Love this post Sarah, and Iām excited to work more on Forum community building this year.
To add a bit to the āMessage Toby with ideas for authors you would like to see writing hereā CTA:
Last year, we had some success cross-posting blogs on the Forumāfor example, Lewis Bollardās Farm Animal Welfare Newsletter, Lauren Gilbertās Lauren Policy, and this post from Oliver Kimās Global Developments blog. Generally, this is a pretty ad hoc decisionāa member of our team spots a great post or finds a great blog through Twitter or Substack, and then we message the author to ask if we can crosspost. Iād previously been concerned that doing too much of this might lead to a Forum with more great content, but less great conversations, especially if the authors didnāt engage with the comments. So far, the results have been quite different, with authors being more keen to engage with the comments than Iād expected, and good conversations often occurring even if they donāt.
I often talk to people who use the Forum but donāt see enough discussion of the particular cause they are most interested in. EA is a broad tent, and the Forum will always reflect that, but the best version of the Forum would contain vibrant sub-communities for each of the key causes. You can help make this happen by keeping the Forum in mind when you are reading substack/ātwitter/āother sources of bloggy content. If you find someone who is writing interesting content which would work as a Forum post, let me know! I can handle the reaching out/ā consent to post/ā automation of crossposting on your behalf.
To clarify, this isnāt exactly a service Iām offering (Iāll take suggestions as suggestions), and you are always very welcome to just linkpost a great post rather than going through me. But I donāt have blog omniscience, even though I write the EA Newsletter, and there is a lot of content on the internet that would be a great addition to the discussion of particular cause areas on the Forum, but wouldnāt initially register as interesting to me.
Love this post Sarah, and Iām excited to work more on Forum community building this year.
To add a bit to the āMessage Toby with ideas for authors you would like to see writing hereā CTA:
Last year, we had some success cross-posting blogs on the Forumāfor example, Lewis Bollardās Farm Animal Welfare Newsletter, Lauren Gilbertās Lauren Policy, and this post from Oliver Kimās Global Developments blog. Generally, this is a pretty ad hoc decisionāa member of our team spots a great post or finds a great blog through Twitter or Substack, and then we message the author to ask if we can crosspost. Iād previously been concerned that doing too much of this might lead to a Forum with more great content, but less great conversations, especially if the authors didnāt engage with the comments. So far, the results have been quite different, with authors being more keen to engage with the comments than Iād expected, and good conversations often occurring even if they donāt.
I often talk to people who use the Forum but donāt see enough discussion of the particular cause they are most interested in. EA is a broad tent, and the Forum will always reflect that, but the best version of the Forum would contain vibrant sub-communities for each of the key causes. You can help make this happen by keeping the Forum in mind when you are reading substack/ātwitter/āother sources of bloggy content. If you find someone who is writing interesting content which would work as a Forum post, let me know! I can handle the reaching out/ā consent to post/ā automation of crossposting on your behalf.
To clarify, this isnāt exactly a service Iām offering (Iāll take suggestions as suggestions), and you are always very welcome to just linkpost a great post rather than going through me. But I donāt have blog omniscience, even though I write the EA Newsletter, and there is a lot of content on the internet that would be a great addition to the discussion of particular cause areas on the Forum, but wouldnāt initially register as interesting to me.