One reason that people might make people hesitant would be that people tend to be very critical of posts, particularly if they are not in line with or adjacent to established cause areas or lines of inquiry.
Something that might make things better:
If you’re criticizing a post, is the point you are making core to the idea that the poster is making? Is it possible that small revisions or extensions would make their idea address your criticism?
Think of the idea in EV terms. Perhaps if you have an intuition regarding its EV, there might be a way to test whether an idea is a particularly effective way of doing good.
Try to identify the key question(s) on which your disagreement with the poster depends. This creates an empirical framework that could potentially lead to agreement in the future, if further understanding regarding the key point(s) is capable of being attained.
Generally, I think the EA community is very good with being critical and identifying potential flaws in ideas or limitations. But I think there is a tendency to assume that all good ideas have already been explored or exhausted, especially if something sounds similar to something that the EA is familiar with. I think open-minded curiosity, with a mind towards constructing empirical tests that might be probative, would probably be far more helpful than just the exhaustive redteaming that is typical of EA forum responses.
Similar to what Brad says, posts not in line with EA mainstream, or just exploring or giving ideas, or not written in EA-style, or drafty are often down-voted very early on without engaging in discussion or giving any reason for the down-vote.
Even though forum moderators try to engage people to write even if the post is not perfectly polished or thought through—most people are very busy!-- to incentivize exchange of ideas, the dynamics of the forum make it basically useless as such posts are usually very quickly hidden. It often feels useless to write anything.
Another reason, which is understandable and difficult to avoid, but that I find a bit surprising in this forum, is the status and political dynamics: I’ve seen several times good posts with very low karma and afterwards very similar posts written by known EAs that have lots of karma.
I know some people disagree, but very early downvoting (especially strong downvoting) often ends up functionally being a vote to cut off discussion of a post before it even starts. Those votes make it less likely that others will see and click on the post, will cause them to come to the post with a more negative lens (consciously or otherwise), and will make them less likely to engage (why make the effort if you think the post is headed into oblivion soon enough because of low karma?). That’s a hard trifecta for a post to overcome.
Like motions to cut off debate early in most parliamentary systems, the bar for functionally cutting off discussion of a post at an early juncture should be relatively high. (It is 2⁄3 majority in most parliamentary systems, IIRC.)
I wonder if we would benefit from something like a system that hides the karma (and treats it as zero for visibility purposes) of posts that have less than <some quantity> of engagement. That way posts would get a “grace period” before getting hidden.
The potential cost there is that there are occasionally some really bad posts that deserve the rapid downvote—such as those that don’t respect important Forum norms, even if not quite to the point of formal moderator action. In those cases, the hail of downvotes allows the Forum to deal with those quickly and without moderator action that could be seen as “censoring” someone. But maybe those kinds of posts are rare enough to incur the cost.
Very much agree with your suggestions for healthy engagement with posts, thanks for writing them.
Also, FWIW, I’ve seen a lot less of a worrying trend towards criticism than I expected before joining the Forum team 4 months ago. Before joining, I had the idea that Forum users would tear ideas apart, sometimes in kind of harsh ways. I’d also internalised the meme that this was a reason for people not to post.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what I’ve seen. Specifically, if a post seems unsuitable for the Forum, or particularly ill-conceived, it is generally quietly downvoted rather than openly critiqued. In many cases, posts that I thought might be particularly open to criticism were given very helpful, good faith comments.
The more critical comments I’ve seen have been on the work of organisations rather than individuals. Although that might be difficult for the organisations, it also seems more fair—orgs are being funded for the content they produce, so it matters to all of us that it is as good and correct as it can be.
If anyone reading has the opposite impression, I’d love to hear about it (here or in DM).
Note: I am the content manager on the Forum, but these are my personal impressions, not those of the team.
it is generally quietly downvoted rather than openly critiqued
I’m not sure if this is better or worse. People often get confused and frustrated by downvotes without explanation (cf. the “Why am I being downvoted?” comments in response to one’s own comments, sometimes from fairly experienced users). And newer users are less likely to intuit the probable reason for the downvotes.
Is there a “Why might my post/comment be getting downvotes and/or little engagement” writeup somewhere? If not, maybe I should sketch that at some point as it might give people some general understanding to those users (and/or allow those offering feedback to do so more efficiently—“much of it relates to reason 3 in the writeup” rather than writing reason 3 out themselves).
