Eventually, weâd like it to be the case that almost all well-written EA content exists on the Forum somewhere. Maybe in full-text form, because thatâs 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, Iâve saved a bit of time.
And of course, weâll need many users working in concert to source, crosspost, and tag all the new content that pops up.
Iâd 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. Iâd 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 donât 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 âcontent thatâs quite EA-relevant and written by EAsâ?
Do you have thoughts on whether the EA Forum should also be home to a bunch of linkposts to content thatâs 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 thatâs about philosophy or politics but not in a way that makes connections to EA focus areas very clear?
I meant âquite EA-relevant and well-writtenâ. I donât especially care whether the content is written by community members, though I suppose thatâs 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 thatâs 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, Iâd label the post as âPersonal Blogâ so that people can more easily choose whether to see it on their homepage.
I donât especially care whether the content is written by community members, though I suppose thatâs 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 âwritten by community membersâ 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 âlinkpost 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)â. But thatâs a murkier principle, and it seems like it could easily end up âgoing too farâ (or at least seeming weird). And I think worrying that Iâm going too far might lead me to hold back more than is warranted.
Maybe this could be phrased as âMaking 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 wonât slip too far.â
A few notes on âdeciding how much to crosspostâ:
A single crosspost with a bit of context from the authorâe.g. a few sentences each of summary/âhighlights, commentary, and action items/âtakeawaysâseems 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.
âWritten by someone connected to EAâ is a decent filter, but quality/ââspecialâ relevance seem like better filters.
In some ways, non-EA academics could be better to crosspostâtheyâre less likely to post their own work, and theyâre more likely to be âdiscoveredâ by people who hadnât 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, thatâs our teamâs responsibility to handleânot a problem caused by the crossposter.
We might eventually try to push for higher standards if crossposts overwhelm the Forum, but I think weâre pretty far from that point right now.
Absent these âhigher standardsâ, 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 âcrosspostâ 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, weâd like it to be the case that almost all well-written EA content exists on the Forum somewhere. Maybe in full-text form, because thatâs 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, Iâve saved a bit of time.
And of course, weâll need many users working in concert to source, crosspost, and tag all the new content that pops up.
Iâd 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. Iâd 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 donât 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 âcontent thatâs quite EA-relevant and written by EAsâ?
Do you have thoughts on whether the EA Forum should also be home to a bunch of linkposts to content thatâs 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 thatâs about philosophy or politics but not in a way that makes connections to EA focus areas very clear?
I meant âquite EA-relevant and well-writtenâ. I donât especially care whether the content is written by community members, though I suppose thatâs 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, Iâd label the post as âPersonal Blogâ so that people can more easily choose whether to see it on their homepage.
The main reason I sort-of suggest âwritten by community membersâ 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 âlinkpost 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)â. But thatâs a murkier principle, and it seems like it could easily end up âgoing too farâ (or at least seeming weird). And I think worrying that Iâm going too far might lead me to hold back more than is warranted.
Maybe this could be phrased as âMaking 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 wonât slip too far.â
A few notes on âdeciding how much to crosspostâ:
A single crosspost with a bit of context from the authorâe.g. a few sentences each of summary/âhighlights, commentary, and action items/âtakeawaysâseems 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.
âWritten by someone connected to EAâ is a decent filter, but quality/ââspecialâ relevance seem like better filters.
In some ways, non-EA academics could be better to crosspostâtheyâre less likely to post their own work, and theyâre more likely to be âdiscoveredâ by people who hadnât 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, thatâs our teamâs responsibility to handleânot a problem caused by the crossposter.
We might eventually try to push for higher standards if crossposts overwhelm the Forum, but I think weâre pretty far from that point right now.
Absent these âhigher standardsâ, 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 âcrosspostâ 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 meâthanks!