Also happy to see this and the mistakes page (which I just realized existed). CEA has a pretty important but difficult position.
I would also be excited about this eventually getting more specific, though I realize that honesty does come with challenges. For instance, on the mistakes page, there’s the shortcoming “We were too slow to distribute funds to student and local groups.” This is obviously quite vague. It doesn’t say when this happened or how big of an issue this was.
Also, one quick idea: I could imagine it may be worthwhile to hire external consultants or eventually organize a semi-extensive project to better understand what the experience of “joining the Effective Altruism movement” is like and trying to improve it accordingly. Service design, for instance, is used to understand how people go through complex experiences, like finding out about, traveling to, and experiencing Disneyland. Here’s a page on it’s use for UK government services. Perhaps similar could be done to analyze all of the pain points for possible new enthusiasts. I imagine there are a lot of pain points that may not be obvious, even to people experienced with things.
Thanks for the suggestion, Ozzie! We agree it’s important that we understand community members’ experiences. I appreciate the pointer to Service Design.
We are working on an update to the mistakes page that will include more data and more recent issues, but I’m not certain if/when we’ll revise that particular item on the mistakes page. Still, I’ve noted the request—thanks.
Also happy to see this and the mistakes page (which I just realized existed). CEA has a pretty important but difficult position.
I would also be excited about this eventually getting more specific, though I realize that honesty does come with challenges. For instance, on the mistakes page, there’s the shortcoming “We were too slow to distribute funds to student and local groups.” This is obviously quite vague. It doesn’t say when this happened or how big of an issue this was.
Also, one quick idea: I could imagine it may be worthwhile to hire external consultants or eventually organize a semi-extensive project to better understand what the experience of “joining the Effective Altruism movement” is like and trying to improve it accordingly. Service design, for instance, is used to understand how people go through complex experiences, like finding out about, traveling to, and experiencing Disneyland. Here’s a page on it’s use for UK government services. Perhaps similar could be done to analyze all of the pain points for possible new enthusiasts. I imagine there are a lot of pain points that may not be obvious, even to people experienced with things.
Thanks for the suggestion, Ozzie! We agree it’s important that we understand community members’ experiences. I appreciate the pointer to Service Design.
We are working on an update to the mistakes page that will include more data and more recent issues, but I’m not certain if/when we’ll revise that particular item on the mistakes page. Still, I’ve noted the request—thanks.