I think the EA Wiki pages are really valuable as a list of posts relevant to a topic. It’s great to see the most important posts to get up to speed with a topic, such as climate change or suffering-focused ethics. But I’m unsure that it’s worthwhile to have very detailed pages on the EA Wiki to introduce a topic. It’s hard for random wiki editors to write a quality article summarizing all the relevant points on a topic such as longtermism, with due balance given to different considerations, and I’m not sure that it generally adds enough value compared to the list of tagged articles. I think high-quality articles introducing an topic would come from people who want to write their own article from a certain perspective, rather than through a collaborative wiki editing process. Even on Wikipedia, high-quality articles are often due to one or two editors writing the vast majority of the article.
That said, I think EA Wiki tags should all have at least a one-line description of what the topic is.
I’m not sure how much of Pablo’s time is spent on writing articles vs tagging articles. But if it were largely for tagging articles, then time spent on the page (which I believe “engagement” is) would be a poor measure of how useful readers find the wiki. I might spend 20 seconds reading an EA Wiki page but 10 minutes reading the articles linked. That would be pretty valuable if I read better articles thanks to the EA Wiki or if I learn more about the topic, than if the EA Wiki were lower quality.
EA Wiki engagement might be boosted if the home page of the EA Forum had a section with recent edits to the wiki, just like how it showcases recent posts. If the recent edit section shows a count of the number of characters changed, that could help people who make a major edit to the wiki get recognition. However, I’m not confident that recent edits are interesting/important enough to be on the main page. There is a Wiki tab on the main page, but to be honest, I had never clicked on it before writing this comment.
Thanks for the comment. Your observation that EA Wiki pages are valuable mostly by virtue of providing a list of posts relevant to a topic is something other people have noted, including recently in the short exploratory survey we conducted. This is a question that is obviously quite important for us to answer, since it has the potential to influence significantly how we prioritize our efforts or even whether it is worth having paid contributors at all. Answering that question is also relevant for assessing the value of some possible directions the Wiki may take, such as asking experts on a given topic to write an in-depth overview of it.
So far, I have prioritized breadth over depth, since I think at the current margin having e.g. five one-paragraph articles generates more value than having five one-paragraph articles. However, there are still one or two dozen articles of medium length, which may allow readers to determine how much value, if any, they derive from a Wiki entry that goes beyond listing the key works in the literature or offering a one-line description of the topic. I list some below in case anyone wants to take a look and share their thoughts. You can also submit your impressions anonymously and I’ll post them myself as a comment.
I think the EA Wiki pages are really valuable as a list of posts relevant to a topic. It’s great to see the most important posts to get up to speed with a topic, such as climate change or suffering-focused ethics. But I’m unsure that it’s worthwhile to have very detailed pages on the EA Wiki to introduce a topic. It’s hard for random wiki editors to write a quality article summarizing all the relevant points on a topic such as longtermism, with due balance given to different considerations, and I’m not sure that it generally adds enough value compared to the list of tagged articles. I think high-quality articles introducing an topic would come from people who want to write their own article from a certain perspective, rather than through a collaborative wiki editing process. Even on Wikipedia, high-quality articles are often due to one or two editors writing the vast majority of the article.
That said, I think EA Wiki tags should all have at least a one-line description of what the topic is.
I’m not sure how much of Pablo’s time is spent on writing articles vs tagging articles. But if it were largely for tagging articles, then time spent on the page (which I believe “engagement” is) would be a poor measure of how useful readers find the wiki. I might spend 20 seconds reading an EA Wiki page but 10 minutes reading the articles linked. That would be pretty valuable if I read better articles thanks to the EA Wiki or if I learn more about the topic, than if the EA Wiki were lower quality.
EA Wiki engagement might be boosted if the home page of the EA Forum had a section with recent edits to the wiki, just like how it showcases recent posts. If the recent edit section shows a count of the number of characters changed, that could help people who make a major edit to the wiki get recognition. However, I’m not confident that recent edits are interesting/important enough to be on the main page. There is a Wiki tab on the main page, but to be honest, I had never clicked on it before writing this comment.
Thanks for the comment. Your observation that EA Wiki pages are valuable mostly by virtue of providing a list of posts relevant to a topic is something other people have noted, including recently in the short exploratory survey we conducted. This is a question that is obviously quite important for us to answer, since it has the potential to influence significantly how we prioritize our efforts or even whether it is worth having paid contributors at all. Answering that question is also relevant for assessing the value of some possible directions the Wiki may take, such as asking experts on a given topic to write an in-depth overview of it.
So far, I have prioritized breadth over depth, since I think at the current margin having e.g. five one-paragraph articles generates more value than having five one-paragraph articles. However, there are still one or two dozen articles of medium length, which may allow readers to determine how much value, if any, they derive from a Wiki entry that goes beyond listing the key works in the literature or offering a one-line description of the topic. I list some below in case anyone wants to take a look and share their thoughts. You can also submit your impressions anonymously and I’ll post them myself as a comment.
Dystopia
Sam Bankman-Fried
Negative utilitarianism (only one section written)
AI race
Astronomical waste
Reversal test
Cause X
Think tanks
Iterated embryo selection
Target Malaria
Totalitarianism
Broad vs. narrow interventions
Cari Tuna