I would write how there’s a collective action problem regarding reading EA forum posts. People want to read interesting, informative, and impactful posts and karma is a signifier of this. So often people will not read posts, especially on topics they are not familiar, unless it has already achieved some karma threshold. Given how time-sensitive front page availability is without karma accumulation and unlikely relatively low karma posts are too be read once off the front page, it is likely that good posts could be entirely ignored. On the other hand, some early traction could result in OK posts getting very high karma because a higher volume of people have been motivated to check the post out.
I think this could be partially addressed by having volunteers, or even paying people, to commit to read posts within a certain time frame and upvote (or not, or downvote) if appropriate. It might be a better use of funds than myriad cosmetic changes.
Below is a post I wrote that I think might be such a post that was good (or at least worthy of discussion) but people probably wanted to freeride on others’ early evaluation. It discusses how jobs in which the performance metrics actually used are orthogonal to many ways in which good can be done may be opportunities for significant impact.
I would write how there’s a collective action problem regarding reading EA forum posts. People want to read interesting, informative, and impactful posts and karma is a signifier of this. So often people will not read posts, especially on topics they are not familiar, unless it has already achieved some karma threshold. Given how time-sensitive front page availability is without karma accumulation and unlikely relatively low karma posts are too be read once off the front page, it is likely that good posts could be entirely ignored. On the other hand, some early traction could result in OK posts getting very high karma because a higher volume of people have been motivated to check the post out.
I think this could be partially addressed by having volunteers, or even paying people, to commit to read posts within a certain time frame and upvote (or not, or downvote) if appropriate. It might be a better use of funds than myriad cosmetic changes.
Below is a post I wrote that I think might be such a post that was good (or at least worthy of discussion) but people probably wanted to freeride on others’ early evaluation. It discusses how jobs in which the performance metrics actually used are orthogonal to many ways in which good can be done may be opportunities for significant impact.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/78pevHteaRxekaRGk/orthogonal-impact-finding-high-leverage-good-in-unlikely