The EA Forum moderation team is going to experiment a bit with how we categorize posts. Currently there is a low bar for a Forum post being categorized as āFrontpageā after itās approved. In comparison, LessWrong is much more opinionated about the content they allow, especially from new users. Weāre considering moving in that direction, in order to maintain a higher percentage of valuable content on our Frontpage.
To start, weāre going to allow moderators to move posts from new users from āFrontpageā to āPersonal blogā[1], at their discretion, but starting conservatively. Weāll keep an eye on this and, depending on how this goes, we may consider taking further steps such as using the ārejected contentā feature (we donāt currently have that on the EA Forum).
Feel free to reply here if you have any questions or feedback.
I would be nervous about discouraging new users. Thereās a high bar for what gets upvoted here on the forum. Especially for VERY new users Iād be nervous about not giving the opportunity for their post to be on the frontpageāmaybe it can depend on if you think the post is decent or not?
Ah yeah sorry I was unclear! I basically meant what you said when I said āat their discretion, but starting conservativelyā ā so we are starting to take āqualityā into account when deciding what stays in the Frontpage, because our readersā time is valuable. You can kind of think of it like: if the mod would have downvoted a post from a new user, the mod can instead decide to move it to āPersonal blogā. I think itās possible that this is actually less discouraging to new users than getting downvoted, since itās like youāre being moved to a category with different standards. You can check our work by looking at what gets categorized as āPersonal blogā via the All posts page. :)
I expect this will affect only a small proportion of new users.
I would be a bit hesitant to follow Less Wrongās lead on this too closely. I find the EA Forum, for lack of a better term, feels much friendlier than Less Wrong, and I wouldnāt want that sense of friendliness to go away.
I was hesitant on this one, but I looked at last monthās posts and saw a lot of them with few votes and little engagement, which made me more sympathetic to the concern about the frontpage. Maybe itās a viable idea with some safeguards:
I think a limitation to application against ānew usersā mitigates some of the downside risk as long as that definition is operationalized well. In particular, people use throwaways to post criticisms, and the newness of an account should not necessarily establish a ānew userā for purpose of this policy. I think mods are capable of figuring out if a throwaway post shows enough EA knowledge, but they should err on the side of letting throwaway criticism posts through to the frontpage. For certain critical posts, the decision to demote should be affirmed by someone independent of CEA.
The risk of being demoted to Personal Blog could be a significant demotivator for people investing the time to write posts.
You could mitigate this by being very clear and objective about what will trigger classification and then applying the stated criteria in a conservative fashion. But based on your stated goals, I think you may have a hard time defining the boundaries with enough objective precision.
You could also invite people to submit 1-2 paragraph pitches if they were concerned about demotion, and establish a safe harbor for anyone who got a thumbs-up on their pitch. But that approach risks being a little too censorious for my tastes, as the likely outcome of a decision not to pre-clear is that the author never completes their idea into a post.
If something is getting any meaningful number of upvotes or comments after being consigned to Personal Blog as lower-quality content, you probably made a mistake that should be reverted ASAP. (When thinking what the thresholds for reversal should be, the much lower visibility of Personal Blogs should carry significant weight.)
I would be hesitant to reject more contentāpeople selecting to show Personal Blog posts presumably know what they are getting themselves into and have implicitly decided to opt out of your filtering efforts.
Thanks Jason! Luckily, which posts get categorized as āPersonal blogā is public information (I think itās easiest to skim via the All posts page), so I would be happy for people to check our work and contact us if you think weāve made a mistake. If you take a look now, youāll see that very few posts have been moved there so far, and I donāt expect the rate to change very much going forward.
2. My guess is that the vast majority of new users donāt even know what āPersonal blogā means, so Iām not sure how demotivating it will be to them. As I mentioned in another comment, my guess is that getting downvoted is more demotivating for new users.
3. I think thatās a good idea, and Iād be happy for users to flag these as mistakes to the moderators, or just DM me directly and I can return a post to the Frontpage if I agree (I have the final say as head moderator).
