The EA Forum seems super dead, which is pretty bad. I think part of the reason is that much of the Forum gets cross-posted to LessWrong, so you get EA Forum content there plus everything else (especially AI stuff) — which means there’s little reason to actually come here.
One take: don’t cross-post to LessWrong. There are real benefits to having two intellectual communities that take the same kinds of ideas seriously but develop distinct cultures, emphases, and standards around them.
Other ways to help:
Do lots of cause prio out loud — especially the parts that haven’t been written about much
If your private doc doesn’t need to be private, don’t make it private
I keep seeing people use the word “dead” in this way and I don’t get it. Today so far I see 8 posts and 2 shortforms. Dead would be 0 posts and 0 shortforms. Do you have some standard for how many posts the EA Forum should have per day?
In the online gaming community, people often say a game is “dead” to mean either “Has reduced activity from a previous peak” or, if sufficiently principled about it, “Has had declining activity for a significant period of time, with no expected boost in the near future”.
So, if you mentally replace “dead” with “more inactive than it used to be” I think this confusion will resolve. The standard I expect Noah is using internally is “At least as much activity as I perceived the EA Forum to have in its most active period since I joined it”. (But I am not Noah, and am guessing entirely from previous usage I’ve seen, not from knowledge of them specifically)
I also don’t like this word being used in this way. “Dead” implies it’s no longer worth engaging with, and for online games there is a very real risk of hyperstition—people don’t want to invest in a dead game. “Dying” would be a better term, but even then that exaggerates it—it is possible to preserve a healthy game or a forum with a lower, but stable, level of activity for a long time. “Declining” would be the best term imo, to honestly describe what is happening, if that is indeed what’s happening.
I think the other thing is that we’ve tucked away the “community section”. People used to come for the drama and stay for well, partly drama and partly other stuff they saw. I think its fine if they come for the drama and read other stuff.
I think Substack isn’t great for comments and the forum is much better for comments.
I’m skeptical that people who counterfactually come for the drama and stay partly for the other stuff represent a sufficient portion of the dropoff, absent data showing this, but I’m admittedly biased as I never did like forum drama and am glad it’s cordoned off.
I agree that the Forum is (fairly) dead; I don’t read it much anymore, and feel somewhat sad about this. I also think a lot of energy has moved to Substack, and would guess that this is a stronger effect than LessWrong cross-posting.
“Super dead” is a bit of an exaggeration, but there is less activity than there should be. The main issue is pretty apparent to me though: there isn’t sufficient cross-posting to the forum. There’s tons of good stuff on substack, but also on various org websites and blogs.
I don’t think other causes are nearly as important as this.
Very keen to hear suggestions of blogs to crosspost—I agree that getting more substack content on here seems important (we’ve done this a bit, but in a fairly ad hoc way)
Thanks Noah! I cosign your suggestions, but probably not your ‘super dead’ diagnosis.
I’d add:
Remember to give and remove karma. A better sorted Forum is a better use of everyone’s time.
Consider commenting more. I started drafting a post about this last week, but basically I think that at its best, comments on the Forum can be its greatest comparative strength. Forum comments are definitely better than comments on Substack (in my view) and I’d like to make that difference even starker.
Addendum: don’t undervalue comments. A good comment can get as much karma as a good post. A graph I made last week [at bottom of quick take] shows that the average karma given to comments has decreased. Proportionally this can’t be completely explained by the userbase being smaller—so either people are giving less karma across the board for a non-quality reason, or they value comments less. (LMK if you have other Qs about this, now AI can write the SQL for me I can access a lot more statistics.)
Tell me people I should crosspost (dm me or comment here). When we ask substackers if we can crosspost them they almost always say yes.
Also FWIW—I don’t see the LessWrong thing as the reason for the Forum seeming more dead, that isn’t a new development.
PS- The Forum team will be on a retreat this week, and we are having a team day on Friday, so all comments on the state of the Forum/ suggestions and requests for what you want to see are massively appreciated and timely.
My guess is that, since the Forum is mostly used by fairly engaged EAs, the post-FTX slowdown in top-of-funnel growth is showing up here on a lag. People don’t usually arrive on the Forum cold; my impression is there’s typically a runway of a year or two between first contact with EA and posting or commenting in earnest. So a recruitment hole in 2023–24 produces a Forum hole now, even if intake has since recovered.
If that’s roughly right, two things should follow: the share of activity from accounts under ~12 months old will have dropped more than overall activity has, and Forum recovery will lag whatever recovery CEA is seeing at the top of the funnel by another year or two.
And then it’s probably compounded by dispersion — as you point out, a lot of the conversation that would once have happened here has migrated to LW, X, or Substack.
The EA Forum seems super dead, which is pretty bad. I think part of the reason is that much of the Forum gets cross-posted to LessWrong, so you get EA Forum content there plus everything else (especially AI stuff) — which means there’s little reason to actually come here.
