The group seems very reasonable as a default place for people to be regularly reminded of EA topics as they go about their day.
I can’t think of a single large (5000+ people) Facebook group that regularly features interesting original discussions that aren’t intruded on by aggression, trolling, memes, etc. In that context, I’m glad that the Facebook group has:
A good selection of top-level posts, thanks to the efforts of moderators
A much better tone of discussion than most large groups (it’s very rare to see someone openly insult someone else without a moderator stepping in, and I saw quick action the one time I reported an aggressive comment)
A good amount of reasonable advice being given in response to quick questions (e.g. how to best persuade a company to add a charity to their matching program). Not all questions get good answers, but few seem to get bad answers.
I think that an outside observer who knew nothing about EA would look at the group and at least think “okay, these seem like well-meaning people who run a lot of different projects”. If they thought the discussion was especially aggressive or low-quality in an epistemic sense, and saw his as a reason to think poorly of EA, I’d question their ability to take Internet norms into account.
(That said, the discussion quality seems much lower than on the Forum, in smaller EA Facebook groups, or on Discord, and I understand why someone would feel dismayed at the thought of how much better it could theoretically be.)
The group seems very reasonable as a default place for people to be regularly reminded of EA topics as they go about their day.
I can’t think of a single large (5000+ people) Facebook group that regularly features interesting original discussions that aren’t intruded on by aggression, trolling, memes, etc. In that context, I’m glad that the Facebook group has:
A good selection of top-level posts, thanks to the efforts of moderators
A much better tone of discussion than most large groups (it’s very rare to see someone openly insult someone else without a moderator stepping in, and I saw quick action the one time I reported an aggressive comment)
A good amount of reasonable advice being given in response to quick questions (e.g. how to best persuade a company to add a charity to their matching program). Not all questions get good answers, but few seem to get bad answers.
I think that an outside observer who knew nothing about EA would look at the group and at least think “okay, these seem like well-meaning people who run a lot of different projects”. If they thought the discussion was especially aggressive or low-quality in an epistemic sense, and saw his as a reason to think poorly of EA, I’d question their ability to take Internet norms into account.
(That said, the discussion quality seems much lower than on the Forum, in smaller EA Facebook groups, or on Discord, and I understand why someone would feel dismayed at the thought of how much better it could theoretically be.)