a focus on the case for giving some of our money to help those in extreme poverty. I may send an email about having a Skype, or at least an email exchange.
As Jess Whittlestone said below, it is often the case that dissenters are much more likely to voice their dissent than agree-ers are to voice their agreement; so the comments on a Facebook group are not necessarily representative.
Edit: Also, if you ask pledgers what they think about the change, your audience necessarily excludes everyone who didn’t like how the pledge was written originally (because people who didn’t like the pledge didn’t sign it).
I think that depends strongly on the group. In some areas (programming, rationality, libertarianism, atheism) people love to disagree. In others (most charities, religions) people like agreeing. Indeed, in the origional article Eliezer discussed such communities. Given the frequency with which comments on this forum begin “Great Post!”, I think it’s credible that we might have a net pro-agreement bias.