People in the EA community can and should try to influence organizations when we think they could be doing better; we donāt just consider it ātheir businessā what they do. For example, StrongMinds should not be a top-rated charity (yet) was trying to convince GWWC to change an endorsement, and Iāve written some and myself. Approaches to interpersonal relationships have effects outside specific organizations, and individual organizations are often too small to put lots of time into carefully coming up with the ideal policies around these issues.
We do need to be careful not to flood organizations with nosy feedback, but if after talking on the Forum and elsewhere in the community it becomes clear that thereās wide support for a norm I think itās pretty reasonable to try to make that case to organizations we think could benefit from it.
I have no problem advocating influencing other organizationās policies around behavior. I have a problem with trying to directly influence individualsā behavior through community norms. As I said above, organizational policies are a) explicit, b) governed by consent, and c) structurally limited in scope whereas ācommunity normsā that attempt to directly alter behavior through social sanction, public shaming, etc. are a) inherently murky, b) not governed by consent, and c) limitless in scope. For these reasons, organizational policy is much less likely to create a community full of intrusive and toxic behavior than the encouragement of community norms.
People in the EA community can and should try to influence organizations when we think they could be doing better; we donāt just consider it ātheir businessā what they do. For example, StrongMinds should not be a top-rated charity (yet) was trying to convince GWWC to change an endorsement, and Iāve written some and myself. Approaches to interpersonal relationships have effects outside specific organizations, and individual organizations are often too small to put lots of time into carefully coming up with the ideal policies around these issues.
We do need to be careful not to flood organizations with nosy feedback, but if after talking on the Forum and elsewhere in the community it becomes clear that thereās wide support for a norm I think itās pretty reasonable to try to make that case to organizations we think could benefit from it.
I have no problem advocating influencing other organizationās policies around behavior. I have a problem with trying to directly influence individualsā behavior through community norms. As I said above, organizational policies are a) explicit, b) governed by consent, and c) structurally limited in scope whereas ācommunity normsā that attempt to directly alter behavior through social sanction, public shaming, etc. are a) inherently murky, b) not governed by consent, and c) limitless in scope. For these reasons, organizational policy is much less likely to create a community full of intrusive and toxic behavior than the encouragement of community norms.