UPDATE: Deadline has been changed to April 30. Added a few “early-bird prizes” for submissions received before March 31. Hoping that this will encourage early submissions while allowing people to participate later. Thank you for the feedback!
Original comment below:
Thanks for pointing this out, Vaidehi and Kaleem! Setting a deadline is tricky, and this is helpful feedback. Here are a few considerations that went into the March 31 deadline:
Spring break is in mid-March for many universities, and I wanted the deadline to be shortly after spring break.
I think there are benefits to having people reflect after conferences, and I also think there are benefits to having people reflect before conferences. EAGxOxford is March 26-27 and EAGxBoston is April 1-3. So I figured this deadline would be a useful “midpoint.”
I think it would be great to start seeing some of these posts published before EAGxOxford and EAGx Boston.
My impression is that three weeks is enough time, though I might be poorly calibrated on this. I expect most submissions will take <10 hours to write over the course of 1-3 days.
I spoke with a few community builders about the deadline and they thought it seemed reasonable & they wouldn’t feel rushed.
For now, I think it makes sense to keep the deadline, but I could see a world in which I extend it by a bit (especially if community builders reach out saying they need more time). If you’re reading this and the deadline would prevent you from submitting, feel free to email me at akashwasil133@gmail.com.
I expect most submissions will take <10 hours to write over the course of 1-3 days.
If memory serves, it took me ~40 hours to write each of theseretrospectives (maybe over the course of a month); these were by far the most useful reflections for me to improve my community-building efforts.
Thanks for mentioning this, Rohin! I agree that longer write-ups and retrospectives can be valuable. And if someone determines that it’s valuable for them to spend 40 hours on a write-up, I’d encourage them to do so.
For this contest, I don’t want the “norm” or “expectation” to be a 20+ hour write-up. I’m expecting many submissions that take the form “here’s an idea that I was already thinking about, and now this contest nudged me to sit down and write it up” or “I sat down and spent a few hours reflecting on X, and here’s what I learned.”
This is partially motivated by finm’s comment here:
I’m a bit worried that contests with large prizes can have distortionary effects. That is, they might pull EAs towards using their time in ways which are not altruistically/impartially best. This would happen when an EA switches her marginal time to some contest with a big prize, where she otherwise would have been doing something expected to be more impactful (e.g. because she’s a better fit for it), but which doesn’t stand to win her as much money or acclaim.
Most importantly, I think people entering this contest should ask themselves if spending marginal hours on their entries would be a good use of their time (relative to their counterfactual). My guess is that most entrants would benefit from reflecting for 1-10 hours, and a smaller subset would benefit from reflecting for 10-100 hours.
Eh, I’m just pretty happy to claim that many contests can in fact push people to do more valuable things with their time than they would have done otherwise. It’s not that hard to think of considerations that most EAs haven’t thought about.
Also, by this logic, should we also not have any posts that give advice to EAs? After all, they might pull EAs towards following that advice, even when that’s not altruistically / impartially best.
Maybe the idea is that once there’s money involved, it is individually rational for EAs to pursue the money from contests instead of doing what is best, and this is community-irrational? That seems surprising; if that were the situation, then why aren’t the EAs just pursuing a normal job which would get more money?
Maybe the idea is that it isn’t the money, it’s the prestige from the contest that’s motivating? That seems plausible.
Maybe the idea is that EAs can just ignore advice if it’s bad, but they will irrationally be more persuaded when there’s money and prestige attached (as in a contest)? That also seems plausible.
Okay, I’m more convinced of distortionary effects, though I’m still pretty keen on “yeah it’s not hard to find cases where individual EAs could do better, because you thought of a consideration that they didn’t”.
My guess is that most entrants would benefit from reflecting for 1-10 hours, and a smaller subset would benefit from reflecting for 10-100 hours.
For this contest I was most compelled by the benefits to other organizers, and for that I think I would be a lot more excited about the 10-100 hour reflections.
My impression is that three weeks is enough time, though I might be poorly calibrated on this. I expect most submissions will take <10 hours to write over the course of 1-3 days.
I would have expected the average person to spend longer than 10 hours to write a submission. Especially for the reflections that help others—I think it can be nontrivial to go from “here’s a thought I have” to “how do i express it to others well” (and often, that process is super valuable because you end up refining your argument and even changing your mind about what it is you’re trying to say).
I might be a good idea to flag this more prominently in the post—this wasn’t really the impression I got from reading the post (perhaps others did).
I do see the value of having posts published before / betweem conferences.
If you are primarily trying to attract university students then it does make sense to time it with spring break, but I do think for working professionals it’s a fairly short timeline.
I think it’s very likely that many people will not read this post until a few days or weeks later, or will see it soon but won’t come up with an interesting idea until several weeks into the deadline.
It’s worth noting that the creative writing contest offered 55 days (7-8 weeks)* for submissions after the original post was posted (though I know this is different from creative writing). I think this is a reasonable amount of time and that this contest should offer roughly the same amount of time.
Edit: Somehow I messed up my math haha. It was 47 days, 6-7 weeks.
I agree with all three of Vaidehi’s comments as of typing this. I’ll add that I think some posts would require research or talking to experts and could therefore take much more than 10 hours.
