Something I’ve noticed more in the EA Forum is the increase in drive-by professional posts. Organizations will promote a idea, a job posting, or something else. Then they’ll engage as long as they’re on the front page before bouncing.
That’s fine in small amounts or if the author is a regular contributor. But if the author is just stopping by to do their public engagement, then it breaks the illusion of a community.
And for me, that is the aesthetic draw of the forum. It’s a place where expects and amateurs alike coexist in the same space, say things that are too rough for professional publication, and then respond to each other in real time.
It’s magical and unreal that I can develop these (admittedly shallow and sometimes parasocial) relationships with people. It’s cool that I have some chance of getting a leading expert to respond to my quarter-baked comment. It’s cool that people sometimes recognize me in real life from what I wrote online.
And that feeling has been decreasing over time, which has made me lean more towards Slack, Discord, or even Twitter for real-time engagement. Meanwhile, I treat the Forum more as a searchable repository for EA-style research
Great comment — this gets at a lot of things that I’ve been thinking about. And I appreciate you sharing your personal perspective.
drive-by professional posts
I like your description that “it breaks the illusion of a community”, that resonates with me. I also think that posts that feel too professional discourage discussion. The flip side is that there are various ways that these kinds of posts create value:
Things like job postings and org calls for donations can pretty straightforwardly contribute to making the world better by encouraging impactful action
Another way the Forum creates value is something like: readers become aware of organizations (such as via org update posts), then they later donate or get involved with the org’s work
In theory, people who do relevant work as their full-time job should produce some of the best research/ideas/work [that is relevant to the Forum audience’s interests]
So I’m thinking about whether we should, for example, move org posts to a separate section, but looking at the Frontpage now, it doesn’t feel to me like there are too many of them. I think this fluctuates so I’ll keep an eye on it.
I feel like a better long-term solution is to offset this feeling by working to increase the number of posts from individuals, and trying harder to build a community (or perhaps clusters of communities) of individuals who feel like they are in conversation with each other. Not that this is easy, but I think it’s worth us trying to do, as it feels more like we are addressing the root cause and building better foundations.
Thanks for giving me a term (or perhaps a concept handle?) for this thing. I was vaguely aware of it, and it feels sort of spammy when I see it, but I didn’t have a clear vocabulary to describe it previously.
I see these kind of “drive-by posts” a lot in subreddits and Slack workspaces, and even a few WhatsApp group chats that I’m in: people will join, post one advertisement/announcement, and then never be heard from again (unless they end up posting another advertisement/announcement after a few months).
Something I’ve noticed more in the EA Forum is the increase in drive-by professional posts. Organizations will promote a idea, a job posting, or something else. Then they’ll engage as long as they’re on the front page before bouncing.
That’s fine in small amounts or if the author is a regular contributor. But if the author is just stopping by to do their public engagement, then it breaks the illusion of a community.
And for me, that is the aesthetic draw of the forum. It’s a place where expects and amateurs alike coexist in the same space, say things that are too rough for professional publication, and then respond to each other in real time.
It’s magical and unreal that I can develop these (admittedly shallow and sometimes parasocial) relationships with people. It’s cool that I have some chance of getting a leading expert to respond to my quarter-baked comment. It’s cool that people sometimes recognize me in real life from what I wrote online.
And that feeling has been decreasing over time, which has made me lean more towards Slack, Discord, or even Twitter for real-time engagement. Meanwhile, I treat the Forum more as a searchable repository for EA-style research
Great comment — this gets at a lot of things that I’ve been thinking about. And I appreciate you sharing your personal perspective.
I like your description that “it breaks the illusion of a community”, that resonates with me. I also think that posts that feel too professional discourage discussion. The flip side is that there are various ways that these kinds of posts create value:
Things like job postings and org calls for donations can pretty straightforwardly contribute to making the world better by encouraging impactful action
Another way the Forum creates value is something like: readers become aware of organizations (such as via org update posts), then they later donate or get involved with the org’s work
In theory, people who do relevant work as their full-time job should produce some of the best research/ideas/work [that is relevant to the Forum audience’s interests]
So I’m thinking about whether we should, for example, move org posts to a separate section, but looking at the Frontpage now, it doesn’t feel to me like there are too many of them. I think this fluctuates so I’ll keep an eye on it.
I feel like a better long-term solution is to offset this feeling by working to increase the number of posts from individuals, and trying harder to build a community (or perhaps clusters of communities) of individuals who feel like they are in conversation with each other. Not that this is easy, but I think it’s worth us trying to do, as it feels more like we are addressing the root cause and building better foundations.
Thanks for giving me a term (or perhaps a concept handle?) for this thing. I was vaguely aware of it, and it feels sort of spammy when I see it, but I didn’t have a clear vocabulary to describe it previously.
I see these kind of “drive-by posts” a lot in subreddits and Slack workspaces, and even a few WhatsApp group chats that I’m in: people will join, post one advertisement/announcement, and then never be heard from again (unless they end up posting another advertisement/announcement after a few months).