In my opinion, the largest effect of rebranding the name of the forum is that newcomers searching for “effective altruism” for the first time would be less likely to find the forum, particularly if alternatives to the forum do some SEO. This has both upsides (people are less likely to be intimidated/skeeved out by weird stuff or community drama, people’s first exposure to EA-in-practice wouldn’t be filled with Extremely Online people), and downsides (whatever else they see instead may be less good as introductions, eg by being more manufactured to be presentable, rather than having mostly earnest conversations).
I’m not convinced that a name change would be net positive, but if we want to make it clearer than the forum doesn’t necessarily represent EA, one option is to have the name be less descriptive and just reference something vaguely positive instead (ideas include: polaris, salon, agora, zephyr, etc). This is akin to how Sierra Club is clearly not representing all of environmentalism, and Leiter Reports is clearly not representing all of philosophy.
I spontaneously thought that the EA forum is actually a decentralizing force for EA, where everyone can participate in central discussions.
So I feel like the opposite, making the forum more central to the broader EA space relative to e.g. CEAs internal discussions, would be great for decentralization. And calling it „Zephyr forum“ would just reduce its prominence and relevance.
Yeah, seems helpful to distinguish central functions (something lots of people use) from centralised control (few people have power). The EA forum is a central function, but no one, in effect, controls it (even though CEA owns and could control it). There are mods, but they aren’t censors.
I think this is a place where the centralisation vs decentralisation axis is not the right thing to talk about. It sounds like you want more transparency and participation, which you might get by having more centrally controlled communication systems.
IME decentralised groups are not usually more transparent, if anything the opposite as they often have fragmented communication, lots of which is person-to-person.
In my opinion, the largest effect of rebranding the name of the forum is that newcomers searching for “effective altruism” for the first time would be less likely to find the forum, particularly if alternatives to the forum do some SEO. This has both upsides (people are less likely to be intimidated/skeeved out by weird stuff or community drama, people’s first exposure to EA-in-practice wouldn’t be filled with Extremely Online people), and downsides (whatever else they see instead may be less good as introductions, eg by being more manufactured to be presentable, rather than having mostly earnest conversations).
I’m not convinced that a name change would be net positive, but if we want to make it clearer than the forum doesn’t necessarily represent EA, one option is to have the name be less descriptive and just reference something vaguely positive instead (ideas include: polaris, salon, agora, zephyr, etc). This is akin to how Sierra Club is clearly not representing all of environmentalism, and Leiter Reports is clearly not representing all of philosophy.
I spontaneously thought that the EA forum is actually a decentralizing force for EA, where everyone can participate in central discussions.
So I feel like the opposite, making the forum more central to the broader EA space relative to e.g. CEAs internal discussions, would be great for decentralization. And calling it „Zephyr forum“ would just reduce its prominence and relevance.
Yeah, seems helpful to distinguish central functions (something lots of people use) from centralised control (few people have power). The EA forum is a central function, but no one, in effect, controls it (even though CEA owns and could control it). There are mods, but they aren’t censors.
I think this is a place where the centralisation vs decentralisation axis is not the right thing to talk about. It sounds like you want more transparency and participation, which you might get by having more centrally controlled communication systems.
IME decentralised groups are not usually more transparent, if anything the opposite as they often have fragmented communication, lots of which is person-to-person.