TLDR; The EA forum team could transform the forum by introducing high status, high activity “focus posts” that are centered on object level discussion, at the same time greatly empowering the forum moderator.
This content below is quickly written, and tries to motivate a vision, not a specific plan. Also, “focus posts” seems like a bad name, someone please come up with another?”
Motivation/Background:
There is a sense that high quality discussions and comments on the forum are briefer and don’t occur as much now.
Overall, there’s sort of two types of issues people have brought up recently:
Demand for modifications to the forum, where one group wants a response, maybe involving changes to karma or voting, motivated by the underlying issues of large growth.
(Note that there is another groupthat wantssomething close to the opposite.)
The forum has moved a bit toward being a place that demands attention. It’s a place where people now enter often to make a point or react to others doing it. That’s not as close to productive discussion as it could be.
The forum should be closer to a place for productive discussions between EAs. These discussions should often reveal the landscape of object level work to its readers, or even help make progress on projects. There’s several interesting but elaborate solutions that might help.
However, this comment chain suggests a major solution that is direct and feasible.
We should foster and promote high status, high quality object level discussions.
These would be in the form of posts that involve prestigious outsiders, near-EA people, or EA leaders or small teams from strong EA projects. These people would create the content and/or star in the resulting discussion.
For lack of a better name, we can call them “focus posts”.
Overall, “focus posts” would:
Generally contain deep object level discussion about their topic.
They might star one or more subject matter experts (maybe in addition to the posters themselves).
The discussions would combine elements of AMAs with guaranteed attention from experts, with some of the best discussions of deep, thoughtful opinions from principled people.
Would appear prominently on the forum, for a long and predictable time. This would generate interest in forum discussion and EA principles to both longtime EAs and newcomers.
The below is a crude mockup to show how this could appear.
(This is a quick, crude mockup, the actual version could be very different.)
These “Focus posts” and the culture and general interest that drives regular participation around them, will take effort to set up (but they shouldn’t be overly difficult or delicate to create).
Building up the supply of these posts can be done gradually, maybe by starting with relationships with existing EA leaders. There are precedents for this work, like the setup of AMAs, and series like Cold Takes, where a major EA leader wrote on the forum for a long time.
As discussed more below, the focus posts would be fostered, curated, and maybe partially developed by the EA forum moderator, who plays a integral, leadership role in the design of this entire feature.
While these new posts doesn’t seem to address voting or scaling issues, I think focus posts could be highly effective. I think ultimately, the sustained, high quality discussion in the curated focus posts can have wide positive effects on the forum, and satisfy a lot of present concern.
Underlying aspects of high status and moderator empowerment
I think this idea of focus posts might at first seem like a simple UX change.
But there are deeper aspects that I think are important to be deliberate about. These two aspects are:
Making Focus Posts a high status place with a high expectation for quality discussion and tie in to object level work
Greatly empower moderator into a high visibility, highly impactful role.
This comment and the next one talk about these points.
1: Making Focus Points Highly Effective and Attractive
The posts need to attract good discussion. A good supply of posters and commentors is needed, ultimately reducing active work by the moderators and create a virtuous cycle of discussion.
There are quick ideas:
Funding might be helpful, for example, a fixed [1]monthly amount of $20,000 or $40,000, that is allocated in a transparent way to focus posts (maybe after passing a mild bar of participation, to encourage discussion).
Regarding this use of money, I think that “focus posts” will initially be from or about EAs working on established projects, or altruistic, near EA projects, so their receipt of funding seems reasonable.
However, the main purpose of this money is to set up the “focus post” system correctly and robustly. Given the budget and opportunity cost of the forum staff (5 FTE EAs), the amount of spend seems reasonable.
Other ideas (more marginal because they involve technical changes to karma).
We could imagine an alternate, special karma that is only gainable in focus posts, or modifications to karma that increase participation.
Maybe this special flavor of karma can be used to govern allocation of the fixed monthly amount.
Note that slowness when starting out doesn’t seem to be a problem. There might be only 0-1 “focus posts” for a while and that’s OK.
This is similar to the “bounty” system, which has been a really popular pattern among EAs.
But this use of prizes is different, as it is a fixed amount, divided monthly across “focus posts”.
