Regarding subforums, the pitch as I see it ( = as JP[1] told me in the software subforum, I think, but I don’t know how to find that link now) is:
There’s a disadvantage in having topics (such as EA software) spread over ~5 different spaces (slack, discord, FB, …)
There’s an advantage in “controlling the platform” (the forum has a team of people from the community maintaining it, controlling the DB, able to make new features, …)
So there’s a case for moving all those spaces into the subforum
I think for this to work well it’s worth while communicating that this (the 3 bullets) is the intent. I’d for example be happy to ask[2] people from the spaces that I admin to try posting in the subforum and reading from the subforum for a month (post the same things, look for the same content) as an experiment.
I hope this would solve “not enough people post” and “people aren’t sure what to post” together with some other problems like “get a critical mass of posters+readers” and “people will know what they want from the subforum, so they’ll know to ‘complain’ if certain are missing (as opposed to having a vibe of trying to understand what the developers meant)”.
Eh, reading what I wrote, this isn’t so tidy. Feel free to ask questions if you’d like me to clarify
I wouldn’t close the existing space, and I’d do other things like “give people an opportunity to push back if they think it’s stupid” (I don’t want to be a dictator and I do want people to compete if they think there’s a reason to do so as opposed to by accident), but I would be happy to nudge and make a pitch to why this is a good idea
Hi there, sorry for the late reply. Regarding your comments on subforums, we really did go back and forth on this, but ultimately felt like we were unlikely to displace slacks and discord groups across the board for “discussion”. We felt like the Forum’s core competency is longform posts and comments on those posts, and the number of features we’d have to build well to displace these other platforms was really large. So for now, we decided to reduce the goals of “subforums” and just focus on topic views that are more coherent than the current wiki.
This doesn’t mean subforums are off the table forever, but we’d like to focus on some other things that we think are higher impact righ tnow.
I’m currently trying to have discussions about AI Safety and the community seems to be split up into an uncountable (to me) amount of slacks-and-stuff. I keep discovering more and more of them. This is a pain point for me, as a user, since I want lots of feedback on what I write. Any chance you have thoughts/advice on this, since you thought about the subforum problem (which seems similar)?
(wow)
Regarding subforums, the pitch as I see it ( = as JP[1] told me in the software subforum, I think, but I don’t know how to find that link now) is:
There’s a disadvantage in having topics (such as EA software) spread over ~5 different spaces (slack, discord, FB, …)
There’s an advantage in “controlling the platform” (the forum has a team of people from the community maintaining it, controlling the DB, able to make new features, …)
So there’s a case for moving all those spaces into the subforum
I think for this to work well it’s worth while communicating that this (the 3 bullets) is the intent. I’d for example be happy to ask[2] people from the spaces that I admin to try posting in the subforum and reading from the subforum for a month (post the same things, look for the same content) as an experiment.
I hope this would solve “not enough people post” and “people aren’t sure what to post” together with some other problems like “get a critical mass of posters+readers” and “people will know what they want from the subforum, so they’ll know to ‘complain’ if certain are missing (as opposed to having a vibe of trying to understand what the developers meant)”.
Eh, reading what I wrote, this isn’t so tidy. Feel free to ask questions if you’d like me to clarify
Probably some of this is my own opinion which I mixed in with what JP said, but I can’t remember what
I wouldn’t close the existing space, and I’d do other things like “give people an opportunity to push back if they think it’s stupid” (I don’t want to be a dictator and I do want people to compete if they think there’s a reason to do so as opposed to by accident), but I would be happy to nudge and make a pitch to why this is a good idea
Hi there, sorry for the late reply. Regarding your comments on subforums, we really did go back and forth on this, but ultimately felt like we were unlikely to displace slacks and discord groups across the board for “discussion”. We felt like the Forum’s core competency is longform posts and comments on those posts, and the number of features we’d have to build well to displace these other platforms was really large. So for now, we decided to reduce the goals of “subforums” and just focus on topic views that are more coherent than the current wiki.
This doesn’t mean subforums are off the table forever, but we’d like to focus on some other things that we think are higher impact righ tnow.
Okay,
If you change your mind, I’ll be on board (unless something changes?) and I’d be happy to post the pitch in the EA Software groups specifically
A bit off topic:
I’m currently trying to have discussions about AI Safety and the community seems to be split up into an uncountable (to me) amount of slacks-and-stuff. I keep discovering more and more of them. This is a pain point for me, as a user, since I want lots of feedback on what I write. Any chance you have thoughts/advice on this, since you thought about the subforum problem (which seems similar)?
(“no” is totally valid)