I’ve been doing judging for the African EA forum post competition, and its been really irritating/sad to see how uncharitable (and keen to be harsh) more experienced EAs have been towards the posts of first-time posters or people who write in a non-rationalist way. Come on people....
If you think a post is bad or could easily be improved, just point out how. Don’t strong downvote and deride the author?
Could you give examples of the harshness and derision?
I checked out the post Nick linked to below and while the karma was middling, the one top level comment is quite supportive. I spot checked a few other posts and what I found was mostly extremely supportive, with occasional substantive criticism- e.g. here
When I looked for the negative karma posts I found this one on Malaria, which had one top level comment I’d call constructive criticism and one sharp criticism (which was at −1 karma when I looked). This post on fraud within GiveDirectly got pushback on issues of fact, but nothing rude or personal.
But I only spot checked and could easily have missed something, and it seems important to get this right, so I’d love to hear what specifically you’re reacting to.
Thanks Elizabeth—I think the commenting is OK, its the silent downvoting without cause and explanation that is discouraging. I think substantive criticism is great—that criticism you cited was indeed myself and led to a good discussion, although in retrospect I think it might have been better for me to be a bit less harsh.
From Kareem ” If you think a post is bad or could easily be improved, just point out how. Don’t strong downvote and deride the author?”.
I might be missing objectionable content in these articles below, but all of them were downvoted by multiple people I think unnecessarily.
- The best example might be the givedirectly post. They raise an important issue of a high profile EA organisation losing almost a million dollars to fraud in Congo, then outline a bunch of ways givedirectly could improve without being harsh on Givedirectly at all really. This issue had not yet been discussed on the forum. And even though this post was in my area of interest I think I never even saw the post and had the opportunity to comment because it was −10 Karma. I don’t see what in the post warrants karma downvoting.
- Again here, a reasonable post about autonomous weapons with a number of downvotes
- I thought this post had interesting personal reflections and made some insightful points about the benefits of Expats in EA Nairobi, and yet again it has had a number of downvotes and negligible net karma. Why?
”Expatriates bridge the gap between local and global viewpoints, ensuring that programs meet both Nairobi’s unique needs and the larger EA movement.”
- On the malaria post, I agree the post has much room for improvement, but I can’t see anything objectionable there which warrants downvoting. And this unnecessarily harsh comment “Blatant submission of ChatGPT’s output.” is probably true, but could have been phrased better and more kindly.
- Our post you point out does now (only after commenting here) does have middling Karma of 36 which is encouraging for Emma and I. When I posted it here though Karma was 13, including some early downvotes which quickly shuffled it off the front page, which again I struggle to understand.
I think silent downvoting is pretty integral to this forum working as it should. I don’t think everyone should have to give reasons why they don’t like something—that would be exhausting.
I could see an argument for reasons-giving, at least from a checklist, on strong downvotes. Strong downvotes should be uncommon, so the extra few seconds to select a reason shouldn’t lead to exhaustion.
At the risk of being downvoted (!) I think I want to push back a bit here (not to say I fully disagree though).
Yes, silent downvoting is important to the Forum, but that doesn’t mean that there can’t be downsides. I think this problem is especially pertinent with top-level posts, since downvotes can’t distinguish between “this is bad content/this breaks forum norms” and “this is something I disagree with”.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that everyone who downvotes (or upvotes) a post is required to give a comment explaining why (perhaps there’s more of a case if someone up or down votes strongly). But it’s a bit of a collective action problem, where it’d probably be good if at least someone explained why but no individual voter is obligated to.
Another case where silent downvoting might be more problematic is where a comment/post is longer than usual, or dealing with more complex topics, or covering different ideas in one go. If a good faith post/comment like this that gets downvoted, I think the Forum would be served a bit better if there was more discussion about why that perhaps it does usually. That is a subjective viewpoint of mine though.
To clarify- I was asking specifically about derision, not just downvotes. I put those in fairly separate categories, although I’m open to arguments I shouldn’t.
Derision is very rarely the correct choice, especially aimed at well meaning new authors. But I don’t think that’s true of downvoting- by default it means you wish you hadn’t read something and expect that opinion to be shared. Low karma feels bad but is not inherently malicious the way derision is.
When Kareem said
“Don’t strong downvote and deride the author?”
I interpreted that Kareem was considering the downvoting as the derisive action here, which is why I listed those examples, but I could be wrong. As a writer I would rather a comment that explained why the post was bad, than just silent downvoting, but I understand Nathan’s point about the effort required to do that.