One take: don’t cross-post to LessWrong. There are real benefits to having two intellectual communities that take the same kinds of ideas seriously but develop distinct cultures, emphases, and standards around them.
Other ways to help:
Do lots of cause prio out loud — especially the parts that haven’t been written about much
If your private doc doesn’t need to be private, don’t make it private
I keep seeing people use the word “dead” in this way and I don’t get it. Today so far I see 8 posts and 2 shortforms. Dead would be 0 posts and 0 shortforms. Do you have some standard for how many posts the EA Forum should have per day?
In the online gaming community, people often say a game is “dead” to mean either “Has reduced activity from a previous peak” or, if sufficiently principled about it, “Has had declining activity for a significant period of time, with no expected boost in the near future”.
So, if you mentally replace “dead” with “more inactive than it used to be” I think this confusion will resolve. The standard I expect Noah is using internally is “At least as much activity as I perceived the EA Forum to have in its most active period since I joined it”. (But I am not Noah, and am guessing entirely from previous usage I’ve seen, not from knowledge of them specifically)
I also don’t like this word being used in this way. “Dead” implies it’s no longer worth engaging with, and for online games there is a very real risk of hyperstition—people don’t want to invest in a dead game. “Dying” would be a better term, but even then that exaggerates it—it is possible to preserve a healthy game or a forum with a lower, but stable, level of activity for a long time. “Declining” would be the best term imo, to honestly describe what is happening, if that is indeed what’s happening.
I think the other thing is that we’ve tucked away the “community section”. People used to come for the drama and stay for well, partly drama and partly other stuff they saw. I think its fine if they come for the drama and read other stuff.
I think Substack isn’t great for comments and the forum is much better for comments.
The drama was bad for my mood & alignment w/ EA. I am glad it is comparatively hidden.
I’m skeptical that people who counterfactually come for the drama and stay partly for the other stuff represent a sufficient portion of the dropoff, absent data showing this, but I’m admittedly biased as I never did like forum drama and am glad it’s cordoned off.
I agree that the Forum is (fairly) dead; I don’t read it much anymore, and feel somewhat sad about this. I also think a lot of energy has moved to Substack, and would guess that this is a stronger effect than LessWrong cross-posting.
“Super dead” is a bit of an exaggeration, but there is less activity than there should be. The main issue is pretty apparent to me though: there isn’t sufficient cross-posting to the forum. There’s tons of good stuff on substack, but also on various org websites and blogs.
I don’t think other causes are nearly as important as this.
Very keen to hear suggestions of blogs to crosspost—I agree that getting more substack content on here seems important (we’ve done this a bit, but in a fairly ad hoc way)
Thanks Noah! I cosign your suggestions, but probably not your ‘super dead’ diagnosis.
I’d add:
Remember to give and remove karma. A better sorted Forum is a better use of everyone’s time.
Consider commenting more. I started drafting a post about this last week, but basically I think that at its best, comments on the Forum can be its greatest comparative strength. Forum comments are definitely better than comments on Substack (in my view) and I’d like to make that difference even starker.
Addendum: don’t undervalue comments. A good comment can get as much karma as a good post. A graph I made last week [at bottom of quick take] shows that the average karma given to comments has decreased. Proportionally this can’t be completely explained by the userbase being smaller—so either people are giving less karma across the board for a non-quality reason, or they value comments less. (LMK if you have other Qs about this, now AI can write the SQL for me I can access a lot more statistics.)
Tell me people I should crosspost (dm me or comment here). When we ask substackers if we can crosspost them they almost always say yes.
Also FWIW—I don’t see the LessWrong thing as the reason for the Forum seeming more dead, that isn’t a new development.
PS- The Forum team will be on a retreat this week, and we are having a team day on Friday, so all comments on the state of the Forum/ suggestions and requests for what you want to see are massively appreciated and timely.
From what I understand, Forum usage declined for a couple of years and has now stabilised.
My guess is that, since the Forum is mostly used by fairly engaged EAs, the post-FTX slowdown in top-of-funnel growth is showing up here on a lag. People don’t usually arrive on the Forum cold; my impression is there’s typically a runway of a year or two between first contact with EA and posting or commenting in earnest. So a recruitment hole in 2023–24 produces a Forum hole now, even if intake has since recovered.
If that’s roughly right, two things should follow: the share of activity from accounts under ~12 months old will have dropped more than overall activity has, and Forum recovery will lag whatever recovery CEA is seeing at the top of the funnel by another year or two.
And then it’s probably compounded by dispersion — as you point out, a lot of the conversation that would once have happened here has migrated to LW, X, or Substack.
Hi Noah. The engagement time on the EA Forum has not presented a clear upwards or downwards trend over the past 2 years or so.
I agree.
It is incorrect to characterize the EA forum as “intellectual”.
The term “pseudo-intellectual” is more appropriate.