Here is something I recently proposed in a .impact chat: Do we need to make it more clear how people can ask questions? When people are new to EA, they’ll have lots of questions, and Google might not always be able to point them to the best documents answering them.
(1) The international effective altruism group has a high bar for quality, so it’s not a good fit for asking a random question; (2) the EA Forum is being used for longer articles, so people who are sensitive to that will refrain from asking questions here; (3) in open threads, questions that arrive rather late are easily overlooked; and (4) not everyone has a meetup nearby or is curious enough about any particular answer to go to one.
https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/ is the best fit that I can think of for asking questions, but it took me a while to remember that it exists, and I don’t recognize any (nick) names there, so if it really is the best place to ask questions, then it would need to be promoted more to newcomers and seasoned EAs. People who work in outreach could add the Reddit feed to their Feedly accounts, and the people operating the EA Forum could put up a link to recommend it as a place to ask questions.
But it needs someone to take it on as a project to do all that’s necessary to make it a success. Oli Habryka has been thinking about how to make it a success, but he needs someone to take on the project.
Here is something I recently proposed in a .impact chat: Do we need to make it more clear how people can ask questions? When people are new to EA, they’ll have lots of questions, and Google might not always be able to point them to the best documents answering them.
(1) The international effective altruism group has a high bar for quality, so it’s not a good fit for asking a random question; (2) the EA Forum is being used for longer articles, so people who are sensitive to that will refrain from asking questions here; (3) in open threads, questions that arrive rather late are easily overlooked; and (4) not everyone has a meetup nearby or is curious enough about any particular answer to go to one.
https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/ is the best fit that I can think of for asking questions, but it took me a while to remember that it exists, and I don’t recognize any (nick) names there, so if it really is the best place to ask questions, then it would need to be promoted more to newcomers and seasoned EAs. People who work in outreach could add the Reddit feed to their Feedly accounts, and the people operating the EA Forum could put up a link to recommend it as a place to ask questions.
What do you think?
An EA stackexchange would be good for this. There is one being proposed: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/97583/effective-altruism
But it needs someone to take it on as a project to do all that’s necessary to make it a success. Oli Habryka has been thinking about how to make it a success, but he needs someone to take on the project.
@Richard_Batty, I’d be interested finding out more about what’s needed for EA-SE proposal. I’ll also shoot Oliver a email about this.
Oh, awesome! I hadn’t seen the Stack Exchange proposal. *fingers crossed*