The EA Forum moderation team is going to experiment a bit with how we categorize posts. Currently there is a low bar for a Forum post being categorized as āFrontpageā after itās approved. In comparison, LessWrong is much more opinionated about the content they allow, especially from new users. Weāre considering moving in that direction, in order to maintain a higher percentage of valuable content on our Frontpage.
To start, weāre going to allow moderators to move posts from new users from āFrontpageā to āPersonal blogā[1], at their discretion, but starting conservatively. Weāll keep an eye on this and, depending on how this goes, we may consider taking further steps such as using the ārejected contentā feature (we donāt currently have that on the EA Forum).
Feel free to reply here if you have any questions or feedback.
If youād like to make sure you see āPersonal blogā posts in your Frontpage, you can customize your feed.
I would be nervous about discouraging new users. Thereās a high bar for what gets upvoted here on the forum. Especially for VERY new users Iād be nervous about not giving the opportunity for their post to be on the frontpageāmaybe it can depend on if you think the post is decent or not?
Ah yeah sorry I was unclear! I basically meant what you said when I said āat their discretion, but starting conservativelyā ā so we are starting to take āqualityā into account when deciding what stays in the Frontpage, because our readersā time is valuable. You can kind of think of it like: if the mod would have downvoted a post from a new user, the mod can instead decide to move it to āPersonal blogā. I think itās possible that this is actually less discouraging to new users than getting downvoted, since itās like youāre being moved to a category with different standards. You can check our work by looking at what gets categorized as āPersonal blogā via the All posts page. :)
I expect this will affect only a small proportion of new users.
I would be a bit hesitant to follow Less Wrongās lead on this too closely. I find the EA Forum, for lack of a better term, feels much friendlier than Less Wrong, and I wouldnāt want that sense of friendliness to go away.
I was hesitant on this one, but I looked at last monthās posts and saw a lot of them with few votes and little engagement, which made me more sympathetic to the concern about the frontpage. Maybe itās a viable idea with some safeguards:
I think a limitation to application against ānew usersā mitigates some of the downside risk as long as that definition is operationalized well. In particular, people use throwaways to post criticisms, and the newness of an account should not necessarily establish a ānew userā for purpose of this policy. I think mods are capable of figuring out if a throwaway post shows enough EA knowledge, but they should err on the side of letting throwaway criticism posts through to the frontpage. For certain critical posts, the decision to demote should be affirmed by someone independent of CEA.
The risk of being demoted to Personal Blog could be a significant demotivator for people investing the time to write posts.
You could mitigate this by being very clear and objective about what will trigger classification and then applying the stated criteria in a conservative fashion. But based on your stated goals, I think you may have a hard time defining the boundaries with enough objective precision.
You could also invite people to submit 1-2 paragraph pitches if they were concerned about demotion, and establish a safe harbor for anyone who got a thumbs-up on their pitch. But that approach risks being a little too censorious for my tastes, as the likely outcome of a decision not to pre-clear is that the author never completes their idea into a post.
If something is getting any meaningful number of upvotes or comments after being consigned to Personal Blog as lower-quality content, you probably made a mistake that should be reverted ASAP. (When thinking what the thresholds for reversal should be, the much lower visibility of Personal Blogs should carry significant weight.)
I would be hesitant to reject more contentāpeople selecting to show Personal Blog posts presumably know what they are getting themselves into and have implicitly decided to opt out of your filtering efforts.
Thanks Jason! Luckily, which posts get categorized as āPersonal blogā is public information (I think itās easiest to skim via the All posts page), so I would be happy for people to check our work and contact us if you think weāve made a mistake. If you take a look now, youāll see that very few posts have been moved there so far, and I donāt expect the rate to change very much going forward.
2. My guess is that the vast majority of new users donāt even know what āPersonal blogā means, so Iām not sure how demotivating it will be to them. As I mentioned in another comment, my guess is that getting downvoted is more demotivating for new users.
3. I think thatās a good idea, and Iād be happy for users to flag these as mistakes to the moderators, or just DM me directly and I can return a post to the Frontpage if I agree (I have the final say as head moderator).