Thanks for the response, Aaron. Had I been aware this post would have received Frontpage status, I would not have made my above comment. I notice my above comment has many votes, but not a lot of karma, which means it was a controversial comment. Presumably, at least several people disagree with me.
1. I believe the launch of new EA-aligned organizations should be considered of interest to people who browse the Frontpage.
2. It’s not clear to me that it’s only people who are ‘relatively new to EA’ who primarily browse the Frontpage instead of the Community page. While I’m aware the Frontpage is intended primarily for people relatively new to EA, it’s not clear to me the usage of the EA Forum is such that it’s only newcomers to EA who primarily browse the Frontpage. Ergo, it seems quite possible there are a lot of people who are committed EA community members, who are not casually interested in each update from every one of dozens of EA-aligned organizations. So, they may skip the ‘Community’ page, while nonetheless there are major updates like these that are more ‘community-related’ than ‘general’ EA content, but nonetheless deserve on the Frontpage, where people who do not browse the community tab often, who are also not newcomers to EA, will see them.
3. I understand why there would be some hesitance to move posts announcing the launch of new EA-aligned projects/organizations to the Frontpage. The problem is there aren’t really hard barriers to just anyone declaring a new project/organization aimed at ‘doing good’ gaming EA by paying lip service to EA principles and practices, but, behind the scenes, the organization is not (intending/trying to be) as effective or altruistic as they claimed to be. One reason this problem intersects with moving posts to the Frontpage of the EA Forum is because to promote just any new project/organization that declares themselves to be EA-aligned to a place of prominence in EA sends the signal, intentionally or not, that this project/org has received a kind of ‘official EA stamp of approval’. Why I brought up Michael Plant’s reputation is not because I thought anyone’s reputation alone should dictate what assignment on the EA Forum their posts receive. I just mentioned it that, on the chance Aaron or the administration of the EA Forum was on the fence about whether to promote this post to the Frontpage or not, I wanted to vouch for Michael Plant as an EA community member whose reputation of commitment of fidelity to EA principles and practices in the projects he is involved with is such that, on priors, I would expect the new project/org he is launching, and its announcement, to be that which the EA Forum should be willing to put its confidence behind.
4. I agree ideally the reputation of an individual EA community member should not impact what we think of the content of their EA Forum posts. I also agree that in practice we should aspire to live this principle in practice as much as possible. I just also believe that it’s realistic to acknowledge EA is a community of biased humans like any other, and so forms of social influence like individual reputation still impact how we behave. For example, if William MacAskill or Peter Singer were to announce the launch of a new EA-aligned project/org, not exclusively based on their prior reputation, but based on their prior reputation, barring a post they made to the EA Forum reading like patent nonsense, which is virtually guaranteed not to happen, I expect it would be promoted to the Frontpage. My goal in vouching for Michael Plant is, while he isn’t as well-known in EA as Profs. MacAskill or Singer, was to indicate I believe he deserves a similar level of credit in the EA community as a philosopher who practices EA with impeccable fidelity.
5. I also made my above comment under perceiving the norms for which posts are assigned to the ‘Community’ or ‘Frontpage’ posts to be ambiguous. For the purposes of what kinds of posts announcing the launch of a new EA-aligned project/org will be assigned to the Frontpage, I find the following from Aaron sufficient and satisfactory clarification of my prior concerns:
I think detailed posts that explain a specific approach to doing the most good make sense for this category, and this post does that while also happening to be about a new organization. Some but not all posts about new organizations are likely to be assigned Frontpage status.
6. Aaron dislikes my use of the word ‘relegate’ to describe the assignments of posts on the EA Forum to the Frontpage or the Community page, respectively. I used the word ‘relegate’, because that appears to be how promotions to the Frontpage on LessWrong work, and because I was under the impression the EA Forum had similar administration norms to LessWrong. Since the EA Forum 2.0 is based on the same codebase as LW 2.0, and the same team that built LW2.0 also was crucial in the development of the EA Forum2.0, I was acting under the assumption the EA Forum admin team significantly borrowed admin norms from the LW2.0 team from which they inherited administration of the EA Forum 2.o. In his above comment, Aaron has clarified the distinction between the ‘Frontpage’ and other tabs on the EA Forum is not the same as the distinction between the ‘Frontpage’ and other tabs on LW.
7. While the distinctions between Frontpage and and Community sections are intended to serve different purposes, and not as a measure of quality, because of the availability heuristic, I worry one default outcome of ‘Frontpage’ posts, well, being on the frontpage on the EA Forum, and their receiving more attention, meaning they will be assumed to be of higher quality.
These are the reasons that motivated me to make my above comment. Some but not all of these concerns are entirely assuaged by Aaron’s response. All my concerns specifically regarding EA Forum posts that are announcements for new orgs/projects are assuaged. Some of my concerns with ambiguity between which posts will be assigned to the Frontpage or Community tabs respectively remain. However, they hinge upon disputable facts of the matter that could be resolved alone by EA Forum usage statistics, specifically comparative usage stats between the Community and Frontpage tabs. I don’t know if the EA Forum moderation team has access to that kind of data, but I believe access to such usage stats could greatly aid in resolving my concerns regarding how much traffic each tab, and its respective posts, receive.