One response may be that this contest isn’t intended for those kinds of posts. But since those posts could be potentially very high value to the community, it seems reasonable to extend the deadline to encourage those kinds of posts. It seems to me like the value of extending the deadline and potentially getting a few more especially well-researched, well-argued posts outweighs the value of keeping the deadline March 31 and getting shorter posts that are written after spring break and between EAGs.
UPDATE: Deadline has been changed to April 30. Added a few “early-bird prizes” for submissions received before March 31. Hoping that this will encourage early submissions while allowing people to participate later. Thank you for the feedback!
Original comment below:
Thanks for pointing this out, Vaidehi and Kaleem! Setting a deadline is tricky, and this is helpful feedback. Here are a few considerations that went into the March 31 deadline:
Spring break is in mid-March for many universities, and I wanted the deadline to be shortly after spring break.
I think there are benefits to having people reflect after conferences, and I also think there are benefits to having people reflect before conferences. EAGxOxford is March 26-27 and EAGxBoston is April 1-3. So I figured this deadline would be a useful “midpoint.”
I think it would be great to start seeing some of these posts published before EAGxOxford and EAGx Boston.
My impression is that three weeks is enough time, though I might be poorly calibrated on this. I expect most submissions will take <10 hours to write over the course of 1-3 days.
I spoke with a few community builders about the deadline and they thought it seemed reasonable & they wouldn’t feel rushed.
For now, I think it makes sense to keep the deadline, but I could see a world in which I extend it by a bit (especially if community builders reach out saying they need more time). If you’re reading this and the deadline would prevent you from submitting, feel free to email me at akashwasil133@gmail.com.
If memory serves, it took me ~40 hours to write each of these retrospectives (maybe over the course of a month); these were by far the most useful reflections for me to improve my community-building efforts.
Thanks for mentioning this, Rohin! I agree that longer write-ups and retrospectives can be valuable. And if someone determines that it’s valuable for them to spend 40 hours on a write-up, I’d encourage them to do so.
For this contest, I don’t want the “norm” or “expectation” to be a 20+ hour write-up. I’m expecting many submissions that take the form “here’s an idea that I was already thinking about, and now this contest nudged me to sit down and write it up” or “I sat down and spent a few hours reflecting on X, and here’s what I learned.”
This is partially motivated by finm’s comment here:
Most importantly, I think people entering this contest should ask themselves if spending marginal hours on their entries would be a good use of their time (relative to their counterfactual). My guess is that most entrants would benefit from reflecting for 1-10 hours, and a smaller subset would benefit from reflecting for 10-100 hours.
Eh, I’m just pretty happy to claim that many contests can in fact push people to do more valuable things with their time than they would have done otherwise. It’s not that hard to think of considerations that most EAs haven’t thought about.
Also, by this logic, should we also not have any posts that give advice to EAs? After all, they might pull EAs towards following that advice, even when that’s not altruistically / impartially best.
Maybe the idea is that once there’s money involved, it is individually rational for EAs to pursue the money from contests instead of doing what is best, and this is community-irrational? That seems surprising; if that were the situation, then why aren’t the EAs just pursuing a normal job which would get more money?
Maybe the idea is that it isn’t the money, it’s the prestige from the contest that’s motivating? That seems plausible.
Maybe the idea is that EAs can just ignore advice if it’s bad, but they will irrationally be more persuaded when there’s money and prestige attached (as in a contest)? That also seems plausible.
Okay, I’m more convinced of distortionary effects, though I’m still pretty keen on “yeah it’s not hard to find cases where individual EAs could do better, because you thought of a consideration that they didn’t”.
For this contest I was most compelled by the benefits to other organizers, and for that I think I would be a lot more excited about the 10-100 hour reflections.
I would have expected the average person to spend longer than 10 hours to write a submission. Especially for the reflections that help others—I think it can be nontrivial to go from “here’s a thought I have” to “how do i express it to others well” (and often, that process is super valuable because you end up refining your argument and even changing your mind about what it is you’re trying to say).
I might be a good idea to flag this more prominently in the post—this wasn’t really the impression I got from reading the post (perhaps others did).
On the timelines:
I do see the value of having posts published before / betweem conferences.
If you are primarily trying to attract university students then it does make sense to time it with spring break, but I do think for working professionals it’s a fairly short timeline.
I think it’s very likely that many people will not read this post until a few days or weeks later, or will see it soon but won’t come up with an interesting idea until several weeks into the deadline.
It’s worth noting that the creative writing contest offered 55 days (7-8 weeks)* for submissions after the original post was posted (though I know this is different from creative writing). I think this is a reasonable amount of time and that this contest should offer roughly the same amount of time.
Edit: Somehow I messed up my math haha. It was 47 days, 6-7 weeks.
I agree with all three of Vaidehi’s comments as of typing this. I’ll add that I think some posts would require research or talking to experts and could therefore take much more than 10 hours.
One response may be that this contest isn’t intended for those kinds of posts. But since those posts could be potentially very high value to the community, it seems reasonable to extend the deadline to encourage those kinds of posts. It seems to me like the value of extending the deadline and potentially getting a few more especially well-researched, well-argued posts outweighs the value of keeping the deadline March 31 and getting shorter posts that are written after spring break and between EAGs.