Related to external evaluations: 80000hours used to have a little box at the bottom of an article, indicating a score given to it by internal and external evaluators. Does anybody know, why this is not being done anymore?
Oh man, happy to have come across this. I’m a bit surprised people remember that article. I was one of the main people that set up the system, that was a while back.
I don’t know specifically why it was changed. I left 80k in 2014 or so and haven’t discussed this with them since. I could imagine some reasons why they stopped it though. I recommend reaching out to them if you want a better sense.
This was done when the site was a custom Ruby/Rails setup. This functionality required a fair bit of custom coding functionality to set up. Writing quality was more variable then than it is now; there were several newish authors and it was much earlier in the research process. I also remember that originally the scores disagreed a lot between evaluators, but over time (the first few weeks of use) they converged a fair bit.
After I left they migrated to Wordpress, which I assume would have required a fair effort to set up a similar system in. The blog posts seem like they became less important than they used to be; in favor of the career guide, coaching, the podcast, and other things. Also the quality has become a fair bit more consistent, from what I can tell as an onlooker.
The ongoing costs of such a system are considerable. First, it just takes a fair bit of time from the reviewers. Second, unfortunately, the internet can be a hostile place for transparency. There are trolls and angry people who will actively search through details and then point them out without the proper context. I think this review system was kind of radical, and can imagine it not being very comfortable to maintain, unless it really justified a fair bit of effort.
I’m of course sad it’s not longer in place, but can’t really blame them.
Related to external evaluations: 80000hours used to have a little box at the bottom of an article, indicating a score given to it by internal and external evaluators. Does anybody know, why this is not being done anymore?
Oh man, happy to have come across this. I’m a bit surprised people remember that article. I was one of the main people that set up the system, that was a while back.
I don’t know specifically why it was changed. I left 80k in 2014 or so and haven’t discussed this with them since. I could imagine some reasons why they stopped it though. I recommend reaching out to them if you want a better sense.
This was done when the site was a custom Ruby/Rails setup. This functionality required a fair bit of custom coding functionality to set up. Writing quality was more variable then than it is now; there were several newish authors and it was much earlier in the research process. I also remember that originally the scores disagreed a lot between evaluators, but over time (the first few weeks of use) they converged a fair bit.
After I left they migrated to Wordpress, which I assume would have required a fair effort to set up a similar system in. The blog posts seem like they became less important than they used to be; in favor of the career guide, coaching, the podcast, and other things. Also the quality has become a fair bit more consistent, from what I can tell as an onlooker.
The ongoing costs of such a system are considerable. First, it just takes a fair bit of time from the reviewers. Second, unfortunately, the internet can be a hostile place for transparency. There are trolls and angry people who will actively search through details and then point them out without the proper context. I think this review system was kind of radical, and can imagine it not being very comfortable to maintain, unless it really justified a fair bit of effort.
I’m of course sad it’s not longer in place, but can’t really blame them.