EA - Why don't people post on the Forum? Some anecdotes by Vaidehi Agarwalla

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Why don't people post on the Forum? Some anecdotes, published by Vaidehi Agarwalla on October 3, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. I know lots of people who want to write for the Forum, but who struggle to actually get their posts written. I think this is bad - it means that we miss out on useful knowledge and insight, and that Forum posts are skewed towards users who: are more self-confident have less impostor syndrome have more spare time feel more comfortable with writing Below, I share some anecdotes I’ve heard from acquaintances and people on EA Twitter about why they don’t post on the Forum. Then, I make some brief suggestions for things you can do if this post resonates. So why don’t people post? All of the stories below are real examples, but with the names and some other details changed for anonymity. Some of these stories come from private conversations; others from Twitter. I also know other specific examples I haven’t described in this post. I want to zoom out and see the big picture, before diving into examples. Aaron Bergman was kind enough to make this plot of unique authors over time (the big jump is likely due to all the competitions recently). Ideally, I would have liked to talk about Forum stats like the proportion of lurkers to commentors and posters, since the increase in authorship is correlated with a jump in overall activity, but that data was not available. I think the positive trend could be exciting, but there has also been some discussion about quality of Forum posts dropping recently. Many of the people I write about had ideas that I think would add meaningful ideas to the current discourse, and don't seem to have changed their minds on this in the last few months. They don’t have time Many people want to post, but struggle to find the time to write their ideas. Often, these are busy domain experts with valuable ideas and knowledge to share. For example, an acquaintance in the alt-protein industry told me that lots of useful information is not public, because the work on it is happening in the private sector. However, they didn’t have time to write about this themself. Even if someone does (eventually) post their ideas, delays can be costly. A grantmaker I know wanted to write about the risks of megaprojects. They worried that megaprojects could turn out to be an EA talent sink, drawing people away from more resource-effective (if smaller) projects; but they didn’t have time to write about this. If people are convinced, they might fund or take on fewer megaprojects and avoid the possible harms. I think that it’s especially important to make it easier for time-poor people to post on the Forum. I’ve had many incredibly informative conversations with experts like this; it’s a shame that their knowledge is not more widely available. They don’t think they can meet the Forum’s high standards Some people worry that because standards on the Forum are so high (rightly), they don’t have much to contribute. A Twitter user writes: ‘given the opportunity cost of time and the frequency of high-quality posts on the forum, it seems possibly net negative to post anything that dilutes the quality’. Others say similar things: one felt that ‘the bar is so high for quality and finality’; another believes they’d have to ‘clear a very high bar’. They feel initimidated, nervous or scared about how their posts will be received (if at all) Lots of people feel intimidated about posting on the Forum. An acquaintance in the finance industry wanted to make the case for exploring the potential to nudge ESG criteria to be more EA-aligned, since it influences trillions of dollars of investments. Conversations with friends discouraged them; they felt like they ‘had to write a whole scientific thesis just to not be torn apart.’ (This person was also time poor). Others ...