Thank you for the warm welcome, I’m glad to be here. And thank you for the suggestions.
Before I make my case for why I think this project is necessary (despite the existence of the EA Forum Question Feature), let me state that some of my points are not meant to belittle the work of the EA forum minders and the entire community.
I believe that EA Forum is very useful and great at fulfilling a number of purposes, but there are certain use cases where it falls short. In such cases, I believe a dedicated Question and Answer (Q and A) website would be better/more effective and will complement the EA Forum to yield greater efficiency.
Now, here are some reasons why a standalone Q and A website for the EA Community is necessary (I have some years experience in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and growing/managing online communities and my experience has shaped some of the points below):
1. EA Forum is Not Newbie—Friendly
Generally, EA seems to have a problem of not being very newbie friendly (see this thread where the issue was discussed to get a better appreciation of the matter).
By newbie I mean people who are totally new to EA (from diverse cultural, language and educational backgrounds).
My experience: I am currently trying to start a local EA group and I have had interactions with a number of people who have never heard about EA but have shown interest in learning more and becoming a part of the community. Initially, I would direct them to EA Forum if they asked me a question I couldn’t answer, but the feedback I kept getting from them was that the “ambience” and “vibe” given off by the discussions in EA Forum makes it feel like “a place for intellectuals and very smart people”.
Many newbies seem to be too intimidated or too scared to ask questions in the EA Forum because they are afraid of “sounding dumb” in the midst of all the scholarly articles and genius-level discussions taking place.
Unfortunately this same “vibe” is common to many EA online groups and communities.
There doesn’t seem to be a generally accepted and recognized place where “non-genius” EAs are not scared but comfortable (even encouraged) to ask apparently “dumb” questions or “silly” questions. Such a place seems to be in demand based on feedback from the newbies I have talked to and from comments I have repeatedly come across in various place online, even here on EA Forum.
This standalone Q and A website will be a less intimidating complement to the EA forum Question feature and would provide a space where EAs especially newbies will not hesitate to ask any questions they might have without fear of “sounding dumb”.
Some Newbies will ask questions that you never expect so this will enrich and diversify the conversations and better expose the community leaders to the thought processes and needs of these newbies and the community at large.
This will improve the onboarding (and retention) of new community members and help to keep the community strong.
2. To Counter Misleading Narratives about EA (via improved Search Engine Visibility)
Google is by far the largest search engine and most people seeking information online use it.
EA has had / continues to have a lot of bad press from critics and opponents. This is made worse by search results being filled with mostly negative posts regarding EA.
A google search of EA related phrases frequently turns up a plethora of negative and often downright misleading information about EA.
This seriously hurts the image of the community and can be a turn off for people who are thinking of joining and are doing research to learn more about effective altruism.
From my Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experience, Google appears to prioritize Q and A—type websites for searches that are phrased as questions thereby ranking them higher in the results.
There are also other factors that will favor a dedicated Q and A site in the search rankings therefore by ranking top for most of these common questions, the EA Community will be able to “influence the narrative” and counter this negative image.
(Results from EA forum also show up frequently but in many cases they are drowned in a sea of negative results.)
Still on EA’s image:
The EA forum appears (or seems to appear) to be a place meant for people already part of the community. People outside the EA community typically don’t post here. In many (most?) cases, such questions may end up on “non-EA-friendly” websites where they might receive a lot of negativity without any strong pro-EA voice to counterbalance the conversation. Having a Q and A website that encourages anybody (EAs and non-EAs) to ask questions will provide a great place to capture some of these questions (that would have gone to other websites) and counter or clarify false and negative narratives about EA.
3. Data and Statistics
For example: What are the most common question newbies in EA have? What are the most frequent challenges EAs generally face, what about those living in a particular country? Being able to provide answers to such questions will help to improve the onboarding process and get new members informed and aligned with the goals and ideals of the EA community.
This type of data cannot (readily) be obtained from the EA Question system but can easily be obtained with this Q and A website.