In general I think the bar for downvoting should be high, and I think some of these posts didn’t warrant downvoting, but obviously that’s subjective and most people here seen to disagree which is fair enough.
Also I think more slack should be given authors on their first couple of posts, especially if the content isn’t downright objectionable (which I don’t think any of these posts are). One of our aims here is to nurture more people into the EA fold, and if someones first or second post is just badly written a bit of grace could be nice, or make the effort to comment and share what the problems are with the post.
The potential lost EV for silently downvoting someone’s first post into obscurit could be fairly high, if it results in them ceasing EA engagement.
I like your reason here for downvoting a post, and think it would be a great rule of thumb to go by. Thinking of both your own reaction and others potential reaction could raise the bar for downvoting a bit.
“wish you hadn’t read something and expect that opinion to be shared”
I don’t think it’s fair or accurate to describe downvoting as derisive. I think it’s pretty important people get to not value content very much without it being an expression of contempt towards the author.
One advantage of downvoting over commenting is that it’s less work. Another is that it doesn’t draw attention to the exact thing you think isn’t a good use of people’s attention. That’s a bigger issue when the post is harmfully wrong rather than just poorly written, but it matters even then. Attention is precious.
I agree that low karma can feel really bad and drive away new writers who would have become valuable contributors. I’m not sure what to do about it. Blocking downvotes on new posts incentivizes creating a new account whenever you want to say something controversial.
OTOH, we may not need something that heavy weight. Right now the new author symbol isn’t prominent, isn’t visible at all on many screens, and includes longtime posters who just never accrued much karma. Maybe making the new user symbol more prominent and asking for a norm of leniency would go pretty far.
I have a second concern, that if someone is never going to do well on the forum it’s kinder to let them know earlier. But some time to acclimate seems reasonable.
It seems useful to talk about why I think it’s important that downvoting be an option, and not inherently a social attack, so let me do that. Attention is a precious resource, karma is a tool to manage attention, and downvoting is an important part of karma management. There are plenty of people who are wonderful in many aspects of their lives, who do lots of good, and write posts that people don’t find useful. No one is good at everything. Forum karma is supposed to reflect the quality of the post alone, not be a judgment on their overall character or even necessarily the quality of their ideas.
You’ve argued that harshness against early posts comes at the cost of preventing more valuable posts later. I agree that’s a concern. You haven’t (yet) argued that those posts deserved more karma on their merits, and I think that makes any discussion about their karma incomplete.
I think your arguments are strong and I’ve changed my mind to some extent. I agree with most of your arguments, even though it makes me a bit uncomfortable
I’ll try and articulate why - if these two arguments of yours really hold...
”I have a second concern, that if someone is never going to do well on the forum it’s kinder to let them know earlier. But some time to acclimate seems reasonable.
It seems useful to talk about why I think it’s important that downvoting be an option, and not inherently a social attack, so let me do that. Attention is a precious resource, karma is a tool to manage attention, and downvoting is an important part of karma management. There are plenty of people who are wonderful in many aspects of their lives, who do lots of good, and write posts that people don’t find useful. No one is good at everything. Forum karma is supposed to reflect the quality of the post alone, not be a judgment on their overall character or even necessarily the quality of their ideas. ”
then realistically we are going to exclude most of the global south, because they simply may not write well enough right now by forum norms/standards. Someone who is “good” at writing by local standards here in Uganda, may still not be able to write a compelling forum post—not because of their ability, but because different writing styles are valued here, and they may have not been fortunate enough to hone their writing abilities in a far better education system that many of us are fortunate to have experienced.
If they were encouraged and nurtured, perhaps after a few months or years and a bunch of ‘non-useful’ posts and comments, then they might begin to write at a level which most forum users would consider “useful”. I kind of wish karma could reflect more than just the “quality of the post alone”, but also (to a lesser extent) intention and effort and perhaps even the background of the poster—but that’s probably too hard.
Otherwise something like this Forum competition for African contributors could even lead to more discouragement than encouragement, as many posters with good ideas and intentions who want to dip their toes in the Forum (which for many of us is a fountain of life) might not (yet) have the ability to write what we would consider a compelling post.
I think you’re right—I have failed to make an argument that these posts necessarily deserved more karma on their merits, but I was hoping for a more nurturing and uplifting experience for entrants, which might be difficult to achieve.
I feel strongly that letting people bounce off the forum needs to be an option (and that being on the EAF should be one option among many for people- I think we do everyone a disservice by seeing EA as the be all and end all of impacful work and community). But I also agree that the loss is really sad, potentially anti-impact, and worth trying to fix. Maybe there are ways to onboard people such that it’s a good experience for them and they become good.
Off the top of my head:
have the contest focus on comments or quick takes rather than full posts. People are kinder to those, and it hurts less when they are mean because you put less of yourself into the work. I think the contest probably did participants a disservice but encouraging them to jump straight into big posts.
use an interview format or co-author
offer intensive editing services
spin-off forum. Perhaps in a different language, although if you’re trying to include multiple countries it probably is more efficient to use a colonial language rather than a local one.
Have everyone on the same forum website but with mild partitions by language. Not siloed, but filtered by default. As a bonus, this would stop my feed from being flooded with translated articles.
Onboarding guides for how to write to the forum. I think these technically exist already but don’t reflect actual voting patterns
I like the quick takes idea, extensive editing idea and the co authoring idea. This competition did actually cover a number of your suggestions, including offering free coaching for those who wanted it, and also encouraged co-written articles.
I’m not sure the language suggestions are so important. English is the dominant language of education for the majority of African countries, including I think almost all the origin countries for those entering the contest.
With all this discussion about negative aspects I don’t want to make our like it’s all doom and gloom. A couple of first time posters, for example Natkillu with her amazing reflections on longtermists from an African perspective were both insightful and very well received.
I’d imagine it’s fairly straightforward to use ChatGPT to make a post more seamless for people on the forum to read (by which I mean to include following EA/rat linguistic norms)
I think Vee’s posts read to me as very ChatGPT spambot as I have downvoted them in the past for the same issue. A key problem I have with the GiveDirectly post that would make me downvote it if I read it is that it doesn’t actually explain anything the linked post doesn’t say and if anything just takes the premise/title of the GiveDirectly post that GiveDirectly lost 900,000 and then doesn’t do anything to analyse the trade offs of any of their “fixes”. Moreover, both the linked post and commenters talk about the trade offs that are reasoned through and weighed up but Vee just doubles down. I don’t think I would add anything to their criticisms and so I would just downvote and move on.
Thanks those are good points. I think I might agree that chat GPT “spamminess” might be a fair enough reason to downvote, even though I wouldn’t downvote on that alone myself.
I’m not sure we should ever downvote unless we have read things thoroughly though.
To be clear I didn’t downvote it because I didn’t read it. I skimmed it and looked for the objectionable parts to steelman what I imagine the downvoter would have downvoted it for. I think the most egregious part of it is not understanding that there are costs to methods of zero fraud (literally means war torn areas get 0 aid and the risk tolerance is too high) and Vee just staunchly reiterates the claim we need to have 0 fraud.
I’ve had a half-finished draft post about how effective altruists shouldn’t be so hostile to newcomers to EA from outside the English-speaking world (e.g., primarily the United States and Commonwealth countries). In addition to English not being a first language, especially for younger people or students who don’t have as much experience, there are the problems of mastering the technical language for a particular field, as well as the jargon unique to EA. That can be hard for even many native English speakers.
LessWrong and the rationality community are distinct from EA, and even AI safety has grown much bigger than the rationality community. There shouldn’t be any default expectation posters on the EA Forum will conform to the communication style of rationalists. If rationalists expect that because they consider their communication norms superior, the least they should do is make more effort to educate or others how to get up to speed, like with style guides, etc. Some rationalists have done that, though rationalists at large aren’t entitled to expect others will do all the work by themselves without help to write just like they do.
This is very true. In general I was disappointed to see the lack off commenting and engagement on the posts. On a personal basis I was especially disappointed after my close Ugandan colleague and I wrote a post which I think was fairly well written, raised a decent point and had a practical solution, yet received very little attention outside of a few connections we already had.
So many ai trolls here. They just join because they want to fit in and feel superior over others. Do they really want to make the world better? Doubtful. They have their own agenda.
Should eliminate the ability to vote on this forum without commenting. Have people show face. Watch how many run away
I don’t think AI trolls are likely. I do think that the down vote karma issue needs some kind of solution. I see a lot of posts and comments that get karma down votes that don’t make sense
I suspect karma down vote still regularly gets used as a proxy for disagree vote, which is unfortunate.
I’ve been doing judging for the African EA forum post competition, and its been really irritating/sad to see how uncharitable (and keen to be harsh) more experienced EAs have been towards the posts of first-time posters or people who write in a non-rationalist way. Come on people....
If you think a post is bad or could easily be improved, just point out how. Don’t strong downvote and deride the author?
