Thank you a lot for this feedback. I was perceiving that the main worry people here were having about Rational Animations was potential downsides, and that they were having this feeling mainly due to our artistic choices (because I was getting few upvotes, some downvotes and feedback that didn’t feel very “central” I figured that there was probably something about the whole thing that was putting off some people but that they weren’t able to put their finger on. Am I correct in this assessment?). I feel like I want to kind of update the direction of the channel because of this, but I need some time to reflect and maybe write a post to understand if what I’m thinking is what people here are also thinking.
Also, stepping back, I think you mainly need to answer two questions, which suggest different types of required data, neither of which is karma on the Forum/LessWrong:
Will it be net positive for these videos to be widely viewed by people who aren’t (yet) highly engaged in the EA/rationality communities? How positive? Can the upsides of that be increased or the downsides decreased?
Will these videos be widely viewed by people who aren’t (yet) highly engaged in the EA/rationality communities?
I think Q1 is best answered through actively soliciting feedback on video ideas, scripts, rough cuts, etc. from specific people or groups who are unusually likely to have good judgement on such things. This could be people who’ve done somewhat similar projects like Rob Miles, could be engaged EAs who know about whatever topic you’re covering in a given vid, could be non-EAs who know about whatever topic you’re covering in a vid, or groups in which some of those types people can be found (e.g., the Slack I made).
I think Q2 is best answered by the number of views your videos to date have gotten, the likes vs dislikes, the comments on YouTube, etc.
I think Forum/LessWrong karma does serve as weak evidence on both questions, but only weak evidence. Karma is a very noisy and coarse-grained metric. (So I don’t think getting low karma is a very bad sign, and I think there are better things to be looking at.)
This is very very helpful feedback, thank you for taking the time to give it (here and on the other post). Also, I’m way less anxious getting feedback like this than trying to hopelessly gauge things by upvotes and downvotes. I think I need to talk more to individual EAs and engage more with comments/express my doubts more like I’m doing now. My initial instinct was to run away (post/interact less), but this feels much better other than being more helpful.
Yeah, I think it is worth often posting, but that this is only partly because you get feedback and more so for other reasons (e.g., making it more likely that people will find your post/videos if it’s relevant to them, via seeing it on the home page, finding it in a search, or tags). And comments are generally more useful as feedback than karma, and comments from specific people asked in places outside the Forum are generally more useful as feedback than Forum comments.
The category “work that’s for large, mostly-non-EA audiences” can be prone to downside risks, so it’s worth thinking about them at least briefly when thinking about something from that category
Making videos hasn’t been tried much by EAs (excluding things like just videos of presentations / Q&As), so people have less of an idea of how to weigh up the upsides and downsides for that type of thing
And this is even more true for animated videos with a substantial sense of humour / substantial “quirkiness”
So some people are sort-of reflexively worried or unsure what to think
I think that this makes not upvoting a pretty reasonable choice for someone who just sees the post/video and doesn’t take the time to think about the pros and cons; maybe they want to neither encourage nor discourage something that’s unfamiliar to them and that they don’t know the implications of. I wouldn’t endorse the downvotes myself, but I guess maybe they’re based on something similar but with a larger degree of worry.
Or maybe some people just personally don’t enjoy the style/videos, separate from their beliefs about whether the channel should exist.
I wouldn’t guess that lots of people are actively opposed to specific artistic choices. Though I could of course be wrong.
Thank you a lot for this feedback. I was perceiving that the main worry people here were having about Rational Animations was potential downsides, and that they were having this feeling mainly due to our artistic choices (because I was getting few upvotes, some downvotes and feedback that didn’t feel very “central” I figured that there was probably something about the whole thing that was putting off some people but that they weren’t able to put their finger on. Am I correct in this assessment?). I feel like I want to kind of update the direction of the channel because of this, but I need some time to reflect and maybe write a post to understand if what I’m thinking is what people here are also thinking.
Also, stepping back, I think you mainly need to answer two questions, which suggest different types of required data, neither of which is karma on the Forum/LessWrong:
Will it be net positive for these videos to be widely viewed by people who aren’t (yet) highly engaged in the EA/rationality communities? How positive? Can the upsides of that be increased or the downsides decreased?
Will these videos be widely viewed by people who aren’t (yet) highly engaged in the EA/rationality communities?
I think Q1 is best answered through actively soliciting feedback on video ideas, scripts, rough cuts, etc. from specific people or groups who are unusually likely to have good judgement on such things. This could be people who’ve done somewhat similar projects like Rob Miles, could be engaged EAs who know about whatever topic you’re covering in a given vid, could be non-EAs who know about whatever topic you’re covering in a vid, or groups in which some of those types people can be found (e.g., the Slack I made).
I think Q2 is best answered by the number of views your videos to date have gotten, the likes vs dislikes, the comments on YouTube, etc.
I think Forum/LessWrong karma does serve as weak evidence on both questions, but only weak evidence. Karma is a very noisy and coarse-grained metric. (So I don’t think getting low karma is a very bad sign, and I think there are better things to be looking at.)
This is very very helpful feedback, thank you for taking the time to give it (here and on the other post). Also, I’m way less anxious getting feedback like this than trying to hopelessly gauge things by upvotes and downvotes. I think I need to talk more to individual EAs and engage more with comments/express my doubts more like I’m doing now. My initial instinct was to run away (post/interact less), but this feels much better other than being more helpful.
Yeah, I think it is worth often posting, but that this is only partly because you get feedback and more so for other reasons (e.g., making it more likely that people will find your post/videos if it’s relevant to them, via seeing it on the home page, finding it in a search, or tags). And comments are generally more useful as feedback than karma, and comments from specific people asked in places outside the Forum are generally more useful as feedback than Forum comments.
(See also Reasons for and against posting on the EA Forum.)
I think maybe it’s more like:
The category “work that’s for large, mostly-non-EA audiences” can be prone to downside risks, so it’s worth thinking about them at least briefly when thinking about something from that category
Making videos hasn’t been tried much by EAs (excluding things like just videos of presentations / Q&As), so people have less of an idea of how to weigh up the upsides and downsides for that type of thing
And this is even more true for animated videos with a substantial sense of humour / substantial “quirkiness”
So some people are sort-of reflexively worried or unsure what to think
I think that this makes not upvoting a pretty reasonable choice for someone who just sees the post/video and doesn’t take the time to think about the pros and cons; maybe they want to neither encourage nor discourage something that’s unfamiliar to them and that they don’t know the implications of. I wouldn’t endorse the downvotes myself, but I guess maybe they’re based on something similar but with a larger degree of worry.
Or maybe some people just personally don’t enjoy the style/videos, separate from their beliefs about whether the channel should exist.
I wouldn’t guess that lots of people are actively opposed to specific artistic choices. Though I could of course be wrong.