I agree with most of what you wrote here, but think that the pledge, as a specific high resolution effort, is not helpful.
This is quite possible, but that’s why we will have M&E and are committing bounded amounts of time to this project. - Although neither of these are much help if there’s a distinct externality/direct harm to the wider community
Would you be able to explain why you think so? I can see you’ve linked to a post but it would take me >15 minutes to read and I think that would be a bad use of my time
I also think that looking at the outcomes for those who made pledges and stuck around is selecting on the outcome variable; the damage that high expectations have may be on-net worthwhile, but it would be unreasonable to come to that conclusion on the basis of talking to who stuck around.
I think my suggestion for randomised outreach and follow-up here would largely control for this
This is quite possible, but that’s why we will have M&E and are committing bounded amounts of time to this project. - Although neither of these are much help if there’s a distinct externality/direct harm to the wider community
Would you be able to explain why you think so? I can see you’ve linked to a post but it would take me >15 minutes to read and I think that would be a bad use of my time
I think my suggestion for randomised outreach and follow-up here would largely control for this