To add to your point: Some EAs have told me in private that they struggle with various forms of online addiction (mostly Youtube, Facebook, but also Reddit, Linkedin etc), and it’s hard for them to find a balance between getting the content they want but not spending too much time on it.
I feel like the EA forum makes it a lot easier for users to find that balance compared to reddit etc, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that counterfactually leads to many more hours spent on important EA work.
It’s hard to measure that as most people are hesitant to comment about this publicly or don’t have a good sense of how much time they ‘waste’ on Reddit etc. If anyone here wants more data, an anonymous poll or mini survey could help.
Thanks for sharing! That’s helpful to hear. :) This broadly matches my understanding, based on the data from our 2024 EA Forum user survey[1]. A majority of respondents said that little to none of their Forum time would otherwise have been spent on work, but our site usage increases during work hours — that tells me that a lot of people are using the Forum in place of other media they would procrastinate take a break with during work or school hours. I guess it’s good if people are replacing more addictive distractions with the Forum, since you can only really scroll the Forum so much. 😅
Agree!
To add to your point: Some EAs have told me in private that they struggle with various forms of online addiction (mostly Youtube, Facebook, but also Reddit, Linkedin etc), and it’s hard for them to find a balance between getting the content they want but not spending too much time on it.
I feel like the EA forum makes it a lot easier for users to find that balance compared to reddit etc, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that counterfactually leads to many more hours spent on important EA work.
It’s hard to measure that as most people are hesitant to comment about this publicly or don’t have a good sense of how much time they ‘waste’ on Reddit etc. If anyone here wants more data, an anonymous poll or mini survey could help.
Thanks for sharing! That’s helpful to hear. :) This broadly matches my understanding, based on the data from our 2024 EA Forum user survey[1]. A majority of respondents said that little to none of their Forum time would otherwise have been spent on work, but our site usage increases during work hours — that tells me that a lot of people are using the Forum in place of other media they would
procrastinatetake a break with during work or school hours. I guess it’s good if people are replacing more addictive distractions with the Forum, since you can only really scroll the Forum so much. 😅I’d like to write something publicly about the results, just haven’t prioritized it yet.