One reason that people might make people hesitant would be that people tend to be very critical of posts, particularly if they are not in line with or adjacent to established cause areas or lines of inquiry.
Something that might make things better:
If you’re criticizing a post, is the point you are making core to the idea that the poster is making? Is it possible that small revisions or extensions would make their idea address your criticism?
Think of the idea in EV terms. Perhaps if you have an intuition regarding its EV, there might be a way to test whether an idea is a particularly effective way of doing good.
Try to identify the key question(s) on which your disagreement with the poster depends. This creates an empirical framework that could potentially lead to agreement in the future, if further understanding regarding the key point(s) is capable of being attained.
Generally, I think the EA community is very good with being critical and identifying potential flaws in ideas or limitations. But I think there is a tendency to assume that all good ideas have already been explored or exhausted, especially if something sounds similar to something that the EA is familiar with. I think open-minded curiosity, with a mind towards constructing empirical tests that might be probative, would probably be far more helpful than just the exhaustive redteaming that is typical of EA forum responses.
Similar to what Brad says, posts not in line with EA mainstream, or just exploring or giving ideas, or not written in EA-style, or drafty are often down-voted very early on without engaging in discussion or giving any reason for the down-vote.
Even though forum moderators try to engage people to write even if the post is not perfectly polished or thought through—most people are very busy!-- to incentivize exchange of ideas, the dynamics of the forum make it basically useless as such posts are usually very quickly hidden. It often feels useless to write anything.
Another reason, which is understandable and difficult to avoid, but that I find a bit surprising in this forum, is the status and political dynamics: I’ve seen several times good posts with very low karma and afterwards very similar posts written by known EAs that have lots of karma.
I know some people disagree, but very early downvoting (especially strong downvoting) often ends up functionally being a vote to cut off discussion of a post before it even starts. Those votes make it less likely that others will see and click on the post, will cause them to come to the post with a more negative lens (consciously or otherwise), and will make them less likely to engage (why make the effort if you think the post is headed into oblivion soon enough because of low karma?). That’s a hard trifecta for a post to overcome.
Like motions to cut off debate early in most parliamentary systems, the bar for functionally cutting off discussion of a post at an early juncture should be relatively high. (It is 2⁄3 majority in most parliamentary systems, IIRC.)
I wonder if we would benefit from something like a system that hides the karma (and treats it as zero for visibility purposes) of posts that have less than <some quantity> of engagement. That way posts would get a “grace period” before getting hidden.
The potential cost there is that there are occasionally some really bad posts that deserve the rapid downvote—such as those that don’t respect important Forum norms, even if not quite to the point of formal moderator action. In those cases, the hail of downvotes allows the Forum to deal with those quickly and without moderator action that could be seen as “censoring” someone. But maybe those kinds of posts are rare enough to incur the cost.
Very much agree with your suggestions for healthy engagement with posts, thanks for writing them.
Also, FWIW, I’ve seen a lot less of a worrying trend towards criticism than I expected before joining the Forum team 4 months ago. Before joining, I had the idea that Forum users would tear ideas apart, sometimes in kind of harsh ways. I’d also internalised the meme that this was a reason for people not to post.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what I’ve seen. Specifically, if a post seems unsuitable for the Forum, or particularly ill-conceived, it is generally quietly downvoted rather than openly critiqued. In many cases, posts that I thought might be particularly open to criticism were given very helpful, good faith comments.
The more critical comments I’ve seen have been on the work of organisations rather than individuals. Although that might be difficult for the organisations, it also seems more fair—orgs are being funded for the content they produce, so it matters to all of us that it is as good and correct as it can be.
If anyone reading has the opposite impression, I’d love to hear about it (here or in DM).
Note: I am the content manager on the Forum, but these are my personal impressions, not those of the team.
I’m not sure if this is better or worse. People often get confused and frustrated by downvotes without explanation (cf. the “Why am I being downvoted?” comments in response to one’s own comments, sometimes from fairly experienced users). And newer users are less likely to intuit the probable reason for the downvotes.
Is there a “Why might my post/comment be getting downvotes and/or little engagement” writeup somewhere? If not, maybe I should sketch that at some point as it might give people some general understanding to those users (and/or allow those offering feedback to do so more efficiently—“much of it relates to reason 3 in the writeup” rather than writing reason 3 out themselves).