Agree. Although, while the Events dashboard isn’t up to date, I notice that the EAG team released the following table in a post last month, which does have complete 2024 data:
EAG applicant numbers were down 42% from 2022 to 2024,[1] which is a comparable decline to that in monthly Forum users (down 35% from November 2022’s peak to November 2024).[2]
To me, this is evidence that the dropping numbers are driven by changes in the larger zeitgeist rather than by any particular thing the Events or Online team is doing (as @Jason surmises in his comment above).
Thanks for sharing some data here! I think the picture is more complicated than it seems (isn’t it always), though I’m not super confident about that. A couple points:
I think one relevant factor here is that (I believe) the Events and Groups teams rely more on funding to scale, and so when funding became less available they (I think) made an explicit decision to spend less. Funding doesn’t affect Forum usage nearly as much (for example, we’ve almost always had one content manager on the Forum Team).
I mentioned in a comment I just wrote earlier that my understanding is that traffic to 80k resources has not declined.
Actually you may be interested to read my whole comment that I linked to, since I think it adds some context relevant to this thread.
Another relevant dimension is that the forum (and Groups) are the most targeted to EAs, so they will be most sensitive to fluctuations in the size of the EA community, whereas 80k will be the least sensitive, and Events will be somewhere in-between.
Given this and the sharp decline in applications to events, it seems like the issue is really a decrease in the size of, or enthusiasm in the EA community, rather than anything specific to the forum.
Agree. Although, while the Events dashboard isn’t up to date, I notice that the EAG team released the following table in a post last month, which does have complete 2024 data:
EAG applicant numbers were down 42% from 2022 to 2024,[1] which is a comparable decline to that in monthly Forum users (down 35% from November 2022’s peak to November 2024).[2]
To me, this is evidence that the dropping numbers are driven by changes in the larger zeitgeist rather than by any particular thing the Events or Online team is doing (as @Jason surmises in his comment above).
(3460/5988) x 100% = 58% (2 s.f.)
(3561/5509) x 100% = 65% (2 s.f.)
Note that, in a surprising (to me) coincidence, the absolute numbers of annual EAG applicants and monthly EA Forum users are very similar.
Thanks for sharing some data here! I think the picture is more complicated than it seems (isn’t it always), though I’m not super confident about that. A couple points:
I think one relevant factor here is that (I believe) the Events and Groups teams rely more on funding to scale, and so when funding became less available they (I think) made an explicit decision to spend less. Funding doesn’t affect Forum usage nearly as much (for example, we’ve almost always had one content manager on the Forum Team).
I mentioned in a comment I just wrote earlier that my understanding is that traffic to 80k resources has not declined.
Actually you may be interested to read my whole comment that I linked to, since I think it adds some context relevant to this thread.
Another relevant dimension is that the forum (and Groups) are the most targeted to EAs, so they will be most sensitive to fluctuations in the size of the EA community, whereas 80k will be the least sensitive, and Events will be somewhere in-between.
Given this and the sharp decline in applications to events, it seems like the issue is really a decrease in the size of, or enthusiasm in the EA community, rather than anything specific to the forum.