The sheer geographical coverage, and the element of in-depth intellectual engagement arenât practically replaceable by other community-building efforts.
I think that fulfilling this role is a lot more important than growing the EA community, and other goals that the EA Forum might have, and that it is worth doing until a better new venue comes along.
I broadly agree with this! :) I personally care a lot about keeping the Forum community alive. Although I ultimately care about impact, and so I think itâs possible that we can do so while also spending our marginal resources on other projects (such as EA Funds).
if the online team stopped stewarding the EA Forumâs content, would it really turn into a mere bulletin board?
Yeah I mentioned in my post that I donât know how likely the Forum is to turn into a bulletin board by default. I have the feeling that it was naturally moving in that direction last year, and I think that without some external push to make EA more salient, thatâs just what would happen to an online discussion platform by default. For example, you can see this kind of thing happening pretty often in slacks. I think if you lose enough authors, you eventually hit a threshold where the platform no longer feels like a community of people (i.e. people view it as âthe place where orgs post updatesâ), and that change in perception heavily discourages people from discussing things. I think we need to be attentive to how visitors view âwhat the EA Forum is aboutâ.
I appreciate this comment a lot, thank you!
I broadly agree with this! :) I personally care a lot about keeping the Forum community alive. Although I ultimately care about impact, and so I think itâs possible that we can do so while also spending our marginal resources on other projects (such as EA Funds).
Yeah I mentioned in my post that I donât know how likely the Forum is to turn into a bulletin board by default. I have the feeling that it was naturally moving in that direction last year, and I think that without some external push to make EA more salient, thatâs just what would happen to an online discussion platform by default. For example, you can see this kind of thing happening pretty often in slacks. I think if you lose enough authors, you eventually hit a threshold where the platform no longer feels like a community of people (i.e. people view it as âthe place where orgs post updatesâ), and that change in perception heavily discourages people from discussing things. I think we need to be attentive to how visitors view âwhat the EA Forum is aboutâ.