I used the word ‘relegate’, because that appears to be how promotions to the Frontpage on LessWrong work, and because I was under the impression the EA Forum had similar administration norms to LessWrong.
Also not how it is intended to work on LessWrong. There is some (around 30%) loss in average visibility but there are many important posts that are on personal blogposts on LessWrong. The distinction is more nuanced and being left on personal blogpost is definitely not primarily a signifier of quality.
You’ve written more here than I can easily respond to, especially the day before EA Global begins! ;-)
...but I’ll focus on your last point:
I worry one default outcome of ‘Frontpage’ posts, well, being on the frontpage on the EA Forum, and their receiving more attention, meaning they will be assumed to be of higher quality.
Some Forum posts seem like they will more accessible than others to people who have little previous experience with the EA community. Because these posts have a larger potential audience (in theory), we currently expose them to a larger audience using the Frontpage category.
This doesn’t mean that Frontpage posts are necessarily “better”, or even more useful to the average Forum visitor. But they could theoretically appeal to new audiences who aren’t as familiar with EA.
For example, while a lot more Forum users might be interested in a post on the historical growth of the movement than on a post about nuclear war (because most Forum users are experienced with/invested in the EA community), a post about nuclear war could be interesting to people from many communities totally separate from EA (think-tank researchers, scientists, journalists, etc.)
Historically, a lot more posts get the “Frontpage” category than the “Community” category. But as you can see by going to the “Community” page on the Forum, posts in that category often get a lot of votes and comments—probably because they appeal broadly to the people who use the Forum most, whatever cause area they might care about.
I doubt that someone looking at posts in both categories would conclude that “Frontpage” posts were “better” or “more important”, at least if they took the time to read a couple of posts in each category.
That said, we did inherit the “Frontpage” name from LessWrong, and we may consider changing it in the future. (I’d welcome any suggestions for new names—“Research” doesn’t quite fit, I think, but good names are probably something along those lines.)
----
Historically, the Forum’s homepage gets roughly ten times as much traffic as the Community page. But of the dozen posts with the most views in June, seven are Frontpage and five are Community. This is partly because many visitors to the homepage don’t read anything, or read one article and bounce off (as for basically any website) and partly because much of the Forum’s traffic comes from link-sharing through social media, the EA Newsletter, etc. (places where categorization doesn’t matter at all).
Do you have any further questions about this point?
Thanks for the response, Aaron. Had I been aware this post would have received Frontpage status, I would not have made my above comment. I notice my above comment has many votes, but not a lot of karma, which means it was a controversial comment. Presumably, at least several people disagree with me.
1. I believe the launch of new EA-aligned organizations should be considered of interest to people who browse the Frontpage.
2. It’s not clear to me that it’s only people who are ‘relatively new to EA’ who primarily browse the Frontpage instead of the Community page. While I’m aware the Frontpage is intended primarily for people relatively new to EA, it’s not clear to me the usage of the EA Forum is such that it’s only newcomers to EA who primarily browse the Frontpage. Ergo, it seems quite possible there are a lot of people who are committed EA community members, who are not casually interested in each update from every one of dozens of EA-aligned organizations. So, they may skip the ‘Community’ page, while nonetheless there are major updates like these that are more ‘community-related’ than ‘general’ EA content, but nonetheless deserve on the Frontpage, where people who do not browse the community tab often, who are also not newcomers to EA, will see them.
3. I understand why there would be some hesitance to move posts announcing the launch of new EA-aligned projects/organizations to the Frontpage. The problem is there aren’t really hard barriers to just anyone declaring a new project/organization aimed at ‘doing good’ gaming EA by paying lip service to EA principles and practices, but, behind the scenes, the organization is not (intending/trying to be) as effective or altruistic as they claimed to be. One reason this problem intersects with moving posts to the Frontpage of the EA Forum is because to promote just any new project/organization that declares themselves to be EA-aligned to a place of prominence in EA sends the signal, intentionally or not, that this project/org has received a kind of ‘official EA stamp of approval’. Why I brought up Michael Plant’s reputation is not because I thought anyone’s reputation alone should dictate what assignment on the EA Forum their posts receive. I just mentioned it that, on the chance Aaron or the administration of the EA Forum was on the fence about whether to promote this post to the Frontpage or not, I wanted to vouch for Michael Plant as an EA community member whose reputation of commitment of fidelity to EA principles and practices in the projects he is involved with is such that, on priors, I would expect the new project/org he is launching, and its announcement, to be that which the EA Forum should be willing to put its confidence behind.