Could you give examples of the harshness and derision?
I checked out the post Nick linked to below and while the karma was middling, the one top level comment is quite supportive. I spot checked a few other posts and what I found was mostly extremely supportive, with occasional substantive criticism- e.g. here
When I looked for the negative karma posts I found this one on Malaria, which had one top level comment I’d call constructive criticism and one sharp criticism (which was at −1 karma when I looked). This post on fraud within GiveDirectly got pushback on issues of fact, but nothing rude or personal.
But I only spot checked and could easily have missed something, and it seems important to get this right, so I’d love to hear what specifically you’re reacting to.
Thanks Elizabeth—I think the commenting is OK, its the silent downvoting without cause and explanation that is discouraging. I think substantive criticism is great—that criticism you cited was indeed myself and led to a good discussion, although in retrospect I think it might have been better for me to be a bit less harsh.
From Kareem ” If you think a post is bad or could easily be improved, just point out how. Don’t strong downvote and deride the author?”.
I might be missing objectionable content in these articles below, but all of them were downvoted by multiple people I think unnecessarily.
- The best example might be the givedirectly post. They raise an important issue of a high profile EA organisation losing almost a million dollars to fraud in Congo, then outline a bunch of ways givedirectly could improve without being harsh on Givedirectly at all really. This issue had not yet been discussed on the forum. And even though this post was in my area of interest I think I never even saw the post and had the opportunity to comment because it was −10 Karma. I don’t see what in the post warrants karma downvoting.
- Again here, a reasonable post about autonomous weapons with a number of downvotes
- I thought this post had interesting personal reflections and made some insightful points about the benefits of Expats in EA Nairobi, and yet again it has had a number of downvotes and negligible net karma. Why?
”Expatriates bridge the gap between local and global viewpoints, ensuring that programs meet both Nairobi’s unique needs and the larger EA movement.”
- On the malaria post, I agree the post has much room for improvement, but I can’t see anything objectionable there which warrants downvoting. And this unnecessarily harsh comment
“Blatant submission of ChatGPT’s output.” is probably true, but could have been phrased better and more kindly.
- Our post you point out does now (only after commenting here) does have middling Karma of 36 which is encouraging for Emma and I. When I posted it here though Karma was 13, including some early downvotes which quickly shuffled it off the front page, which again I struggle to understand.
I think silent downvoting is pretty integral to this forum working as it should. I don’t think everyone should have to give reasons why they don’t like something—that would be exhausting.
I could see an argument for reasons-giving, at least from a checklist, on strong downvotes. Strong downvotes should be uncommon, so the extra few seconds to select a reason shouldn’t lead to exhaustion.
At the risk of being downvoted (!) I think I want to push back a bit here (not to say I fully disagree though).
Yes, silent downvoting is important to the Forum, but that doesn’t mean that there can’t be downsides. I think this problem is especially pertinent with top-level posts, since downvotes can’t distinguish between “this is bad content/this breaks forum norms” and “this is something I disagree with”.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that everyone who downvotes (or upvotes) a post is required to give a comment explaining why (perhaps there’s more of a case if someone up or down votes strongly). But it’s a bit of a collective action problem, where it’d probably be good if at least someone explained why but no individual voter is obligated to.
Another case where silent downvoting might be more problematic is where a comment/post is longer than usual, or dealing with more complex topics, or covering different ideas in one go. If a good faith post/comment like this that gets downvoted, I think the Forum would be served a bit better if there was more discussion about why that perhaps it does usually. That is a subjective viewpoint of mine though.
To clarify- I was asking specifically about derision, not just downvotes. I put those in fairly separate categories, although I’m open to arguments I shouldn’t.
Derision is very rarely the correct choice, especially aimed at well meaning new authors. But I don’t think that’s true of downvoting- by default it means you wish you hadn’t read something and expect that opinion to be shared. Low karma feels bad but is not inherently malicious the way derision is.
Nice one Elizabeth
When Kareem said “Don’t strong downvote and deride the author?”
I interpreted that Kareem was considering the downvoting as the derisive action here, which is why I listed those examples, but I could be wrong. As a writer I would rather a comment that explained why the post was bad, than just silent downvoting, but I understand Nathan’s point about the effort required to do that.
In general I think the bar for downvoting should be high, and I think some of these posts didn’t warrant downvoting, but obviously that’s subjective and most people here seen to disagree which is fair enough.
