I like answering questions when I’m asked them, but I suspect that there won’t be (m)any questions asked to me if I did an AMA. Should I do one anyway?
Another idea is to set up conditional AMAs, e.g. “I will commit to doing an AMA if at least n people commit to asking questions.” This has the benefit of giving each AMA its own time (without competing for attention with other AMAs) while trying to minimize the chance of time waste and embarrassment.
One slight downside of a group AMA thread is that it’s not quite as easily indexable as smaller AMA threads would be (harder to get good tags on it, harder for people to know it’s a thing they’re interested in based on the title). But I still think it would be a clear net positive if this were to exist.
I could post one of these, but I think it would also be good to have it come from a more grassroots source than the head moderator—Denise, would you be down to post something, assuming that you would be willing to answer questions on some topic? (I can also do it, just wanted to give you the first shot.)
I had similar concerns about our Operations AMA recently. It wasn’t wildly popular, but we got 7 questions and I still felt like it was a good use of my time. Several people in the group said they really enjoyed it and would be interested in doing another one, and I liked it enough that I’m planning to do another AMA for one of my other projects as well.
I’ll also mention that it’s a (relatively) low-effort way to create content (and get karma, if you care). I often feel like I should post to the Forum more but either don’t feel like I have anything worth posting, or don’t have the time to write anything out, but the nice thing about AMAs is that you don’t have to come up with a novel topic that fits neatly into a typical EA Forum post, and the standard for quality as far as formatting/organization/etc. is lower.
The only downsides of posting that I see is time spent on creating the post (I estimate we collectively spent about an hour on this, though I think you could do a less detailed one in 15 minutes), and I suppose the possible embarrassment of not getting asked any questions, but I think this is unlikely (I don’t think it’s ever happened on the Forum), and you can always delete the post if you’re really concerned about that.
Yeah, my view is that it takes little time to set up an AMA, and can take very little time if you go for a barebones approach, such that the “may as well just run an AMA and see” bar is fairly low.
Personally, I had relatively little engagement with my AMA, which was basically what I expected (as I was focusing on a somewhat niche topic that I’m not a proper expert on). But I still think setting it up made sense ex ante, since it took me little time and there was some chance it wouldn’t been more useful.
(Also, focusing on Jamie Harris’s case specifically, I share Marisa’s view that an AMA by Jamie would get a decent amount of engagement.)
I’ll note that an AMA doesn’t have to be “time-limited”: you can set it up, and then link to it in your Forum bio/elsewhere so that people know they can always ask questions.
For example, if you left a detailed response on someone’s post/comment, you could add: “If you have other questions about this area that aren’t exactly on this topic, you can email me or put them on my AMA thread.” Or something like that.
I like answering questions when I’m asked them, but I suspect that there won’t be (m)any questions asked to me if I did an AMA. Should I do one anyway?
Maybe a group AMA thread would be a good idea, where everyone can post a comment that they are happy to answer questions?
Another idea is to set up conditional AMAs, e.g. “I will commit to doing an AMA if at least n people commit to asking questions.” This has the benefit of giving each AMA its own time (without competing for attention with other AMAs) while trying to minimize the chance of time waste and embarrassment.
This is a nice idea!
One slight downside of a group AMA thread is that it’s not quite as easily indexable as smaller AMA threads would be (harder to get good tags on it, harder for people to know it’s a thing they’re interested in based on the title). But I still think it would be a clear net positive if this were to exist.
I could post one of these, but I think it would also be good to have it come from a more grassroots source than the head moderator—Denise, would you be down to post something, assuming that you would be willing to answer questions on some topic? (I can also do it, just wanted to give you the first shot.)
I had similar concerns about our Operations AMA recently. It wasn’t wildly popular, but we got 7 questions and I still felt like it was a good use of my time. Several people in the group said they really enjoyed it and would be interested in doing another one, and I liked it enough that I’m planning to do another AMA for one of my other projects as well.
I’ll also mention that it’s a (relatively) low-effort way to create content (and get karma, if you care). I often feel like I should post to the Forum more but either don’t feel like I have anything worth posting, or don’t have the time to write anything out, but the nice thing about AMAs is that you don’t have to come up with a novel topic that fits neatly into a typical EA Forum post, and the standard for quality as far as formatting/organization/etc. is lower.
The only downsides of posting that I see is time spent on creating the post (I estimate we collectively spent about an hour on this, though I think you could do a less detailed one in 15 minutes), and I suppose the possible embarrassment of not getting asked any questions, but I think this is unlikely (I don’t think it’s ever happened on the Forum), and you can always delete the post if you’re really concerned about that.
FWIW I think you’d be well-suited to do an AMA :)
Yeah, my view is that it takes little time to set up an AMA, and can take very little time if you go for a barebones approach, such that the “may as well just run an AMA and see” bar is fairly low.
Personally, I had relatively little engagement with my AMA, which was basically what I expected (as I was focusing on a somewhat niche topic that I’m not a proper expert on). But I still think setting it up made sense ex ante, since it took me little time and there was some chance it wouldn’t been more useful.
(Also, focusing on Jamie Harris’s case specifically, I share Marisa’s view that an AMA by Jamie would get a decent amount of engagement.)
Agree with Marisa that you’d be well suited to do an AMA
You should!
I’ll note that an AMA doesn’t have to be “time-limited”: you can set it up, and then link to it in your Forum bio/elsewhere so that people know they can always ask questions.
For example, if you left a detailed response on someone’s post/comment, you could add: “If you have other questions about this area that aren’t exactly on this topic, you can email me or put them on my AMA thread.” Or something like that.