The benefits of this setup are that the prize size and incentive for writing is high when there are few high quality posts. When there are numerous posts, the incentive is smaller but no longer needed.
Also, this funding, maybe simply divided equally among curated posts, is more stable and predictable than most prizes. This means it can be principledly secured by being curated as a “focus post”, which gives agency to the moderator (to enter into planning and fostering with participants).
2: Greatly empower the EA forum moderator and change its role
This second point is really important. This project will greatly change the moderators role, increasing the prominence and even real world impact of the EA forum moderator.
The moderator would be the person to curate “focus posts”, deciding which posts qualify (or possibly helping to create them outright).
The moderator will decide on the composition of these posts (e.g. breakdown by cause area).
There are other complex issues the moderator will influence: For example, while most of these new “focus posts” might be on object-level topics, some meta posts might appear. What qualifies is tricky to decide, and at the same time, gives a niche for the moderator to express their vision and skill.
This control by the moderator is a key aspect of “focus posts” (and ultimately a major change to the forum itself).
Note that this control has checks and balances. The moderator’s output and decisions are very visible work. Also, maybe later, additional features can be added that allow community input, such as voting that can promote (or demote) posts into focus posts. Finally, simple regular user discussions act as a check on moderators.
This change in the role of the moderator has additional effects:
Sometimes the role of moderators can seem thankless or low reward, yet the role is extremely important. Now, with this change, the moderator has dramatically more prestige, such as great access to a large group of talented senior EAs. The moderator has portfolio and well funded mission of promoting discussion in a highly visible place, as well as making the entire project of focus posts more effective. This permanently improves the role of the moderator, increasing talent flows for this role, and supporting health of the EA forum.
This new role and the focus posts can be a safeguard in periods when the Forum is entering noisy, difficult times with a lower supply of content, promoting strong writing and reducing imbalances in discussion.
Another way of looking at this: instead of seeing “focus posts” as a new prominent position for posts, you can see it as a vehicle to empower principled moderators.
I think both the current and past EA forum moderator are more than qualified, both in terms of subject matter knowledge, as well as virtue and judgement, for at least the control envisioned in this comment chain.
This is a long series of comments (~1200 words)
TLDR; The EA forum team could transform the forum by introducing high status, high activity “focus posts” that are centered on object level discussion, at the same time greatly empowering the forum moderator.
This content below is quickly written, and tries to motivate a vision, not a specific plan. Also, “focus posts” seems like a bad name, someone please come up with another?”
Motivation/Background:
There is a sense that high quality discussions and comments on the forum are briefer and don’t occur as much now.
Overall, there’s sort of two types of issues people have brought up recently:
Demand for more object level discussion, as above from Jonas Vollmer and Holly Morgan.
Demand for modifications to the forum, where one group wants a response, maybe involving changes to karma or voting, motivated by the underlying issues of large growth.
(Note that there is another group that wants something close to the opposite.)
The forum has moved a bit toward being a place that demands attention. It’s a place where people now enter often to make a point or react to others doing it. That’s not as close to productive discussion as it could be.
The forum should be closer to a place for productive discussions between EAs. These discussions should often reveal the landscape of object level work to its readers, or even help make progress on projects. There’s several interesting but elaborate solutions that might help.
However, this comment chain suggests a major solution that is direct and feasible.
The suggestion “focus posts”:
We should foster and promote high status, high quality object level discussions.
These would be in the form of posts that involve prestigious outsiders, near-EA people, or EA leaders or small teams from strong EA projects. These people would create the content and/or star in the resulting discussion.
For lack of a better name, we can call them “focus posts”.
Overall, “focus posts” would:
Generally contain deep object level discussion about their topic.
They might star one or more subject matter experts (maybe in addition to the posters themselves).
The discussions would combine elements of AMAs with guaranteed attention from experts, with some of the best discussions of deep, thoughtful opinions from principled people.
Would appear prominently on the forum, for a long and predictable time. This would generate interest in forum discussion and EA principles to both longtime EAs and newcomers.
The below is a crude mockup to show how this could appear.
(This is a quick, crude mockup, the actual version could be very different.)
These “Focus posts” and the culture and general interest that drives regular participation around them, will take effort to set up (but they shouldn’t be overly difficult or delicate to create).