This data can also be used to improve EA community building and management processes and procedures for better efficiency.
The Q and A site can be used as an additional feedback mechanism to gauge the effectiveness of various EA procedures/policies/initiatives/etc by monitoring the types of questions being asked.
4. A (Very) Useful Resource for Community Leaders
This will be a really useful resource for many community leaders trying to onboard new EAs. It will make their jobs easier and save them time because they don’t need to repeatedly answer common “dumb” questions from newbies, they can just point them to the Q and A website and EA Forum so that they can ask their question wherever they feel most comfortable asking. This will save community leaders time that can then be used for other important things. Also community leaders will not have to go through my experience described earlier where newbies complained that they were sacred of posting in EA forum.
Budget Overview
TOTAL: $21,000
This budget is meant to cover web hosting costs, software licenses and software services subscriptions and remuneration for the development (dev) team. The project will require hiring one full time developer and one part time developer to make up the dev team.
Breakdown (figures rounded to the nearest hundred):
Web hosting + security, CDN etc for two years: $2,900
Software/SAAS licenses/subscriptions for three years: $2,200
Full Time Dev Salary ($3,800 per month for three months)
Part Time Dev Salary ($1,500 per month for three months)
Milestones / Deliverables:
End of month one: User Interface prototype wireframes / user flow diagrams
End of month two: Demo Alpha version with few rudimentary features
End of month three: Complete production-ready Beta version hosted and ready for public Beta test
Beta will last for one month then final launch.
Ongoing maintenance after the Beta will be handled by unpaid volunteers until we are able to hire a full time admin for the website.
After the Launch, What Next?
If there happens to be any leftover funds it will be used to run online ads to get some traction for the website. But success of the project in the long term will require serious and continuous promotional, marketing and SEO campaigns.
I’m thinking that many of these issues with the forum are fixable directly within the forum:
Newbie-friendliness: This is probably the hardest to fix directly, but this seems more related with the EA culture than anything platform-specific.
SEO: Nothing about the forum seems to put it at a disadvantage in terms of SEO, and in my experience, Q&A posts already show up in search results.
Data and Statistics: I’m not aware of how the analytics system of the EA forum works, but in general, there’s no clear limitation on performing makeshift analyses on current forum threads, see this, by example.
Overall, I think it’s difficult to justify a new platform, especially considering that splintering the community conveys pretty significant disadvantages. Specifically, creating a new platforms risks creating a new information silo and reducing newbie involvement with the rest of the community (while not allowing a clear path for them to start engaging with the forum).
I agree with you on the issue of this being an EA Culture thing that will be challenging to fix. However, culture is shaped and influenced by many things, including more increasingly (these days of tech advances) the content of websites that appear in search results. While culture-related issues cannot be fixed by one single action, various actions can be taken to help fix or mitigate such.
Unfortunately right now it seems that not a lot of action is being taken to tackle the issue.
So, my small group and I decided to take this up as one of our focal points. We brainstormed and came up with a list of actions in the form of recommended projects, platforms and policies that can be implemented to make EA more newbie friendly. This Q and A website is just one of the items on our list and it is our belief that if we can achieve all the things on the list, the newbie-friendliness issue will be greatly reduced or totally eliminated.
It will not be an easy or a quick journey and many things are still uncertain and experimental but we plan to take a slow and steady approach, one step at a time, starting with this Q and A website. As time goes on we will present the other ideas we have to the community.
On Your other points:
The problem is not with the EA Forum platform software itself but with the actual content i.e the questions and posts contained in the forum. EA Forum has great SEO but does not contain many newbie questions because “newbies are scared to ask”.
Also the forum software may be able to generate the type of data you linked to, but that data does not capture the full picture because some/much/most(?) of the newbie questions that probably would have been asked are not included (because they have not been asked). There are also other kinds of data /polling that would be less time and resource intensive to obtain speedily and at scale with a dedicated platform, rather than trying to wrangle it from other data as it appears was done in the post you linked to.
