Perhaps one source of downvotes is that the main idea of this post is unoriginal. Anyone putting on an intro fellowship has put some amount of thought into:
Do I call it a “fellowship” to give it prestige, or do I call it a “seminar” / “reading group” to make it sound academic, or do I call it a “program” or a more neutral tone, …
Do I call it “Arete” to sound fancy, or do I call it “intro” to sound welcoming, …
Do I explicitly put “EA” in the title?
The one new thought here seems to be having the acronym “IDEA” stand for “Introduction to making a Difference through Effective Altruism”. And this post isn’t even a comprehensive exploration of the pros and cons of this acronym! OP leaves off one important downside: at other universities (e.g. Harvard, Brown), IDEA stands for “In-Depth EA”. Another point OP doesn’t expand on is why “fellowship” had religious connotations for so many people. (Could this be more of an issue in LSU / the US South in general, compared to other parts of US/Europe?)
Finding good names is important, but this post doesn’t really do much in aim of this goal. The pros and cons here are exclusively supported by anecdotal evidence or OP’s personal aesthetics. Stuff I would like to see in the “naming CB interventions better” space:
Perhaps one source of downvotes is that the main idea of this post is unoriginal. Anyone putting on an intro fellowship has put some amount of thought into:
Do I call it a “fellowship” to give it prestige, or do I call it a “seminar” / “reading group” to make it sound academic, or do I call it a “program” or a more neutral tone, …
Do I call it “Arete” to sound fancy, or do I call it “intro” to sound welcoming, …
Do I explicitly put “EA” in the title?
The one new thought here seems to be having the acronym “IDEA” stand for “Introduction to making a Difference through Effective Altruism”. And this post isn’t even a comprehensive exploration of the pros and cons of this acronym! OP leaves off one important downside: at other universities (e.g. Harvard, Brown), IDEA stands for “In-Depth EA”. Another point OP doesn’t expand on is why “fellowship” had religious connotations for so many people. (Could this be more of an issue in LSU / the US South in general, compared to other parts of US/Europe?)
Finding good names is important, but this post doesn’t really do much in aim of this goal. The pros and cons here are exclusively supported by anecdotal evidence or OP’s personal aesthetics. Stuff I would like to see in the “naming CB interventions better” space:
More experiments such as “Should you use EA in your group name?” An update on PISE’s naming experiment
A compendium of names used at different universities / regions, with attached retrospectives from organizers
(Probably too high effort) Proper user testing on group names