Also I think more slack should be given authors on their first couple of posts, especially if the content isn’t downright objectionable (which I don’t think any of these posts are). One of our aims here is to nurture more people into the EA fold, and if someones first or second post is just badly written a bit of grace could be nice, or make the effort to comment and share what the problems are with the post.
The potential lost EV for silently downvoting someone’s first post into obscurit could be fairly high, if it results in them ceasing EA engagement.
I like your reason here for downvoting a post, and think it would be a great rule of thumb to go by. Thinking of both your own reaction and others potential reaction could raise the bar for downvoting a bit.
“wish you hadn’t read something and expect that opinion to be shared”
I don’t think it’s fair or accurate to describe downvoting as derisive. I think it’s pretty important people get to not value content very much without it being an expression of contempt towards the author.
One advantage of downvoting over commenting is that it’s less work. Another is that it doesn’t draw attention to the exact thing you think isn’t a good use of people’s attention. That’s a bigger issue when the post is harmfully wrong rather than just poorly written, but it matters even then. Attention is precious.
I agree that low karma can feel really bad and drive away new writers who would have become valuable contributors. I’m not sure what to do about it. Blocking downvotes on new posts incentivizes creating a new account whenever you want to say something controversial.
OTOH, we may not need something that heavy weight. Right now the new author symbol isn’t prominent, isn’t visible at all on many screens, and includes longtime posters who just never accrued much karma. Maybe making the new user symbol more prominent and asking for a norm of leniency would go pretty far.
I have a second concern, that if someone is never going to do well on the forum it’s kinder to let them know earlier. But some time to acclimate seems reasonable.
It seems useful to talk about why I think it’s important that downvoting be an option, and not inherently a social attack, so let me do that. Attention is a precious resource, karma is a tool to manage attention, and downvoting is an important part of karma management. There are plenty of people who are wonderful in many aspects of their lives, who do lots of good, and write posts that people don’t find useful. No one is good at everything. Forum karma is supposed to reflect the quality of the post alone, not be a judgment on their overall character or even necessarily the quality of their ideas.
You’ve argued that harshness against early posts comes at the cost of preventing more valuable posts later. I agree that’s a concern. You haven’t (yet) argued that those posts deserved more karma on their merits, and I think that makes any discussion about their karma incomplete.
Thanks Elizabeth, that’s excellent
I think your arguments are strong and I’ve changed my mind to some extent. I agree with most of your arguments, even though it makes me a bit uncomfortable
I’ll try and articulate why - if these two arguments of yours really hold...
”I have a second concern, that if someone is never going to do well on the forum it’s kinder to let them know earlier. But some time to acclimate seems reasonable.
It seems useful to talk about why I think it’s important that downvoting be an option, and not inherently a social attack, so let me do that. Attention is a precious resource, karma is a tool to manage attention, and downvoting is an important part of karma management. There are plenty of people who are wonderful in many aspects of their lives, who do lots of good, and write posts that people don’t find useful. No one is good at everything. Forum karma is supposed to reflect the quality of the post alone, not be a judgment on their overall character or even necessarily the quality of their ideas. ”
then realistically we are going to exclude most of the global south, because they simply may not write well enough right now by forum norms/standards. Someone who is “good” at writing by local standards here in Uganda, may still not be able to write a compelling forum post—not because of their ability, but because different writing styles are valued here, and they may have not been fortunate enough to hone their writing abilities in a far better education system that many of us are fortunate to have experienced.
If they were encouraged and nurtured, perhaps after a few months or years and a bunch of ‘non-useful’ posts and comments, then they might begin to write at a level which most forum users would consider “useful”. I kind of wish karma could reflect more than just the “quality of the post alone”, but also (to a lesser extent) intention and effort and perhaps even the background of the poster—but that’s probably too hard.
Otherwise something like this Forum competition for African contributors could even lead to more discouragement than encouragement, as many posters with good ideas and intentions who want to dip their toes in the Forum (which for many of us is a fountain of life) might not (yet) have the ability to write what we would consider a compelling post.
I think you’re right—I have failed to make an argument that these posts necessarily deserved more karma on their merits, but I was hoping for a more nurturing and uplifting experience for entrants, which might be difficult to achieve.
I appreciate this a lot.
I feel strongly that letting people bounce off the forum needs to be an option (and that being on the EAF should be one option among many for people- I think we do everyone a disservice by seeing EA as the be all and end all of impacful work and community). But I also agree that the loss is really sad, potentially anti-impact, and worth trying to fix. Maybe there are ways to onboard people such that it’s a good experience for them and they become good.