Information Silo: Having a separate standalone platform does not necessary mean it has to be a silo. It all boils down to the way the project is executed and the user interface / user experience (UI/UX).
There are ways to closely link both websites so that there is no siloing or dilution, rather synergy, with each platform complementing the other. For example, the Q and A site could be included officially in EA forum resources as an aditional resource for the newbie EA community, while on our end we funnel visitors back to EA Forum through conspicuous links and prompts and carefully guiding the user journey through thoughtfully planned UX design and testing.
You can picture this Q and A platform like a big broad net to capture a wider swathe of persons interested in EA, and then eventually funnel them to EA Forum as the final authoritative destination for all things EA. Therefore, rather than be a silo, it becomes a useful tool to ensure that newbies are “captured” and led to the right information sources and resources instead of them straying without guidance and possibly ending up getting information from questionable/unreliable/biased/anti-EA sources. This is a commonly used and very effective technique by website owners and community builders/growth hackers to capture more of their market (and potential clients) and I believe it will also be effective in our case.
My general thoughts:
This newbie friendliness issue is an important issue within the EA Community and something concrete needs to be done about it. There’s been much discussions and suggestions in various threads but it still feels like a highly neglected problem.
I would argue that this is a problem that really needs to be prioritized.
EA is growing fast (maybe exponentially even). The movement is growing in popularity and an increasing number of new people are coming into EA (or researching more about it). If nothing is done about this problem, there is a risk of alienating a sizeable chunk of newbies in EA.
Solving or mitigating the newbie-friendliness issue will also make things easier for people in diverse areas trying to start EA groups and onboard new members on their own.
I would understand if this does not feel like a priority to everyone but being in an area with virtually zero EA activity (or hub or official support structure) and trying to create awareness and raise groups there, this is really one of the BIGGEST challenges I am facing. So I do feel it needs to be solved (at least for the sake of others who might be in the same shoes as this poster and I).
I strongly believe that this Q and A platform (and other ideas we have) will go a long way to at least move us towards some kind of fix or mitigation.
Thank you for the warm welcome, I’m glad to be here. And thank you for the suggestions.
Before I make my case for why I think this project is necessary (despite the existence of the EA Forum Question Feature), let me state that some of my points are not meant to belittle the work of the EA forum minders and the entire community.
I believe that EA Forum is very useful and great at fulfilling a number of purposes, but there are certain use cases where it falls short. In such cases, I believe a dedicated Question and Answer (Q and A) website would be better/more effective and will complement the EA Forum to yield greater efficiency.
Now, here are some reasons why a standalone Q and A website for the EA Community is necessary (I have some years experience in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and growing/managing online communities and my experience has shaped some of the points below):
1. EA Forum is Not Newbie—Friendly
Generally, EA seems to have a problem of not being very newbie friendly (see this thread where the issue was discussed to get a better appreciation of the matter).
By newbie I mean people who are totally new to EA (from diverse cultural, language and educational backgrounds).
My experience: I am currently trying to start a local EA group and I have had interactions with a number of people who have never heard about EA but have shown interest in learning more and becoming a part of the community. Initially, I would direct them to EA Forum if they asked me a question I couldn’t answer, but the feedback I kept getting from them was that the “ambience” and “vibe” given off by the discussions in EA Forum makes it feel like “a place for intellectuals and very smart people”.
Many newbies seem to be too intimidated or too scared to ask questions in the EA Forum because they are afraid of “sounding dumb” in the midst of all the scholarly articles and genius-level discussions taking place.
Unfortunately this same “vibe” is common to many EA online groups and communities.
There doesn’t seem to be a generally accepted and recognized place where “non-genius” EAs are not scared but comfortable (even encouraged) to ask apparently “dumb” questions or “silly” questions. Such a place seems to be in demand based on feedback from the newbies I have talked to and from comments I have repeatedly come across in various place online, even here on EA Forum.
This standalone Q and A website will be a less intimidating complement to the EA forum Question feature and would provide a space where EAs especially newbies will not hesitate to ask any questions they might have without fear of “sounding dumb”.
