Eventually, we’d like it to be the case that almost all well-written EA content exists on the Forum somewhere. Maybe in full-text form, because that’s more searchable, but well-tagged linkposts with summaries are a good option too.
This quarter, I plan to start doing a bunch of backfill, using the EA Forum Archives account to post a lot of material. Depending on how the material is formatted, this might be full-text or might just include an abstract or summary. (The separate account is meant to stop my karma from getting inflated, and to draw attention to the importance of archiving.)
That said, I also appreciate other people who do this! If something is linkposted before I get to it, I’ve saved a bit of time.
And of course, we’ll need many users working in concert to source, crosspost, and tag all the new content that pops up.
I’d personally love to get more Alignment Forum content cross-posted to the EA Forum. Maybe some sort of automatic link-posting? Though that could pollute the EA Forum with a lot of link posts that probably should be organized separately somehow. I’d certainly be willing to start cross-posting my research to the EA Forum if that would be helpful.
Instinctively, I wish that discussion on these posts could all happen on the Alignment Forum, but since who can join is limited, having discussion here as well could be nice.
I don’t know whether every single post should be posted here, but it would be nice to at least have occasional posts summarizing the best recent AF content. This might look like just crossposting every new issue of the Alignment Newsletter, which is something I may start doing soon.
So by this I assume you mean “content that’s quite EA-relevant and written by EAs”?
Do you have thoughts on whether the EA Forum should also be home to a bunch of linkposts to content that’s just either quite-EA relevant or written by EAs? E.g., an article on nuclear risk from a non-EA academic? Or a well-written blog post by an EA that’s about philosophy or politics but not in a way that makes connections to EA focus areas very clear?
I meant “quite EA-relevant and well-written”. I don’t especially care whether the content is written by community members, though I suppose that’s slightly preferable (as community members are much more likely to respond to comments on their work).
an article on nuclear risk from a non-EA academic
Heck yeah.
a well-written blog post by an EA that’s about philosophy or politics but not in a way that makes connections to EA focus areas very clear
Depends on the post. Sometimes, connections to EA become clear if you delve deep enough into a topic, or if a bunch of people with EA-related specialties read it and consider how it might apply to their work. But if there really is no clear connection at all, I’d label the post as “Personal Blog” so that people can more easily choose whether to see it on their homepage.
I don’t especially care whether the content is written by community members, though I suppose that’s slightly preferable (as community members are much more likely to respond to comments on their work).
>an article on nuclear risk from a non-EA academic
Heck yeah.
The main reason I sort-of suggest “written by community members” as a possible criterion for deciding whether to linkpost things here is that it seems like, without that criterion, it might be very hard to decide how much to linkpost here. There are huge numbers of articles on nuclear risk from non-EA academics. If someone decided to linkpost all of them here, or to linkpost all of the peer-reviewed non-EA articles on any one of many other EA-relevant topics, that batch of linkposts might suddenly become a large fraction of all posts that year.
We could go with something like “linkpost all especially high quality articles on nuclear risk that are especially relevant to the most extreme risk scenarios (not just e.g. the detonation of 1 or a few bombs by terrorists)”. But that’s a murkier principle, and it seems like it could easily end up “going too far” (or at least seeming weird). And I think worrying that I’m going too far might lead me to hold back more than is warranted.
Maybe this could be phrased as “Making the decision partly based on whether the content was created by an EA could help in establishing a Schelling fence that avoids a slippery slope. And the existence of that fence could help people be more comfortable with beginning to travel down the slope, knowing they won’t slip too far.”
A single crosspost with a bit of context from the author—e.g. a few sentences each of summary/highlights, commentary, and action items/takeaways—seems better to me than three or four crossposts with no context at all. In my view, the best Forum content tends to give busy people a quick way to decide whether to read further.
“Written by someone connected to EA” is a decent filter, but quality/”special” relevance seem like better filters.
In some ways, non-EA academics could be better to crosspost—they’re less likely to post their own work, and they’re more likely to be “discovered” by people who hadn’t seen their work before because it was outside the community. (That said, the greater likelihood that an EA-involved person participates in discussion still makes that feature seem net-positive to me.)
If people are sharing too much interesting information on the Forum, and the site becomes cluttered, that’s our team’s responsibility to handle—not a problem caused by the crossposter.
We might eventually try to push for higher standards if crossposts overwhelm the Forum, but I think we’re pretty far from that point right now.
Absent these “higher standards”, we have other ways to mitigate a potential flood of crossposts; for example, we could add a way for people to filter out crossposts from their feed (using a “crosspost” tag is the simple version of this, but linkposts are distinct from regular posts in our code, so there are probably other ways it could be built).