4. I agree ideally the reputation of an individual EA community member should not impact what we think of the content of their EA Forum posts. I also agree that in practice we should aspire to live this principle in practice as much as possible. I just also believe that it’s realistic to acknowledge EA is a community of biased humans like any other, and so forms of social influence like individual reputation still impact how we behave. For example, if William MacAskill or Peter Singer were to announce the launch of a new EA-aligned project/org, not exclusively based on their prior reputation, but based on their prior reputation, barring a post they made to the EA Forum reading like patent nonsense, which is virtually guaranteed not to happen, I expect it would be promoted to the Frontpage. My goal in vouching for Michael Plant is, while he isn’t as well-known in EA as Profs. MacAskill or Singer, was to indicate I believe he deserves a similar level of credit in the EA community as a philosopher who practices EA with impeccable fidelity.
5. I also made my above comment under perceiving the norms for which posts are assigned to the ‘Community’ or ‘Frontpage’ posts to be ambiguous. For the purposes of what kinds of posts announcing the launch of a new EA-aligned project/org will be assigned to the Frontpage, I find the following from Aaron sufficient and satisfactory clarification of my prior concerns:
6. Aaron dislikes my use of the word ‘relegate’ to describe the assignments of posts on the EA Forum to the Frontpage or the Community page, respectively. I used the word ‘relegate’, because that appears to be how promotions to the Frontpage on LessWrong work, and because I was under the impression the EA Forum had similar administration norms to LessWrong. Since the EA Forum 2.0 is based on the same codebase as LW 2.0, and the same team that built LW2.0 also was crucial in the development of the EA Forum2.0, I was acting under the assumption the EA Forum admin team significantly borrowed admin norms from the LW2.0 team from which they inherited administration of the EA Forum 2.o. In his above comment, Aaron has clarified the distinction between the ‘Frontpage’ and other tabs on the EA Forum is not the same as the distinction between the ‘Frontpage’ and other tabs on LW.
7. While the distinctions between Frontpage and and Community sections are intended to serve different purposes, and not as a measure of quality, because of the availability heuristic, I worry one default outcome of ‘Frontpage’ posts, well, being on the frontpage on the EA Forum, and their receiving more attention, meaning they will be assumed to be of higher quality.
These are the reasons that motivated me to make my above comment. Some but not all of these concerns are entirely assuaged by Aaron’s response. All my concerns specifically regarding EA Forum posts that are announcements for new orgs/projects are assuaged. Some of my concerns with ambiguity between which posts will be assigned to the Frontpage or Community tabs respectively remain. However, they hinge upon disputable facts of the matter that could be resolved alone by EA Forum usage statistics, specifically comparative usage stats between the Community and Frontpage tabs. I don’t know if the EA Forum moderation team has access to that kind of data, but I believe access to such usage stats could greatly aid in resolving my concerns regarding how much traffic each tab, and its respective posts, receive.
Also not how it is intended to work on LessWrong. There is some (around 30%) loss in average visibility but there are many important posts that are on personal blogposts on LessWrong. The distinction is more nuanced and being left on personal blogpost is definitely not primarily a signifier of quality.
Alright, thanks for letting me know. I’ll remember that for the future.
You’ve written more here than I can easily respond to, especially the day before EA Global begins! ;-)
...but I’ll focus on your last point:
Some Forum posts seem like they will more accessible than others to people who have little previous experience with the EA community. Because these posts have a larger potential audience (in theory), we currently expose them to a larger audience using the Frontpage category.
This doesn’t mean that Frontpage posts are necessarily “better”, or even more useful to the average Forum visitor. But they could theoretically appeal to new audiences who aren’t as familiar with EA.
For example, while a lot more Forum users might be interested in a post on the historical growth of the movement than on a post about nuclear war (because most Forum users are experienced with/invested in the EA community), a post about nuclear war could be interesting to people from many communities totally separate from EA (think-tank researchers, scientists, journalists, etc.)
Historically, a lot more posts get the “Frontpage” category than the “Community” category. But as you can see by going to the “Community” page on the Forum, posts in that category often get a lot of votes and comments—probably because they appeal broadly to the people who use the Forum most, whatever cause area they might care about.
I doubt that someone looking at posts in both categories would conclude that “Frontpage” posts were “better” or “more important”, at least if they took the time to read a couple of posts in each category.
That said, we did inherit the “Frontpage” name from LessWrong, and we may consider changing it in the future. (I’d welcome any suggestions for new names—“Research” doesn’t quite fit, I think, but good names are probably something along those lines.)
----
Historically, the Forum’s homepage gets roughly ten times as much traffic as the Community page. But of the dozen posts with the most views in June, seven are Frontpage and five are Community. This is partly because many visitors to the homepage don’t read anything, or read one article and bounce off (as for basically any website) and partly because much of the Forum’s traffic comes from link-sharing through social media, the EA Newsletter, etc. (places where categorization doesn’t matter at all).
Do you have any further questions about this point?
Hi. I’m just revisiting this comment now. I don’t have anymore questions. Thanks for your detailed response.