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Joyce Alvino1
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The people that need these things are not all here. I would suggest you  consider posting this in other EA communities like the facebook groups and see if you can get more opinions. In my opinion, such website does not necessarily need to have thousands of users to be highly effective. One does not need to have "critical mass" in the common sense of the word in relationship to large scales. If a handful of people per week regularly use and routinely find solutions from such a "marketplace", it can still be said to be effective because with every connection made and solution found via the platform, many hours will be saved (time that would have been spent looking for and screening various providers if there was no marketplace like this).

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by John Salter
1 min read6 answers 0

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CommunityCommunity projects
Frontpage

Vision

Amazon / Upwork hybrid where all the sellers/buyers/freelancers are EAs.

Why

  • Many EA run businesses would offer better deals to EAs

  • EAs trust each other more than strangers

  • The cost of being a bad buyer / seller are much higher (so people behave better)

Details

  • 10% commission to cover running costs, all proceeds fund community projects

  • You can only sign up via a refferals (once initial users recruited)

  • Classic stars out of 5 rating system for rating products/services

How to vote

Agreevote on "yes" to vote yes

Agreevote on "no" to vote no

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6 Answers sorted by
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Yonatan Cale

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  1. What product [I'm asking for a concrete example] would you put on this marketplace?
  2. What "cost" of being a bad buyer/seller [I'm asking for a concrete example] might you suggest?
  3. Do you think that having such a cost would create a more healthy situation than a negative review on Amazon?

My main reason for voting "no" is that I don't expect good answers to these questions, so if you have such answers (which cause me to also say "yes" to question 3), that would probably change my mind somewhat.

 

My secondary (but still big) pushback is that marketplaces need a critical mass of buyers and sellers, and creating such a critical mass is hard (and, in my opinion, a core problem and not a side note that can surely be solved somehow).

 

I do, btw, think that improving the level of marketplaces in the world is generally really great if it can somehow be done.

John Salter8
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  1. Products / Services examples

  • Overcome, the world greatest mental health charity, offer free behaviour change coaching for EAs (I'm not biased)

  • GoalsWon offer free accountability buddy services to EAs (especially founders)

  • Amber Dawn does paid editing for EA forum posts

  • There's a bunch of therapists who specialise in EAs

  • I offer coaching for EAs wanting to start a charity on a tiny budget, and writing/editing for important emails / grant applications etc

  • Mind Ease have an app they're willing to give to EAs for free (anxiety).

  • There's a load

... (read more)
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Yonatan Cale
Ah, this sounds more like what I'd call a "list of services" and less like like what I'd call a "marketplace". What I mean by this is "very few (even only 1) provider in each category" (as opposed to trying to get many providers to compete). I'd also be happy if such providers would have an open way of getting long text feedback publicly (as opposed to only 1-5 stars)
John Salter1
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Critical mass could indeed be hard, I'm making this post to see if there's enough demand to make it worth the while.

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Joyce Alvino1
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The people that need these things are not all here. I would suggest you  consider posting this in other EA communities like the facebook groups and see if you can get more opinions. In my opinion, such website does not necessarily need to have thousands of users to be highly effective. One does not need to have "critical mass" in the common sense of the word in relationship to large scales. If a handful of people per week regularly use and routinely find solutions from such a "marketplace", it can still be said to be effective because with every conne... (read more)

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John Salter1
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Costs of being bad

Big community = being terrible is easy to get away with. You're less likely to see people again

Small comuunity = being terrible is hard to get away with.

Whole internet = big EA = small

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Ivy Mazzola

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I think this would be great for people who aren't on facebook and so can't use the bountied rationality facebook page. That page is super handy for commissioning research and such. But I do like the bounty system. Would be awesome to have both a bounty section (services needed) and a worker profile section (services offered)

Wil Perkins2
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Could you link that page?

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Ivy Mazzola
Sure but you require mod approval to join. (I'll take down this link if someone thinks I should)  DM me for the link or just search for it
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Yonatan Cale
I personally think it's better not to have this link public (but ok to send it privately) Reason: This group works so well partly because of such a good fit of people, and I think trolls/bots might break that. [I'm not a mod/admin in the group, just a participant] [when I'm not sure if it's ok to post a link publicly, I err on asking a mod/admin]
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Joyce Alvino
Thanks for this, I searched and found it (its actually a group and not a page). But I can't help but  wonder what would happen if for some (inexplicable) reason facebook decides to shutdown the group. Yes, it happens.
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Wil Perkins
Thanks!
[comment deleted]1
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Deleted by Joyce Alvino,
MathiasKB🔸5
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Yes to some variant of this.

a simple directory of services and prices seems sufficient, no need to a platform which charges commission and unnecessarily complicates things. These features are needed for non-ea work to make up for a lack of trust, but unnecessary here

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david_reinstein

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Yes especially for earn-to-give people /donors/pledgers because I would hope a share of the 'profit' would go to a good cause

But maybe this can be done on existing platforms with correct labelling linking.

Where do I 'agree vote'? I can't figure this out.

John Salter3
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Click the tick on my comment that just says "Yes"

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DAOMaximalist

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I agreevote YES (hope I did it correctly). 

Maybe "marketplace" might not be the best word to describe the service considering the (probably) limited number of people that might use it. 

But IMHO you don't really need to have thousands of users for a project to be useful or worthwhile. Even without large numbers of users, if lots of EAs know about the "marketplace" and make use of it regularly and it becomes a kind of goto hub then it would still be effective enough for its original purpose despite not having thousands of users or massive scale.

As long as the platform can be sustainable, I think it is worth a try. Aside from the few examples given in your reply in the comments, there are probably lots of other stuff we have not thought about.

In summary, even if this does not have thousands of users and/or scale, I would personally love to have a central location where EAs know to go to find such services and service providers. With enough info about it, I believe people will find it useful.

Yonatan Cale4
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(I decided to use the "agree" here to indicate "no", as opposed to using the upvote/downvote. I recommend you make it explicit what you prefer. 

I also think you don't need a message for both "yes" and "no" since we can vote both up and down)

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John Salter
I'd like to know how many people are in each category. It's not clear to me how I'd differentiate between [0 votes] and [100 votes for, 100 votes against] otherwise
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Larks
You can mouse over the total to see how many individual votes there are (though this does not differentiate strong votes).
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Yonatan Cale
1. If you hover over the number, you'll see how many voters there are 2. If you prefer to keep them separate (legit, especially since some people's vote causes more karma), then I'd ask people (A) to specifically agreevote (B) specifically to the comment they agree with (and not both), or something like that
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John Salter
Have updated post accordingly, asking for agreevotes on whichever comment you agree to
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Ivy Mazzola
I just upvoted the "yes" so that it would be above the "no", so users don't have to scroll past all these comments to see both options. Another option is to now delete these comment
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