I’d update significantly more in that direction if the final outcomes for the subset of voters with over X karma (1000? 2000? I dunno) were similar to the current all-voter data.
I say that not because I think only medium-plus karma voters have value, but because it’s the cleanest way I can think of to mitigate the risk that the results have been affected by off-Forum advocacy and organizing. Those efforts have been blessed by the mods within certain bounds, but the effects of superior get-out-the-vote efforts are noise insofar as determining what the “consensus EA” is, and the resulting electorate may be rather unrepresentative. In contrast, the set of medium-plus karma voters seems more like to be representative of the broader community’s thinking regarding cause areas. (If there are other voter characteristics that could be analyzed and would be expected to be broadly representative, those would be worth looking at too.)
For example, it seemed fairly clear to me that animal-advocacy folks were significantly more on the ball in claiming funds during Manifund’s EA Community Choice event than other folks. This makes sense given how funding constrained animal advocacy is. So the possibility that something similar could be going on here caps how much I’d be willing to update on the current data.
the risk that the results have been affected by off-Forum advocacy and organizing
I’m not sure if this addresses your concern, but just want to clarify that accounts can only vote if they were created before Oct 22, 2024. I think that having to have created an account prior to the announcement of the donation election is a medium bar (at least I think it’s higher than Manifund’s event was) — it’s quite easy to use the Forum without creating an account, so people who create an account tend not to be casual readers.
I do think it would be interesting to compare the overall results with those of the subset of users who have earned at least some karma.
Not really—I think the creation-date rule mostly addresses a somewhat different concern, that of ringers (people who are not really part of the Forum community but join for the primary purpose of voting). This would be—to use an analogy from where I grew up—the rough equivalent of people who didn’t go to a particular church showing up to play for that church’s softball team (this happened, by the way).
My concern here is more that get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts may make the population that voted significantly unrepresentative of the Forum population as a whole. In contrast to ringers, those voters are not illegitimate or shady. However, the results would be slanted in favor of the organizations and cause areas that spent energy on GOTV efforts. So in a sense, I worry that if I defer too much to the results, I am in a sense deferring to organizational decisions on whether to conduct GOTV efforts rather than a representative / unbiased read of the broader community’s opinion.
I’d update significantly more in that direction if the final outcomes for the subset of voters with over X karma (1000? 2000? I dunno) were similar to the current all-voter data.
I say that not because I think only medium-plus karma voters have value, but because it’s the cleanest way I can think of to mitigate the risk that the results have been affected by off-Forum advocacy and organizing. Those efforts have been blessed by the mods within certain bounds, but the effects of superior get-out-the-vote efforts are noise insofar as determining what the “consensus EA” is, and the resulting electorate may be rather unrepresentative. In contrast, the set of medium-plus karma voters seems more like to be representative of the broader community’s thinking regarding cause areas. (If there are other voter characteristics that could be analyzed and would be expected to be broadly representative, those would be worth looking at too.)
For example, it seemed fairly clear to me that animal-advocacy folks were significantly more on the ball in claiming funds during Manifund’s EA Community Choice event than other folks. This makes sense given how funding constrained animal advocacy is. So the possibility that something similar could be going on here caps how much I’d be willing to update on the current data.
I’m not sure if this addresses your concern, but just want to clarify that accounts can only vote if they were created before Oct 22, 2024. I think that having to have created an account prior to the announcement of the donation election is a medium bar (at least I think it’s higher than Manifund’s event was) — it’s quite easy to use the Forum without creating an account, so people who create an account tend not to be casual readers.
I do think it would be interesting to compare the overall results with those of the subset of users who have earned at least some karma.
Not really—I think the creation-date rule mostly addresses a somewhat different concern, that of ringers (people who are not really part of the Forum community but join for the primary purpose of voting). This would be—to use an analogy from where I grew up—the rough equivalent of people who didn’t go to a particular church showing up to play for that church’s softball team (this happened, by the way).
My concern here is more that get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts may make the population that voted significantly unrepresentative of the Forum population as a whole. In contrast to ringers, those voters are not illegitimate or shady. However, the results would be slanted in favor of the organizations and cause areas that spent energy on GOTV efforts. So in a sense, I worry that if I defer too much to the results, I am in a sense deferring to organizational decisions on whether to conduct GOTV efforts rather than a representative / unbiased read of the broader community’s opinion.