Off the top of my head:
have the contest focus on comments or quick takes rather than full posts. People are kinder to those, and it hurts less when they are mean because you put less of yourself into the work. I think the contest probably did participants a disservice but encouraging them to jump straight into big posts.
use an interview format or co-author
offer intensive editing services
spin-off forum. Perhaps in a different language, although if you’re trying to include multiple countries it probably is more efficient to use a colonial language rather than a local one.
Have everyone on the same forum website but with mild partitions by language. Not siloed, but filtered by default. As a bonus, this would stop my feed from being flooded with translated articles.
Onboarding guides for how to write to the forum. I think these technically exist already but don’t reflect actual voting patterns
Nice one again.
I like the quick takes idea, extensive editing idea and the co authoring idea. This competition did actually cover a number of your suggestions, including offering free coaching for those who wanted it, and also encouraged co-written articles.
I’m not sure the language suggestions are so important. English is the dominant language of education for the majority of African countries, including I think almost all the origin countries for those entering the contest.
With all this discussion about negative aspects I don’t want to make our like it’s all doom and gloom. A couple of first time posters, for example Natkillu with her amazing reflections on longtermists from an African perspective were both insightful and very well received.
I’d imagine it’s fairly straightforward to use ChatGPT to make a post more seamless for people on the forum to read (by which I mean to include following EA/rat linguistic norms)
I think Vee’s posts read to me as very ChatGPT spambot as I have downvoted them in the past for the same issue. A key problem I have with the GiveDirectly post that would make me downvote it if I read it is that it doesn’t actually explain anything the linked post doesn’t say and if anything just takes the premise/title of the GiveDirectly post that GiveDirectly lost 900,000 and then doesn’t do anything to analyse the trade offs of any of their “fixes”. Moreover, both the linked post and commenters talk about the trade offs that are reasoned through and weighed up but Vee just doubles down. I don’t think I would add anything to their criticisms and so I would just downvote and move on.
Thanks those are good points. I think I might agree that chat GPT “spamminess” might be a fair enough reason to downvote, even though I wouldn’t downvote on that alone myself.
I’m not sure we should ever downvote unless we have read things thoroughly though.
To be clear I didn’t downvote it because I didn’t read it. I skimmed it and looked for the objectionable parts to steelman what I imagine the downvoter would have downvoted it for. I think the most egregious part of it is not understanding that there are costs to methods of zero fraud (literally means war torn areas get 0 aid and the risk tolerance is too high) and Vee just staunchly reiterates the claim we need to have 0 fraud.
Fair enough and i agree. I’m not saying the post isn’t flawed or that I agree with all of it, just that we can be kinder engaging in these situations
I’ve had a half-finished draft post about how effective altruists shouldn’t be so hostile to newcomers to EA from outside the English-speaking world (e.g., primarily the United States and Commonwealth countries). In addition to English not being a first language, especially for younger people or students who don’t have as much experience, there are the problems of mastering the technical language for a particular field, as well as the jargon unique to EA. That can be hard for even many native English speakers.
LessWrong and the rationality community are distinct from EA, and even AI safety has grown much bigger than the rationality community. There shouldn’t be any default expectation posters on the EA Forum will conform to the communication style of rationalists. If rationalists expect that because they consider their communication norms superior, the least they should do is make more effort to educate or others how to get up to speed, like with style guides, etc. Some rationalists have done that, though rationalists at large aren’t entitled to expect others will do all the work by themselves without help to write just like they do.
This is very true. In general I was disappointed to see the lack off commenting and engagement on the posts. On a personal basis I was especially disappointed after my close Ugandan colleague and I wrote a post which I think was fairly well written, raised a decent point and had a practical solution, yet received very little attention outside of a few connections we already had.
What’s the post?
Thanks Chris—here it is!
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/GpAngpFmn3HFrBLnt/health-aim-a-mapping-tool-helping-health-providers-reach
I wonder if there is something that could be automated on the platform that nudges people to be nicer? Being nice seems underrated still
I just noticed this on LW @Kaleem which I quite like
Love this! I think I saw from the community team that there might be a trial of this coming?
So many ai trolls here. They just join because they want to fit in and feel superior over others. Do they really want to make the world better? Doubtful. They have their own agenda.
Should eliminate the ability to vote on this forum without commenting. Have people show face. Watch how many run away
I don’t think AI trolls are likely. I do think that the down vote karma issue needs some kind of solution. I see a lot of posts and comments that get karma down votes that don’t make sense
I suspect karma down vote still regularly gets used as a proxy for disagree vote, which is unfortunate.