I expect the same post written by someone else would have not received much prominence and I expect would have very unlikely been selected for a prize.
I’m not sure about this. One of last month’s winners, “Aligning Recommender Systems,” also outlined an argument for EAs gaining experience/pursuing careers in a field that hadn’t been covered much or at all by prior authors, and was highly upvoted. As far as I know, neither author works for an EA organization (though I don’t know much about their background, and would appreciate someone correcting me if I’m wrong).
I think it’s particularly bad for posts to get prizes that would have been impossible to write when not coming from an established organization.
How do you feel about posts which would have been almost impossible to write for authors who weren’t in some other exceptional circumstance?
For example, during the first month of prize selection, one winner was Adam Gleave, who wrote a great post about deciding what to do with his winnings from the EA Donor Lottery. I’d guess that only someone with unusual financial resources would have been able to make such large donations (and get statements from ALLFED, etc.) which left me uncertain at the time whether Adam’s post should have qualified.
The main difference here seems to be that he sacrificed a lot of his free time to conduct research and write a post, but I still expect that other authors with equal willingness to research and write wouldn’t have gotten as much attention.
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On another note, I think that some posts in this category are highly valuable. For example, someone working at an org might write a very detailed post on operations that they couldn’t have written without experience running large-scale EA events. If this kind of post wouldn’t be written in someone’s spare time without incentives (which I know is a big assumption), I’d like to provide those incentives.
I’m not sure about this. One of last month’s winners, “Aligning Recommender Systems,” also outlined an argument for EAs gaining experience/pursuing careers in a field that hadn’t been covered much or at all by prior authors, and was highly upvoted. As far as I know, neither author works for an EA organization (though I don’t know much about their background, and would appreciate someone correcting me if I’m wrong).
How do you feel about posts which would have been almost impossible to write for authors who weren’t in some other exceptional circumstance?
For example, during the first month of prize selection, one winner was Adam Gleave, who wrote a great post about deciding what to do with his winnings from the EA Donor Lottery. I’d guess that only someone with unusual financial resources would have been able to make such large donations (and get statements from ALLFED, etc.) which left me uncertain at the time whether Adam’s post should have qualified.
The main difference here seems to be that he sacrificed a lot of his free time to conduct research and write a post, but I still expect that other authors with equal willingness to research and write wouldn’t have gotten as much attention.
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On another note, I think that some posts in this category are highly valuable. For example, someone working at an org might write a very detailed post on operations that they couldn’t have written without experience running large-scale EA events. If this kind of post wouldn’t be written in someone’s spare time without incentives (which I know is a big assumption), I’d like to provide those incentives.