Agreed—I tried to account for this with weasel words like “most,” “good-faith,” and “presumptively.”
I know at least one of the prize contests this year offered participation prizes for good-faith submissions (e.g., GiveWell awarded 39 $500 participation prizes). I would be curious whether the judges felt there were a bunch of submissions that seemed engineered to just garner one of those prizes.
My hunch is the compensation-seeking problem is manageable if the grants are modest; it would be tricky for someone to figure out how to do enough to clear the good-faith/serious application bar while working quickly enough to make compensation-seeking an attractive approach. Presumably, there would be one participation grant per lifetime, unless the applicant was given specific encouragement to reapply on a prior round and reasonably addressed any suggestions given. Also, I wouldn’t be opposed to the grantmaker compensating for somewhat less than the value of the applicant’s time—both as a means of discouraging compensation-seeking, and because it’s not unreasonable for the would-be grantee to bear some of the costs of the joint product.
Agreed—I tried to account for this with weasel words like “most,” “good-faith,” and “presumptively.”
I know at least one of the prize contests this year offered participation prizes for good-faith submissions (e.g., GiveWell awarded 39 $500 participation prizes). I would be curious whether the judges felt there were a bunch of submissions that seemed engineered to just garner one of those prizes.
My hunch is the compensation-seeking problem is manageable if the grants are modest; it would be tricky for someone to figure out how to do enough to clear the good-faith/serious application bar while working quickly enough to make compensation-seeking an attractive approach. Presumably, there would be one participation grant per lifetime, unless the applicant was given specific encouragement to reapply on a prior round and reasonably addressed any suggestions given. Also, I wouldn’t be opposed to the grantmaker compensating for somewhat less than the value of the applicant’s time—both as a means of discouraging compensation-seeking, and because it’s not unreasonable for the would-be grantee to bear some of the costs of the joint product.
Edit: typo, should be not UNreasonable