For what it’s worth, if I could choose between this form existing or not existing, I would prefer that it exists. But we can also try to think about something in-between. Like:
(1) We agree in advance that there will be some clean-up of the form before release. We clarify what this means, I suppose that we will want to say that offensive or ad hominem content will be removed. Maybe we propose a list of made-up examples to explain what we want to be removed. This will be subject to some debate, but we can figure out something reasonable.
(2) We collect all the answers without disclosing them.
(3) We ask for a pool of people to volunteer for cleaning up the form.
(4) We select a small subset of these volunteers at random and they do the job. They check on each other for the cleaning, and then release the cleaned-up form.
I suppose that the simple fact of having this structure in place will already essentially clean up the form, whatever we mean by that.
More simply, we can also ask for what we want. We could say, for example, “This form is about ideas you’d be reluctant to share. If you have a concern about a specific person, please talk to Julia Wise rather than posting about it here.”
Or we could ask, “What’s the title of an EA Forum post that you’d like to see written, but that you think would receive negative karma overall?”
I know it sounds trite, but the question you ask really affects the answers you receive.
I also think the form should exist. I would agree that attacks on individuals should be removed (with a comment left explaining why). I’m uneasy about screening the comments more than that, as then people may not trust that no bias has come in. For negative comments about organisations, perhaps people could be encouraged to briefly explain their thoughts and link to evidence. I would hope that people reading the comments would know to take criticism of organisations with no evidence given with a very big pinch of salt, since there will be people around with gripes due to rejected applications etc.
For what it’s worth, if I could choose between this form existing or not existing, I would prefer that it exists. But we can also try to think about something in-between. Like:
(1) We agree in advance that there will be some clean-up of the form before release. We clarify what this means, I suppose that we will want to say that offensive or ad hominem content will be removed. Maybe we propose a list of made-up examples to explain what we want to be removed. This will be subject to some debate, but we can figure out something reasonable.
(2) We collect all the answers without disclosing them.
(3) We ask for a pool of people to volunteer for cleaning up the form.
(4) We select a small subset of these volunteers at random and they do the job. They check on each other for the cleaning, and then release the cleaned-up form.
I suppose that the simple fact of having this structure in place will already essentially clean up the form, whatever we mean by that.
More simply, we can also ask for what we want. We could say, for example, “This form is about ideas you’d be reluctant to share. If you have a concern about a specific person, please talk to Julia Wise rather than posting about it here.”
Or we could ask, “What’s the title of an EA Forum post that you’d like to see written, but that you think would receive negative karma overall?”
I know it sounds trite, but the question you ask really affects the answers you receive.
I also think the form should exist. I would agree that attacks on individuals should be removed (with a comment left explaining why). I’m uneasy about screening the comments more than that, as then people may not trust that no bias has come in. For negative comments about organisations, perhaps people could be encouraged to briefly explain their thoughts and link to evidence. I would hope that people reading the comments would know to take criticism of organisations with no evidence given with a very big pinch of salt, since there will be people around with gripes due to rejected applications etc.