Eventually, we’d like it to be the case that almost all well-written EA content exists on the Forum somewhere. Maybe in full-text form, because that’s more searchable, but well-tagged linkposts with summaries are a good option too.
This quarter, I plan to start doing a bunch of backfill, using the EA Forum Archives account to post a lot of material. Depending on how the material is formatted, this might be full-text or might just include an abstract or summary. (The separate account is meant to stop my karma from getting inflated, and to draw attention to the importance of archiving.)
That said, I also appreciate other people who do this! If something is linkposted before I get to it, I’ve saved a bit of time.
And of course, we’ll need many users working in concert to source, crosspost, and tag all the new content that pops up.
I’d personally love to get more Alignment Forum content cross-posted to the EA Forum. Maybe some sort of automatic link-posting? Though that could pollute the EA Forum with a lot of link posts that probably should be organized separately somehow. I’d certainly be willing to start cross-posting my research to the EA Forum if that would be helpful.
Instinctively, I wish that discussion on these posts could all happen on the Alignment Forum, but since who can join is limited, having discussion here as well could be nice.
I don’t know whether every single post should be posted here, but it would be nice to at least have occasional posts summarizing the best recent AF content. This might look like just crossposting every new issue of the Alignment Newsletter, which is something I may start doing soon.
That sounds good!
So by this I assume you mean “content that’s quite EA-relevant and written by EAs”?
Do you have thoughts on whether the EA Forum should also be home to a bunch of linkposts to content that’s just either quite-EA relevant or written by EAs? E.g., an article on nuclear risk from a non-EA academic? Or a well-written blog post by an EA that’s about philosophy or politics but not in a way that makes connections to EA focus areas very clear?
I meant “quite EA-relevant and well-written”. I don’t especially care whether the content is written by community members, though I suppose that’s slightly preferable (as community members are much more likely to respond to comments on their work).
Heck yeah.
Depends on the post. Sometimes, connections to EA become clear if you delve deep enough into a topic, or if a bunch of people with EA-related specialties read it and consider how it might apply to their work. But if there really is no clear connection at all, I’d label the post as “Personal Blog” so that people can more easily choose whether to see it on their homepage.
The main reason I sort-of suggest “written by community members” as a possible criterion for deciding whether to linkpost things here is that it seems like, without that criterion, it might be very hard to decide how much to linkpost here. There are huge numbers of articles on nuclear risk from non-EA academics. If someone decided to linkpost all of them here, or to linkpost all of the peer-reviewed non-EA articles on any one of many other EA-relevant topics, that batch of linkposts might suddenly become a large fraction of all posts that year.
We could go with something like “linkpost all especially high quality articles on nuclear risk that are especially relevant to the most extreme risk scenarios (not just e.g. the detonation of 1 or a few bombs by terrorists)”. But that’s a murkier principle, and it seems like it could easily end up “going too far” (or at least seeming weird). And I think worrying that I’m going too far might lead me to hold back more than is warranted.
Maybe this could be phrased as “Making the decision partly based on whether the content was created by an EA could help in establishing a Schelling fence that avoids a slippery slope. And the existence of that fence could help people be more comfortable with beginning to travel down the slope, knowing they won’t slip too far.”
A few notes on “deciding how much to crosspost”:
A single crosspost with a bit of context from the author—e.g. a few sentences each of summary/highlights, commentary, and action items/takeaways—seems better to me than three or four crossposts with no context at all. In my view, the best Forum content tends to give busy people a quick way to decide whether to read further.
“Written by someone connected to EA” is a decent filter, but quality/”special” relevance seem like better filters.
In some ways, non-EA academics could be better to crosspost—they’re less likely to post their own work, and they’re more likely to be “discovered” by people who hadn’t seen their work before because it was outside the community. (That said, the greater likelihood that an EA-involved person participates in discussion still makes that feature seem net-positive to me.)
If people are sharing too much interesting information on the Forum, and the site becomes cluttered, that’s our team’s responsibility to handle—not a problem caused by the crossposter.
We might eventually try to push for higher standards if crossposts overwhelm the Forum, but I think we’re pretty far from that point right now.
Absent these “higher standards”, we have other ways to mitigate a potential flood of crossposts; for example, we could add a way for people to filter out crossposts from their feed (using a “crosspost” tag is the simple version of this, but linkposts are distinct from regular posts in our code, so there are probably other ways it could be built).
That all makes sense to me—thanks!