I strongly agree that the benefits of sharing the evaluation greatly outweigh the risks, but I’m not sure if sharing the it relatively early is best
There is a risk of starting a draining back-and-forth which could block or massively delay publication. See e.g. Research Deprioritizing External Communication which was delayed by one year
It would cost more time for the org to review a very early draft and point out mistakes that would be fixed anyway
It could cause the org to take the evaluation less seriously, and be less likely to take action based on the feedback
I think the minimal version proposed by @Jason of just sending an advance copy a week or two in advance is an extremely low-cost policy that mitigates most of the risks and provides most of the benefits (but some limited back-and-forth would be ideal)
From first hand experience, I think critics should make more of an effort to ensure that the charities have actually received your communications and had a chance to review it. When my organization was the subject of a critical post, the email from the critic had landed in my spam, so I only learned of the critique when reading it on the forum.
What’s more, as an organization of 2 people, one of which was on leave at the time of the notice, we couldn’t have reasonably responded to it without stopping critical work to keep the lights on. The smaller the organization being critiqued is, the less flex capacity they have to respond quickly to these sorts of things, and so they should be given a longer grace period.
Yep fair enough! That was one bit I wasn’t sure about and can definitely see the downsides of sharing too early. I guess the trade-off I was considering was Vetted Causes’ time spent on the evaluation but definitely think an advance finished version with two weeks notice would be something most groups would be happy with.
I strongly agree that the benefits of sharing the evaluation greatly outweigh the risks, but I’m not sure if sharing the it relatively early is best
There is a risk of starting a draining back-and-forth which could block or massively delay publication. See e.g. Research Deprioritizing External Communication which was delayed by one year
It would cost more time for the org to review a very early draft and point out mistakes that would be fixed anyway
It could cause the org to take the evaluation less seriously, and be less likely to take action based on the feedback
I think the minimal version proposed by @Jason of just sending an advance copy a week or two in advance is an extremely low-cost policy that mitigates most of the risks and provides most of the benefits (but some limited back-and-forth would be ideal)
From first hand experience, I think critics should make more of an effort to ensure that the charities have actually received your communications and had a chance to review it. When my organization was the subject of a critical post, the email from the critic had landed in my spam, so I only learned of the critique when reading it on the forum.
What’s more, as an organization of 2 people, one of which was on leave at the time of the notice, we couldn’t have reasonably responded to it without stopping critical work to keep the lights on. The smaller the organization being critiqued is, the less flex capacity they have to respond quickly to these sorts of things, and so they should be given a longer grace period.
Yep fair enough! That was one bit I wasn’t sure about and can definitely see the downsides of sharing too early. I guess the trade-off I was considering was Vetted Causes’ time spent on the evaluation but definitely think an advance finished version with two weeks notice would be something most groups would be happy with.