Thank you for all of this work. I really appreciate it.
The process of writing this post has only strengthened my conviction about an issue I’ve previously noted: I believe the community should assign responsibility to, and funding for, one or more people or organizations to conduct and disseminate this sort of high-level analysis of community growth metrics. I honestly find it baffling that measuring the growth of EA and reporting findings back to the community isn’t someone’s explicit job.
I completely agree with this and have made several similar comments.
I think that one reason this isn’t done is that the people who have the best access to such metrics might not think it’s actually that important to disseminate them to the broader EA community, rather than just sharing them as necessary with the people for whom these facts are most obviously action-relevant.
Yeah, I think that might be one reason it isn’t done. I personally think that it is probably somewhat important for the community to understand itself better (e.g., the relative progress and growth in different interests/programs/geographies). Especially for people in the community who are community builders, recruiters, founders, etc. I also recognise that it might not be seen as priority for various reasons or risky for other reasons and I haven’t thought a lot about it.
Regardless, if people who have data about the community that they don’t want to share with the community, it might be good to ensure that the community knows that i) someone is collecting this data and ii) who they can ask for access to that data. I think this would increase confidence in the quality of community governance and reduce thought/time wasted on debates or analyses (e.g., about the topic of this post).
Thank you for all of this work. I really appreciate it.
I completely agree with this and have made several similar comments.
I think that one reason this isn’t done is that the people who have the best access to such metrics might not think it’s actually that important to disseminate them to the broader EA community, rather than just sharing them as necessary with the people for whom these facts are most obviously action-relevant.
Yeah, I think that might be one reason it isn’t done. I personally think that it is probably somewhat important for the community to understand itself better (e.g., the relative progress and growth in different interests/programs/geographies). Especially for people in the community who are community builders, recruiters, founders, etc. I also recognise that it might not be seen as priority for various reasons or risky for other reasons and I haven’t thought a lot about it.
Regardless, if people who have data about the community that they don’t want to share with the community, it might be good to ensure that the community knows that i) someone is collecting this data and ii) who they can ask for access to that data. I think this would increase confidence in the quality of community governance and reduce thought/time wasted on debates or analyses (e.g., about the topic of this post).
Seems like a good fit for Rethink Priorities, but we’re very funding constrained
Yes, this would be great, and it’s something we’re working on improving in the Netherlands, but it’s hard to find the capacity.