I’m a big fan of engineering work. At the same time, I realize it’s expensive, and it seems like we don’t have much money to work with these days. I think this makes it tricky to find situations where it’s clearly a good fit with the existing donors.
Bigger-picture, I imagine many readers here would have little idea of what “new engineering work” would really look like. It’s tough to do a lot with a tiny team, as you point out. I could imagine some features helping the forum, but would also expect many changes to be experimental.
“Everyone going to the Reddit thread, at once” seems doomed to me, as you point out. But I’d feel better about gradual things. Maybe we could have someone try moderating Reddit for a few months, and see if we can make it any better first. “Transitioning the EA Forum” could come very late, only if we’re able to show good success on a smaller scale.
That said, I’m skeptical of Reddit as a primary forum. I don’t know of other smart Academic-aligned groups who have really made it official infrastructure for them. It seems to me like Reddits are often branches of the overall Reddit community, which is quite separate from the EA community, so it will be difficult to find the slice that we want. I feel better about other paid Forum providers, if we go the route of shutting down the EA Forum.
I think that the EA Discords/Slacks could use more support. Perhaps we shouldn’t try to have “One True Platform”, but have a variety of platforms that work with different sets of people.
As I think about it, I think it’s quite possible that many of the obvious technical improvements for the EA Forum, at this point, won’t translate nicely to user growth. It’s just very hard to make user growth happen, especially after a few years of tech improvements.
I think the EA Forum has major problems with scaling, and that this is a hard tech problem. It’s hard to cleanly split the community into sub-communities (I know there’s been some attempts here). So right now I think we have the issue that we can only have one internet community (to some extent), and this scares a bunch of people away.
Personally, what feels most missing to me around EA online is leadership/communication about the big issues, some smart+effective moderation (this is really tough), and experimentation on online infrastructure outside the EA Forum (see Discords, online courses, online meetups, maybe new online platforms, etc). I think there’s a lot of work to do here, but would flag that it’s likely pretty hit-or-miss, maybe making it a more difficult ask for funders.
Anyway, this was just my quick take. Your team obviously has a lot more context.
I’m overall appreciative to the team and to the funders who have supported the team this long.
Thanks! I found it helpful to hear your perspective. :)
I imagine many readers here would have little idea of what “new engineering work” would really look like
Yup this is fair — this includes work to customize the site for events (like the Donation Election voting system), and also work that is intended to be a longer-term investment that makes the site better (like updating our notification defaults, or improving site speed, or adding features like Google Docs import).
Personally, what feels most missing to me around EA online is leadership/communication about the big issues, some smart+effective moderation (this is really tough), and experimentation on online infrastructure outside the EA Forum (see Discords, online courses, online meetups, maybe new online platforms, etc). I think there’s a lot of work to do here, but would flag that it’s likely pretty hit-or-miss, maybe making it a more difficult ask for funders.
Quick thoughts:
I appreciate the write up and transparency.
I’m a big fan of engineering work. At the same time, I realize it’s expensive, and it seems like we don’t have much money to work with these days. I think this makes it tricky to find situations where it’s clearly a good fit with the existing donors.
Bigger-picture, I imagine many readers here would have little idea of what “new engineering work” would really look like. It’s tough to do a lot with a tiny team, as you point out. I could imagine some features helping the forum, but would also expect many changes to be experimental.
“Everyone going to the Reddit thread, at once” seems doomed to me, as you point out. But I’d feel better about gradual things. Maybe we could have someone try moderating Reddit for a few months, and see if we can make it any better first. “Transitioning the EA Forum” could come very late, only if we’re able to show good success on a smaller scale.
That said, I’m skeptical of Reddit as a primary forum. I don’t know of other smart Academic-aligned groups who have really made it official infrastructure for them. It seems to me like Reddits are often branches of the overall Reddit community, which is quite separate from the EA community, so it will be difficult to find the slice that we want. I feel better about other paid Forum providers, if we go the route of shutting down the EA Forum.
I think that the EA Discords/Slacks could use more support. Perhaps we shouldn’t try to have “One True Platform”, but have a variety of platforms that work with different sets of people.
As I think about it, I think it’s quite possible that many of the obvious technical improvements for the EA Forum, at this point, won’t translate nicely to user growth. It’s just very hard to make user growth happen, especially after a few years of tech improvements.
I think the EA Forum has major problems with scaling, and that this is a hard tech problem. It’s hard to cleanly split the community into sub-communities (I know there’s been some attempts here). So right now I think we have the issue that we can only have one internet community (to some extent), and this scares a bunch of people away.
Personally, what feels most missing to me around EA online is leadership/communication about the big issues, some smart+effective moderation (this is really tough), and experimentation on online infrastructure outside the EA Forum (see Discords, online courses, online meetups, maybe new online platforms, etc). I think there’s a lot of work to do here, but would flag that it’s likely pretty hit-or-miss, maybe making it a more difficult ask for funders.
Anyway, this was just my quick take. Your team obviously has a lot more context.
I’m overall appreciative to the team and to the funders who have supported the team this long.
Thanks! I found it helpful to hear your perspective. :)
Yup this is fair — this includes work to customize the site for events (like the Donation Election voting system), and also work that is intended to be a longer-term investment that makes the site better (like updating our notification defaults, or improving site speed, or adding features like Google Docs import).
I’d love to see you expand on this paragraph: