Personally, I downvoted because I guessed that the post was likely to be of interest to sufficiently few people that it felt somewhat spammy. If I imagine everyone posting with that level of selectivity I would guess the Forum would become a worse place, so it’s the type of behavior I think should probably be discouraged.
As a reply, I feel like uncharitably downvoting things because you don’t think it matches the interests of large numbers of forums users is the sort of behaviour that should probably be discouraged.
Unless you think the poster is being insincere, I think it’s unhelpful and unfriendly to downvote what they say and thus discourage them. It contributes to the feeling EA is an unwelcoming place. If we only talk about causes people already find plausible then we will never improve the causes we work on, and it will drive away people interested in other causes.
I agree that posting about conferences is maybe not very exciting, but it’s not obvious this should be posted somewhere else. Facebook would be the alternative, but that not ideal for reasons not worth discussing here.
Personally, I downvoted because I guessed that the post was likely to be of interest to sufficiently few people that it felt somewhat spammy. If I imagine everyone posting with that level of selectivity I would guess the Forum would become a worse place, so it’s the type of behavior I think should probably be discouraged.
I’m not very confident about that, though.
As a reply, I feel like uncharitably downvoting things because you don’t think it matches the interests of large numbers of forums users is the sort of behaviour that should probably be discouraged.
Unless you think the poster is being insincere, I think it’s unhelpful and unfriendly to downvote what they say and thus discourage them. It contributes to the feeling EA is an unwelcoming place. If we only talk about causes people already find plausible then we will never improve the causes we work on, and it will drive away people interested in other causes.
I agree that posting about conferences is maybe not very exciting, but it’s not obvious this should be posted somewhere else. Facebook would be the alternative, but that not ideal for reasons not worth discussing here.
I upvoted the original post for balance.