Somewhat ironically, given all the strong upvotes that this is getting, I want to (gently) push back a bit. I would ask those who disagree with me to not downvote me too strongly[1] or at least explain why (disagree vote away though).
I feel like there’s a mostly unstated opinion in this post that the posts getting high karma are actually not the highest quality ones, or the ones that the community cares about, or the ones that Forum readers should care about. I think terms like “lowest common denominator” and “bikeshedding” imply this quite heavily. But my fear is that this could be used, perhaps unintentionally, to shut down debates on issues, especially from newer users or those new to EA.
For example, the top-voted comment on the Wytham Abbey post writes the whole community response off as bikeshedding[2]. This comment seems linked to the use of ‘bad epistemics’ which I feel often assumes a conclusion. See this post, which I mostly agree with, for further discussion on this issue. My emotional reaction is that it all feels a bit like subtweeting[3], unless there are examples given of “this specific post had too much karma and was over-rated by the forum” and “this specific post was undervalued and dropped from the frontpage too quickly”.
Furthermore, it’s not clear that valuing community-oriented topics is bad in-and-of-itself. “Building effective altruism” is currently number 3 on 80,000 Hour’s list of most pressing problems. To the extent that these posts involving the whole community lead to community improvement, then it might be positive. I’m not necessarily arguing that this is true, but I do dispute that the issues discussed in community posts are not ‘real-world’ issues.
As for the practical solutions proposed, I think 2 & 3 sound fine. Potentially you could add a section similar to ‘Recommendations’ that might be something like ‘CEA Online Choice’ or ‘Curated’ or something—where the Online Team selects high-quality, valuable niche posts that aren’t getting viewed and displays them more prominently?
Finally, this reminds me of the discourse around ‘Open EA Global’ and the CEA response. There seemed to be a misunderstanding between a large part of the community and CEA regarding what the purpose of EAG was, and perhaps this is true of the forum as well? I would welcome thoughts on this or any of the above, or people providing more information and corrections to what I’ve written
I can see how all of this can feel related to the discussion about “bad epistemics” or a claim that the community as a whole is overly navel-gazing, etc. Thanks for flagging that you’re concerned about this.
To be clear, though, one of the issues here (and use of the term “bike-shedding”) is more specific than those broader discussions. I think, given whatever it is that the community cares about (without opining about whether that prioritization is “correct”), the issues described in the post will appear.
Take the example of the Forum itself as a topic that’s relevant to building EA and a topic of interest to the EA community.
Within that broad topic, some sub-topics will get more attention than others for reasons that don’t track how much the community actually values them (in ~total). Suppose there are two discussions that could (and potentially should) happen: a discussion about the fonts on the site, and a discussion on how to improve fact-checking (or how to improve the Forum experience for newcomers, or how to nurture a culture that welcomes criticism, or something like that). I’d claim that the latter (sub)topic(s) is likely more important to discuss and get right than the former, but, because it’s harder, and harder to participate in than a discussion about the font — something everyone interacts with all the time — it might get less attention.
Moreover, posts that are more like “I dislike the font, do you?” will often get more engagement than posts like “the font is bad for people with dyslexia, based on these 5 studies — here are some suggestions and some reasons to doubt the studies,” because (likely) fewer people will feel like they can weigh in on the latter kind of post. This is where bike-shedding comes in. I think we can probably do better, but it’ll require a bit of testing and tweaking.
[Writing just for myself, not my employer or even my team. I am working on the Forum, and that’s probably hard to separate from my views on this topic— but this is a quickly-written comment, not something that I feedback on from the rest of the team, etc.]
Somewhat ironically, given all the strong upvotes that this is getting, I want to (gently) push back a bit. I would ask those who disagree with me to not downvote me too strongly[1] or at least explain why (disagree vote away though).
I feel like there’s a mostly unstated opinion in this post that the posts getting high karma are actually not the highest quality ones, or the ones that the community cares about, or the ones that Forum readers should care about. I think terms like “lowest common denominator” and “bikeshedding” imply this quite heavily. But my fear is that this could be used, perhaps unintentionally, to shut down debates on issues, especially from newer users or those new to EA.
For example, the top-voted comment on the Wytham Abbey post writes the whole community response off as bikeshedding[2]. This comment seems linked to the use of ‘bad epistemics’ which I feel often assumes a conclusion. See this post, which I mostly agree with, for further discussion on this issue. My emotional reaction is that it all feels a bit like subtweeting[3], unless there are examples given of “this specific post had too much karma and was over-rated by the forum” and “this specific post was undervalued and dropped from the frontpage too quickly”.
Furthermore, it’s not clear that valuing community-oriented topics is bad in-and-of-itself. “Building effective altruism” is currently number 3 on 80,000 Hour’s list of most pressing problems. To the extent that these posts involving the whole community lead to community improvement, then it might be positive. I’m not necessarily arguing that this is true, but I do dispute that the issues discussed in community posts are not ‘real-world’ issues.
As for the practical solutions proposed, I think 2 & 3 sound fine. Potentially you could add a section similar to ‘Recommendations’ that might be something like ‘CEA Online Choice’ or ‘Curated’ or something—where the Online Team selects high-quality, valuable niche posts that aren’t getting viewed and displays them more prominently?
Finally, this reminds me of the discourse around ‘Open EA Global’ and the CEA response. There seemed to be a misunderstanding between a large part of the community and CEA regarding what the purpose of EAG was, and perhaps this is true of the forum as well? I would welcome thoughts on this or any of the above, or people providing more information and corrections to what I’ve written
Yeah, I hate how much this sounds like “I know I’ll get downvoted for this but...” too smh
Though I was pleased to see that there was strong pushback to this characterisation in the replies
Personal to me. I don’t want to imply that ‘subtweeting’ is actually happening
I can see how all of this can feel related to the discussion about “bad epistemics” or a claim that the community as a whole is overly navel-gazing, etc. Thanks for flagging that you’re concerned about this.
To be clear, though, one of the issues here (and use of the term “bike-shedding”) is more specific than those broader discussions. I think, given whatever it is that the community cares about (without opining about whether that prioritization is “correct”), the issues described in the post will appear.
Take the example of the Forum itself as a topic that’s relevant to building EA and a topic of interest to the EA community.
Within that broad topic, some sub-topics will get more attention than others for reasons that don’t track how much the community actually values them (in ~total). Suppose there are two discussions that could (and potentially should) happen: a discussion about the fonts on the site, and a discussion on how to improve fact-checking (or how to improve the Forum experience for newcomers, or how to nurture a culture that welcomes criticism, or something like that). I’d claim that the latter (sub)topic(s) is likely more important to discuss and get right than the former, but, because it’s harder, and harder to participate in than a discussion about the font — something everyone interacts with all the time — it might get less attention.
Moreover, posts that are more like “I dislike the font, do you?” will often get more engagement than posts like “the font is bad for people with dyslexia, based on these 5 studies — here are some suggestions and some reasons to doubt the studies,” because (likely) fewer people will feel like they can weigh in on the latter kind of post. This is where bike-shedding comes in. I think we can probably do better, but it’ll require a bit of testing and tweaking.
[Writing just for myself, not my employer or even my team. I am working on the Forum, and that’s probably hard to separate from my views on this topic— but this is a quickly-written comment, not something that I feedback on from the rest of the team, etc.]