Officially adopted by the moderation team on July 25, 2025[1].
Moderators should flag internally when they have a conflict of interest, erring on the side of caution and mentioning something.
We don’t need to be incredibly paranoid about conflicts of interest. This community is fairly densely connected and it will often be the case that a moderator will have some connection to one of the people involved.
This should push us to have a different moderator be the point person for that incident, proportional to the size of the COI. However, it does not need to prevent a moderator from providing input.
In the case of major COIs, such as a romantic partner or employer, the moderator should err far to the side of avoiding even the appearance of pressuring the result.
CEA is a special case because it is hard to exclude all CEA-employed moderators. Forum moderation work is also paid for by CEA. Full employees of CEA should nevertheless prefer to have a non-CEA mod run the case, and we should generally err against moderating criticisms of CEA.
Note that I (Sarah) am currently the Head Moderator, and also employed by CEA. Although I plan to defer to non-CEA mods for cases that involve CEA, and mod decisions do not need my approval, it is still a fact that I always have the ability to influence moderation decisions (for example by vetoing them).
FAQ:
What if we accidentally make a mistake?
Disclose to head moderator ASAP, no written policy for reacting at this time
Would we say publicly something like, “JP was recused from the decision on this 80k critic[2]”?
Default to no, but weakly, and be willing to make exceptions if (e.g.) it’s a situation where not announcing it could create the appearance that there was a large COI
Previous to that, to the best of my knowledge, we did not have an official policy, nor did we encounter any major issues that would be relevant to such a policy. Note that I was not involved with moderation before August 2024.
EA Forum moderator conflict of interest policy
Officially adopted by the moderation team on July 25, 2025[1].
Moderators should flag internally when they have a conflict of interest, erring on the side of caution and mentioning something.
We don’t need to be incredibly paranoid about conflicts of interest. This community is fairly densely connected and it will often be the case that a moderator will have some connection to one of the people involved.
This should push us to have a different moderator be the point person for that incident, proportional to the size of the COI. However, it does not need to prevent a moderator from providing input.
In the case of major COIs, such as a romantic partner or employer, the moderator should err far to the side of avoiding even the appearance of pressuring the result.
CEA is a special case because it is hard to exclude all CEA-employed moderators. Forum moderation work is also paid for by CEA. Full employees of CEA should nevertheless prefer to have a non-CEA mod run the case, and we should generally err against moderating criticisms of CEA.
Note that I (Sarah) am currently the Head Moderator, and also employed by CEA. Although I plan to defer to non-CEA mods for cases that involve CEA, and mod decisions do not need my approval, it is still a fact that I always have the ability to influence moderation decisions (for example by vetoing them).
FAQ:
What if we accidentally make a mistake?
Disclose to head moderator ASAP, no written policy for reacting at this time
Would we say publicly something like, “JP was recused from the decision on this 80k critic[2]”?
Default to no, but weakly, and be willing to make exceptions if (e.g.) it’s a situation where not announcing it could create the appearance that there was a large COI
Previous to that, to the best of my knowledge, we did not have an official policy, nor did we encounter any major issues that would be relevant to such a policy. Note that I was not involved with moderation before August 2024.
At time of writing, JP was employed by 80k.