I think we should keep our eye the most important role that online EA (and adjacent) platforms have played historically. Over the last 20 years, there has always been one or two key locations for otherwise isolated EAs and utilitarians to discover like-minds online, get feedback on their ideas, and then become researchers or real-life contributors. Originally, it was (various incarnations of) Felicifia, and then the EA Forum. The rationalist community benefited in similar ways from the extropians mailing list, SL4, Overcoming Bias and LessWrong. The sheer geographical coverage, and the element of in-depth intellectual engagement aren’t 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. Currently, I don’t think a better venue exists. I don’t think r/effectivegiving or LessWrong would be a great successor. You could make a case for Substack+Twitter, but that may flip to something else in a few years time, how people want to connect online can change completely on that kind of timescale. Overall, I think it important to keep things running for the next 5-10 as the future of EA and the future of online discussion declare themselves.
Of course, this role could be performed without a lot of new technology.
The other thing I wonder is: if the online team stopped stewarding the EA Forum’s content, would it really turn into a mere bulletin board? I’m not so sure. I can imagine that plenty of people might continue to use the Forum to discuss EA matters and to post original research. If so, then this might be another way to cut costs with less change to the forum’s core role, compared to declaring it a bulletin board or moving conversation to a different platform.
The sheer geographical coverage, and the element of in-depth intellectual engagement aren’t 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 it’s 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 Forum’s content, would it really turn into a mere bulletin board?
Yeah I mentioned in my post that I don’t 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, that’s 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 “the place where orgs post updates”), and that change in perception heavily discourages people from discussing things. I think we need to be attentive to how visitors view “what the EA Forum is about”.
I think we should keep our eye the most important role that online EA (and adjacent) platforms have played historically. Over the last 20 years, there has always been one or two key locations for otherwise isolated EAs and utilitarians to discover like-minds online, get feedback on their ideas, and then become researchers or real-life contributors. Originally, it was (various incarnations of) Felicifia, and then the EA Forum. The rationalist community benefited in similar ways from the extropians mailing list, SL4, Overcoming Bias and LessWrong. The sheer geographical coverage, and the element of in-depth intellectual engagement aren’t 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. Currently, I don’t think a better venue exists. I don’t think r/effectivegiving or LessWrong would be a great successor. You could make a case for Substack+Twitter, but that may flip to something else in a few years time, how people want to connect online can change completely on that kind of timescale. Overall, I think it important to keep things running for the next 5-10 as the future of EA and the future of online discussion declare themselves.
Of course, this role could be performed without a lot of new technology.
The other thing I wonder is: if the online team stopped stewarding the EA Forum’s content, would it really turn into a mere bulletin board? I’m not so sure. I can imagine that plenty of people might continue to use the Forum to discuss EA matters and to post original research. If so, then this might be another way to cut costs with less change to the forum’s core role, compared to declaring it a bulletin board or moving conversation to a different platform.
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 it’s 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 don’t 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, that’s 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 “the place where orgs post updates”), and that change in perception heavily discourages people from discussing things. I think we need to be attentive to how visitors view “what the EA Forum is about”.