I list this ageing as a drawback of blogs because it is in practice, if not in theory (and the structure of blogs encourages this). Safe some exceptions (SSC for minor stylistic edits, Nintil) blogs are usually not maintained in any way. I guess my complaint is that it would be entirely possible for this maintenance to occur (unlike with tweets/newspapers/books), but it usually doesn’t happen.
The structure of blogs doesn’t encourage this either: usually arranged chronologically, not by topic, with a focus on novelty.
As for reading archives, there is certainly a style of blog that is in practice not linked very often in the long term (I’m thinking of Overcoming Bias or Marginal Revolution or Econlog).
I don’t object to the posts being unfinished! That would be quite hypocritical of me :-) My argument is that here, the incentives are structured such that it’s much more likely that people will start a blog because of the prize, and once it’s over, they abandon it. I admit to the point that the prize will probably push marginal not-yet-bloggers over the edge.
One way to improve the prize might be to reward blogs that stay maintained years from now, but I don’t think you make that point.
Interesting! I thought I was absolutely making that point, especially in this section and especially especially in this section.
Maybe I wasn’t as clear here as I could have been, but I didn’t want to discourage the bloggers on your site. But to be absolutely clear:
You list 1 person who doesn’t have a public blog at all (!), 2 people whose blogs contain 0 content (!!), 2 more people who have written 3 blogposts each, and 3 more bloggers who actually have presentable blogs. That 3⁄8 blogs that could be in the category of “Flagship blog”. Not, I think, a good ratio.
Yeah, you’re probably right about this one.
Maybe it’s that I think that a prize is not the perfect way to approach this: Prizes seem to be useful for very discrete problems that have a very clear solution criterion, and less useful for very long-term, open-ended endeavours (where something like certificates of impact or retroactive funding are more suited).
I should have been clearer about this: I think blogs are in an odd position in the discourse—there is much more discourse going on on Twitter/YouTube/Discord (?) than on blogs, and I believe that this will not change much (newsletters notwithstanding). On the Pareto-frontier of “produces long-term value” and “encourages discourse” I think blogs are at best in an odd spot, and encouraging good YouTube videos about effective altruism would be a much better way to enter the discourse (admittedly, this may be already happening, with the OpenPhil grant to Kurzgesagt).
I think my phrasing might have been unclear earlier – I’m Nick’s colleague at Works in Progress, but not on the blog prize and don’t have any involvement there.
1. I think that blogs fill a different purpose to many other formats you mention, but are also more feasible than writing long-form: for people who have other commitments, for writing short commentaries, for responding to topical events or stories, for publishing independent parts of a series in a way that makes each part more shareable. I’m sure you can think of many examples of each of these. I think it’s not important for them to be searchable in the same way as it is for encyclopedia entries, although that’s a bonus. YouTube videos are an alternative but they also have a different demographic audience and people who prefer to consume information in a different format, so they’re not interchangeable in that way, in my opinion.
2. Those aren’t quite the same as I suggested, which would be more like a prize for new blogs that are maintained in the longterm, or an additional prize for longterm maintenance.
3. (I’m not involved in this so don’t have any comments)
4. I think those are a different sort of problem. Prizes for open ended endeavours – such as answering an unsolved problem – don’t have a certainty of being resolved. Prizes for meeting some criteria, which involve essentially improving on existing methods, are more effective than those, as Anton Howes has written about here. But neither are the same as having a prize with the certainty that someone will win the prize out of the candidates that apply. A closer analogue of this prize is probably a competition.
Thanks for the detailed answer :-)
I list this ageing as a drawback of blogs because it is in practice, if not in theory (and the structure of blogs encourages this). Safe some exceptions (SSC for minor stylistic edits, Nintil) blogs are usually not maintained in any way. I guess my complaint is that it would be entirely possible for this maintenance to occur (unlike with tweets/newspapers/books), but it usually doesn’t happen.
The structure of blogs doesn’t encourage this either: usually arranged chronologically, not by topic, with a focus on novelty.
As for reading archives, there is certainly a style of blog that is in practice not linked very often in the long term (I’m thinking of Overcoming Bias or Marginal Revolution or Econlog).
I don’t object to the posts being unfinished! That would be quite hypocritical of me :-) My argument is that here, the incentives are structured such that it’s much more likely that people will start a blog because of the prize, and once it’s over, they abandon it. I admit to the point that the prize will probably push marginal not-yet-bloggers over the edge.
Interesting! I thought I was absolutely making that point, especially in this section and especially especially in this section.
Maybe I wasn’t as clear here as I could have been, but I didn’t want to discourage the bloggers on your site. But to be absolutely clear:
You list 1 person who doesn’t have a public blog at all (!), 2 people whose blogs contain 0 content (!!), 2 more people who have written 3 blogposts each, and 3 more bloggers who actually have presentable blogs. That 3⁄8 blogs that could be in the category of “Flagship blog”. Not, I think, a good ratio.
Yeah, you’re probably right about this one.
Maybe it’s that I think that a prize is not the perfect way to approach this: Prizes seem to be useful for very discrete problems that have a very clear solution criterion, and less useful for very long-term, open-ended endeavours (where something like certificates of impact or retroactive funding are more suited).
I should have been clearer about this: I think blogs are in an odd position in the discourse—there is much more discourse going on on Twitter/YouTube/Discord (?) than on blogs, and I believe that this will not change much (newsletters notwithstanding). On the Pareto-frontier of “produces long-term value” and “encourages discourse” I think blogs are at best in an odd spot, and encouraging good YouTube videos about effective altruism would be a much better way to enter the discourse (admittedly, this may be already happening, with the OpenPhil grant to Kurzgesagt).
I think my phrasing might have been unclear earlier – I’m Nick’s colleague at Works in Progress, but not on the blog prize and don’t have any involvement there.
1. I think that blogs fill a different purpose to many other formats you mention, but are also more feasible than writing long-form: for people who have other commitments, for writing short commentaries, for responding to topical events or stories, for publishing independent parts of a series in a way that makes each part more shareable. I’m sure you can think of many examples of each of these. I think it’s not important for them to be searchable in the same way as it is for encyclopedia entries, although that’s a bonus. YouTube videos are an alternative but they also have a different demographic audience and people who prefer to consume information in a different format, so they’re not interchangeable in that way, in my opinion.
2. Those aren’t quite the same as I suggested, which would be more like a prize for new blogs that are maintained in the longterm, or an additional prize for longterm maintenance.
3. (I’m not involved in this so don’t have any comments)
4. I think those are a different sort of problem. Prizes for open ended endeavours – such as answering an unsolved problem – don’t have a certainty of being resolved. Prizes for meeting some criteria, which involve essentially improving on existing methods, are more effective than those, as Anton Howes has written about here. But neither are the same as having a prize with the certainty that someone will win the prize out of the candidates that apply. A closer analogue of this prize is probably a competition.