Some Newbies will ask questions that you never expect so this will enrich and diversify the conversations and better expose the community leaders to the thought processes and needs of these newbies and the community at large.
This will improve the onboarding (and retention) of new community members and help to keep the community strong.
2. To Counter Misleading Narratives about EA (via improved Search Engine Visibility)
Google is by far the largest search engine and most people seeking information online use it.
EA has had / continues to have a lot of bad press from critics and opponents. This is made worse by search results being filled with mostly negative posts regarding EA.
A google search of EA related phrases frequently turns up a plethora of negative and often downright misleading information about EA.
This seriously hurts the image of the community and can be a turn off for people who are thinking of joining and are doing research to learn more about effective altruism.
From my Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experience, Google appears to prioritize Q and A—type websites for searches that are phrased as questions thereby ranking them higher in the results.
There are also other factors that will favor a dedicated Q and A site in the search rankings therefore by ranking top for most of these common questions, the EA Community will be able to “influence the narrative” and counter this negative image.
(Results from EA forum also show up frequently but in many cases they are drowned in a sea of negative results.)
Still on EA’s image:
The EA forum appears (or seems to appear) to be a place meant for people already part of the community. People outside the EA community typically don’t post here. In many (most?) cases, such questions may end up on “non-EA-friendly” websites where they might receive a lot of negativity without any strong pro-EA voice to counterbalance the conversation. Having a Q and A website that encourages anybody (EAs and non-EAs) to ask questions will provide a great place to capture some of these questions (that would have gone to other websites) and counter or clarify false and negative narratives about EA.
3. Data and Statistics
For example: What are the most common question newbies in EA have? What are the most frequent challenges EAs generally face, what about those living in a particular country? Being able to provide answers to such questions will help to improve the onboarding process and get new members informed and aligned with the goals and ideals of the EA community.
This type of data cannot (readily) be obtained from the EA Question system but can easily be obtained with this Q and A website.
This data can also be used to improve EA community building and management processes and procedures for better efficiency.
The Q and A site can be used as an additional feedback mechanism to gauge the effectiveness of various EA procedures/policies/initiatives/etc by monitoring the types of questions being asked.
4. A (Very) Useful Resource for Community Leaders
This will be a really useful resource for many community leaders trying to onboard new EAs. It will make their jobs easier and save them time because they don’t need to repeatedly answer common “dumb” questions from newbies, they can just point them to the Q and A website and EA Forum so that they can ask their question wherever they feel most comfortable asking. This will save community leaders time that can then be used for other important things. Also community leaders will not have to go through my experience described earlier where newbies complained that they were sacred of posting in EA forum.
Budget Overview
TOTAL: $21,000
This budget is meant to cover web hosting costs, software licenses and software services subscriptions and remuneration for the development (dev) team. The project will require hiring one full time developer and one part time developer to make up the dev team.
Breakdown (figures rounded to the nearest hundred):
Web hosting + security, CDN etc for two years: $2,900
Software/SAAS licenses/subscriptions for three years: $2,200
Full Time Dev Salary ($3,800 per month for three months)
Part Time Dev Salary ($1,500 per month for three months)
Milestones / Deliverables:
End of month one: User Interface prototype wireframes / user flow diagrams
End of month two: Demo Alpha version with few rudimentary features
End of month three: Complete production-ready Beta version hosted and ready for public Beta test
Beta will last for one month then final launch.
Ongoing maintenance after the Beta will be handled by unpaid volunteers until we are able to hire a full time admin for the website.
After the Launch, What Next?
If there happens to be any leftover funds it will be used to run online ads to get some traction for the website. But success of the project in the long term will require serious and continuous promotional, marketing and SEO campaigns.
I’m thinking that many of these issues with the forum are fixable directly within the forum:
Newbie-friendliness: This is probably the hardest to fix directly, but this seems more related with the EA culture than anything platform-specific.
