Some quick thoughts from writing the critique post (from the perspective of the main contributor / writer w/o a TAIS background)
If you’re a non-subject matter expert (SME) who can write, but who knows that other SME’s have good/thoughtful critiques, I think it’s worth sitting down with them and helping them write it. Often SME’s lack the time and energy to write a critique. I think not being a SME gave me a bit of an outsider’s perspective and I think I pushed back more on pieces because they weren’t obvious to non-technical people, which I think made some of the technical critiques more specific.
Overall, we are all really happy with the response this post has gotten, the quality of critiques / comments, and the impact it seems to be making in relevant circles. I would be happy to give feedback on others’ critiques, if they share similar goals (improving information asymmetry, genuinely truth seeking).
Writing anonymously has made this post better quality because I feel less ego / attached to the critiques we made, and feel like i can be more in truth seeking mode rather than worrying about protecting my status / reputation. On the flipside, we put a lot of effort into this post and i feel sad that this won’t be recognized, because i’m proud of this work.
Things we will change in future posts (keen to get feedback on this!)
We will have a section which states our bottom-line opinions very explicitly and clearly (e.g. org X should receive less funding, we don’t recommend people work at org Y) and then cite which reasons we think support each critique. I think a handful of comments raised points that we had thought about, but weren’t made clear on the page. I feel a little hesitatnt to not say the bottom-line view because I worry people will think we are being overly negative, but I think if we can communicate our uncertainties and cavesat them, it could be okay.
There were several contributors to this post. I think (partly due to being busy, time constraints and not wanting to delay publishing or be bottlenecked on a contributor getting back to me) I didn’t scrutinize some contributions as thoroughly as I should have prior to publishing. I will aim to reduce that in future posts.
I will be sharing all future drafts with 5-10 other SME reviewers (both people we think would agree & disagree with us) prior to publication, because I think a the comments on this post improved it substantialy.
(minor) I would add a little more context on the flavor of feedback we are aiming to get from the org we are critiquing
Some quick thoughts from writing the critique post (from the perspective of the main contributor / writer w/o a TAIS background)
If you’re a non-subject matter expert (SME) who can write, but who knows that other SME’s have good/thoughtful critiques, I think it’s worth sitting down with them and helping them write it. Often SME’s lack the time and energy to write a critique. I think not being a SME gave me a bit of an outsider’s perspective and I think I pushed back more on pieces because they weren’t obvious to non-technical people, which I think made some of the technical critiques more specific.
Overall, we are all really happy with the response this post has gotten, the quality of critiques / comments, and the impact it seems to be making in relevant circles. I would be happy to give feedback on others’ critiques, if they share similar goals (improving information asymmetry, genuinely truth seeking).
Writing anonymously has made this post better quality because I feel less ego / attached to the critiques we made, and feel like i can be more in truth seeking mode rather than worrying about protecting my status / reputation. On the flipside, we put a lot of effort into this post and i feel sad that this won’t be recognized, because i’m proud of this work.
Things we will change in future posts (keen to get feedback on this!)
We will have a section which states our bottom-line opinions very explicitly and clearly (e.g. org X should receive less funding, we don’t recommend people work at org Y) and then cite which reasons we think support each critique. I think a handful of comments raised points that we had thought about, but weren’t made clear on the page. I feel a little hesitatnt to not say the bottom-line view because I worry people will think we are being overly negative, but I think if we can communicate our uncertainties and cavesat them, it could be okay.
There were several contributors to this post. I think (partly due to being busy, time constraints and not wanting to delay publishing or be bottlenecked on a contributor getting back to me) I didn’t scrutinize some contributions as thoroughly as I should have prior to publishing. I will aim to reduce that in future posts.
I will be sharing all future drafts with 5-10 other SME reviewers (both people we think would agree & disagree with us) prior to publication, because I think a the comments on this post improved it substantialy.
(minor) I would add a little more context on the flavor of feedback we are aiming to get from the org we are critiquing