Thank you for your thoughtful and extended feedback. I appreciate the time you have taken to raise a number of valid concerns. I will just respond to a few of your points, since much of what you say is in reply to Aaron’s previous comment, and I don’t want to interfere with that conversation.
I think the worry that the Wiki may fail due to insufficient contributions is very real. As you note, none of the previous attempts to build something like what we are trying to accomplish here have succeeded. And it appears that this is a common phenomenon with general efforts to create specialist wikis. Forecasting is one of my hobbies, and I’m well aware that the base rates aren’t in our favor.
This was is fact my primary concern back when I was considering this project for a grant application. The reason I eventually decided to go ahead—besides feeling that I had a somewhat higher shot at success than my predecessors based on my experience editing Wikipedia and the insight this experience gave me about my capacity to feel motivated long-term by a project of this nature—was that I thought I could gain more information by just trying things out for a few months. The money costs for EA Grants were relatively modest, as were the time costs for me: at the time I didn’t have any other project I felt excited about, and I don’t think I would have spent those months very productively otherwise.
Fortunately, the experiment was a success: by the time the grant was over, I had not only produced more content than I had promised, but had discovered that I found writing these articles a more enjoyable experience than I had anticipated. Since then, I have continued to work on the project, and all the direct evidence indicates that lack of motivation will not be a serious impediment. This may still be insufficient to warrant an update from the naive prior to the point that I feel super confident that I will either continue to work on this project full-time for at least the next five years or find a suitable replacement, but if I had to guess, I’d estimate the chances of this happening at something like 65%.
How sensitive are your worries to scenarios in which the main paid content-writer fails to stay motivated, relative to scenarios in which the project fails because of insufficient volunteer effort? I’m inclined to believe that as long as there is someone whose full-time job is to write content for the Wiki (whether it’s me or someone else), in combination with all the additional work that Aaron and the technical team are devoting to it, enough progress will probably occur to sustain growth over time and attract volunteer contributors. I’m modestly confident in this, but I’m much more confident in that it makes sense to (again) test the hypothesis experimentally, by trying to make the Wiki happen and see how excited people feel about it after a period of a year or so.
Thanks Pablo… I appreciate your thoughtful engagement with my comments, and all the hard work you’ve put into this project.
How sensitive are your worries to scenarios in which the main paid content-writer fails to stay motivated, relative to scenarios in which the project fails because of insufficient volunteer effort? I’m inclined to believe that as long as there is someone whose full-time job is to write content for the Wiki (whether it’s me or someone else), in combination with all the additional work that Aaron and the technical team are devoting to it, enough progress will probably occur to sustain growth over time and attract volunteer contributors.
I’m not at all concerned that “the main paid content-writer fails to stay motivated” since that can easily be solved by finding a suitable replacement. I worry a bit about “insufficient volunteer effort”, but mostly see that as a symptom of my main concern: whether organizational commitment can be sustained.
If CEA has a good understanding of what it will cost to create and maintain the necessary content, technical platform, and volunteer structure and commits to (indefinitely) paying those costs, I’d feel pretty optimistic about the project. I’ve expressed some concerns that CEA is underestimating those costs, but would like to let Aaron respond to those concerns as I may be underestimating the paid staff time CEA is planning or otherwise missing something.
Hi Anonymous,
Thank you for your thoughtful and extended feedback. I appreciate the time you have taken to raise a number of valid concerns. I will just respond to a few of your points, since much of what you say is in reply to Aaron’s previous comment, and I don’t want to interfere with that conversation.
I think the worry that the Wiki may fail due to insufficient contributions is very real. As you note, none of the previous attempts to build something like what we are trying to accomplish here have succeeded. And it appears that this is a common phenomenon with general efforts to create specialist wikis. Forecasting is one of my hobbies, and I’m well aware that the base rates aren’t in our favor.
This was is fact my primary concern back when I was considering this project for a grant application. The reason I eventually decided to go ahead—besides feeling that I had a somewhat higher shot at success than my predecessors based on my experience editing Wikipedia and the insight this experience gave me about my capacity to feel motivated long-term by a project of this nature—was that I thought I could gain more information by just trying things out for a few months. The money costs for EA Grants were relatively modest, as were the time costs for me: at the time I didn’t have any other project I felt excited about, and I don’t think I would have spent those months very productively otherwise.
Fortunately, the experiment was a success: by the time the grant was over, I had not only produced more content than I had promised, but had discovered that I found writing these articles a more enjoyable experience than I had anticipated. Since then, I have continued to work on the project, and all the direct evidence indicates that lack of motivation will not be a serious impediment. This may still be insufficient to warrant an update from the naive prior to the point that I feel super confident that I will either continue to work on this project full-time for at least the next five years or find a suitable replacement, but if I had to guess, I’d estimate the chances of this happening at something like 65%.
How sensitive are your worries to scenarios in which the main paid content-writer fails to stay motivated, relative to scenarios in which the project fails because of insufficient volunteer effort? I’m inclined to believe that as long as there is someone whose full-time job is to write content for the Wiki (whether it’s me or someone else), in combination with all the additional work that Aaron and the technical team are devoting to it, enough progress will probably occur to sustain growth over time and attract volunteer contributors. I’m modestly confident in this, but I’m much more confident in that it makes sense to (again) test the hypothesis experimentally, by trying to make the Wiki happen and see how excited people feel about it after a period of a year or so.
Thanks Pablo… I appreciate your thoughtful engagement with my comments, and all the hard work you’ve put into this project.
I’m not at all concerned that “the main paid content-writer fails to stay motivated” since that can easily be solved by finding a suitable replacement. I worry a bit about “insufficient volunteer effort”, but mostly see that as a symptom of my main concern: whether organizational commitment can be sustained.
If CEA has a good understanding of what it will cost to create and maintain the necessary content, technical platform, and volunteer structure and commits to (indefinitely) paying those costs, I’d feel pretty optimistic about the project. I’ve expressed some concerns that CEA is underestimating those costs, but would like to let Aaron respond to those concerns as I may be underestimating the paid staff time CEA is planning or otherwise missing something.