SEO: Nothing about the forum seems to put it at a disadvantage in terms of SEO, and in my experience, Q&A posts already show up in search results.
Data and Statistics: I’m not aware of how the analytics system of the EA forum works, but in general, there’s no clear limitation on performing makeshift analyses on current forum threads, see this, by example.
Overall, I think it’s difficult to justify a new platform, especially considering that splintering the community conveys pretty significant disadvantages. Specifically, creating a new platforms risks creating a new information silo and reducing newbie involvement with the rest of the community (while not allowing a clear path for them to start engaging with the forum).
I agree with you on the issue of this being an EA Culture thing that will be challenging to fix. However, culture is shaped and influenced by many things, including more increasingly (these days of tech advances) the content of websites that appear in search results. While culture-related issues cannot be fixed by one single action, various actions can be taken to help fix or mitigate such.
Unfortunately right now it seems that not a lot of action is being taken to tackle the issue.
So, my small group and I decided to take this up as one of our focal points. We brainstormed and came up with a list of actions in the form of recommended projects, platforms and policies that can be implemented to make EA more newbie friendly. This Q and A website is just one of the items on our list and it is our belief that if we can achieve all the things on the list, the newbie-friendliness issue will be greatly reduced or totally eliminated.
It will not be an easy or a quick journey and many things are still uncertain and experimental but we plan to take a slow and steady approach, one step at a time, starting with this Q and A website. As time goes on we will present the other ideas we have to the community.
On Your other points:
The problem is not with the EA Forum platform software itself but with the actual content i.e the questions and posts contained in the forum. EA Forum has great SEO but does not contain many newbie questions because “newbies are scared to ask”.
Also the forum software may be able to generate the type of data you linked to, but that data does not capture the full picture because some/much/most(?) of the newbie questions that probably would have been asked are not included (because they have not been asked). There are also other kinds of data /polling that would be less time and resource intensive to obtain speedily and at scale with a dedicated platform, rather than trying to wrangle it from other data as it appears was done in the post you linked to.
Information Silo: Having a separate standalone platform does not necessary mean it has to be a silo. It all boils down to the way the project is executed and the user interface / user experience (UI/UX).
There are ways to closely link both websites so that there is no siloing or dilution, rather synergy, with each platform complementing the other. For example, the Q and A site could be included officially in EA forum resources as an aditional resource for the newbie EA community, while on our end we funnel visitors back to EA Forum through conspicuous links and prompts and carefully guiding the user journey through thoughtfully planned UX design and testing.
You can picture this Q and A platform like a big broad net to capture a wider swathe of persons interested in EA, and then eventually funnel them to EA Forum as the final authoritative destination for all things EA. Therefore, rather than be a silo, it becomes a useful tool to ensure that newbies are “captured” and led to the right information sources and resources instead of them straying without guidance and possibly ending up getting information from questionable/unreliable/biased/anti-EA sources. This is a commonly used and very effective technique by website owners and community builders/growth hackers to capture more of their market (and potential clients) and I believe it will also be effective in our case.
My general thoughts:
This newbie friendliness issue is an important issue within the EA Community and something concrete needs to be done about it. There’s been much discussions and suggestions in various threads but it still feels like a highly neglected problem.
I would argue that this is a problem that really needs to be prioritized.
EA is growing fast (maybe exponentially even). The movement is growing in popularity and an increasing number of new people are coming into EA (or researching more about it). If nothing is done about this problem, there is a risk of alienating a sizeable chunk of newbies in EA.
Solving or mitigating the newbie-friendliness issue will also make things easier for people in diverse areas trying to start EA groups and onboard new members on their own.
I would understand if this does not feel like a priority to everyone but being in an area with virtually zero EA activity (or hub or official support structure) and trying to create awareness and raise groups there, this is really one of the BIGGEST challenges I am facing. So I do feel it needs to be solved (at least for the sake of others who might be in the same shoes as this poster and I).
I strongly believe that this Q and A platform (and other ideas we have) will go a long way to at least move us towards some kind of fix or mitigation.