Building up the supply of these posts can be done gradually, maybe by starting with relationships with existing EA leaders. There are precedents for this work, like the setup of AMAs, and series like Cold Takes, where a major EA leader wrote on the forum for a long time.
As discussed more below, the focus posts would be fostered, curated, and maybe partially developed by the EA forum moderator, who plays a integral, leadership role in the design of this entire feature.
While these new posts doesn’t seem to address voting or scaling issues, I think focus posts could be highly effective. I think ultimately, the sustained, high quality discussion in the curated focus posts can have wide positive effects on the forum, and satisfy a lot of present concern.
Underlying aspects of high status and moderator empowerment
I think this idea of focus posts might at first seem like a simple UX change.
But there are deeper aspects that I think are important to be deliberate about. These two aspects are:
Making Focus Posts a high status place with a high expectation for quality discussion and tie in to object level work
Greatly empower moderator into a high visibility, highly impactful role.
This comment and the next one talk about these points.
1: Making Focus Points Highly Effective and Attractive
The posts need to attract good discussion. A good supply of posters and commentors is needed, ultimately reducing active work by the moderators and create a virtuous cycle of discussion.
There are quick ideas:
Funding might be helpful, for example, a fixed [1]monthly amount of $20,000 or $40,000, that is allocated in a transparent way to focus posts (maybe after passing a mild bar of participation, to encourage discussion).
Regarding this use of money, I think that “focus posts” will initially be from or about EAs working on established projects, or altruistic, near EA projects, so their receipt of funding seems reasonable.
However, the main purpose of this money is to set up the “focus post” system correctly and robustly. Given the budget and opportunity cost of the forum staff (5 FTE EAs), the amount of spend seems reasonable.
Other ideas (more marginal because they involve technical changes to karma).
We could imagine an alternate, special karma that is only gainable in focus posts, or modifications to karma that increase participation.
Maybe this special flavor of karma can be used to govern allocation of the fixed monthly amount.
Note that slowness when starting out doesn’t seem to be a problem. There might be only 0-1 “focus posts” for a while and that’s OK.
This is similar to the “bounty” system, which has been a really popular pattern among EAs.
But this use of prizes is different, as it is a fixed amount, divided monthly across “focus posts”.
The benefits of this setup are that the prize size and incentive for writing is high when there are few high quality posts. When there are numerous posts, the incentive is smaller but no longer needed.
Also, this funding, maybe simply divided equally among curated posts, is more stable and predictable than most prizes. This means it can be principledly secured by being curated as a “focus post”, which gives agency to the moderator (to enter into planning and fostering with participants).
2: Greatly empower the EA forum moderator and change its role
This second point is really important. This project will greatly change the moderators role, increasing the prominence and even real world impact of the EA forum moderator.
The moderator would be the person to curate “focus posts”, deciding which posts qualify (or possibly helping to create them outright).
The moderator will decide on the composition of these posts (e.g. breakdown by cause area).
There are other complex issues the moderator will influence: For example, while most of these new “focus posts” might be on object-level topics, some meta posts might appear. What qualifies is tricky to decide, and at the same time, gives a niche for the moderator to express their vision and skill.
This control by the moderator is a key aspect of “focus posts” (and ultimately a major change to the forum itself).
Note that this control has checks and balances. The moderator’s output and decisions are very visible work. Also, maybe later, additional features can be added that allow community input, such as voting that can promote (or demote) posts into focus posts. Finally, simple regular user discussions act as a check on moderators.
This change in the role of the moderator has additional effects:
Sometimes the role of moderators can seem thankless or low reward, yet the role is extremely important. Now, with this change, the moderator has dramatically more prestige, such as great access to a large group of talented senior EAs. The moderator has portfolio and well funded mission of promoting discussion in a highly visible place, as well as making the entire project of focus posts more effective. This permanently improves the role of the moderator, increasing talent flows for this role, and supporting health of the EA forum.
This new role and the focus posts can be a safeguard in periods when the Forum is entering noisy, difficult times with a lower supply of content, promoting strong writing and reducing imbalances in discussion.
Another way of looking at this: instead of seeing “focus posts” as a new prominent position for posts, you can see it as a vehicle to empower principled moderators.
I think both the current and past EA forum moderator are more than qualified, both in terms of subject matter knowledge, as well as virtue and judgement, for at least the control envisioned in this comment chain.