Comments
This was a helpful introduction to the forum. I previously felt slightly intimidated at the idea of posting on the forum but this post made me feel much more comfortable doing so.
This was a helpful introduction to the forum. I previously felt slightly intimidated at the idea of posting on the forum but this post made me feel much more comfortable doing so.
Thanks for the guidelines.
Is there any policy (or existing discussion) on commenting on old posts? Is anything relevant enough to be worth adding to posts that are years old, or do you prefer that replies (across years) become their own posts linking to the original ones?
I'd generally side with "comment", since that lets anyone else who reads the old posts see your comment, and avoids having lots of unlinked posts spring up over the years around a single central post.
If you think an older post is worth revisiting (with or without your new comment as context), you can try sharing it on social media (here's a list of EA Facebook groups) or in the next Open Thread (I'm trying to encourage these to happen more often, since they're useful for cases like the one you mention).
Of course, sometimes a comment winds up having enough material to be its own post, and that's fine! I'd err on the side of "comment", but new ideas related to an old post may well demand posts of their own.
(I work with Julia at CEA, and I help to moderate the Forum.)
Note for now: all existing posts and comments from the old Forum will be transferred over to the new one once the final version is done.
Sometimes I'd like to write on a topic that is only tangentially related to EA--for example, the simulation argument. Is this a good place to do that, or should I save that sort of thing for a different forum?
Are there any other philosophy-related forums you recommend?
Well, LessWrong is good for some philosophy-related things. That's my go-to. Other than that I don't know, alas.
I notice that some writers (e.g. Hauke in his recent post about the cost effectiveness climate change interventions) have something just above the comments section a note about their personal commenting guidelines. This seems like a potentially really useful feature. Not every user seems to have this though.
EDIT: I assume this relates to the feature on LessWrong described here where users can add moderation guidelines to their own posts so that they can treat LessWrong like a personal blog to some degree. This seems like a good way to encourage more people to post. Is there a similar feature on the EA Forum? If so, how does it work here?
Good noticing. One facet of the LessWrong feature is that as users pass a certain amount of karma they gain privileges. I believe that high karma users such as Eliezer (on LW) or Peter Hurford (here) can moderate their own posts, even on the frontpage. I think very low karma users may not be able to moderate posts that remain on their personal blog. Given the EA Forum's differences in how we treat the personal blog / frontpage distinction, we may want to diverge from LW's feature-set here. I haven't touched it since I was initially setting up the Forum, and I'm not sure how I left it. I'm not sure all of the features are there. Certainly we'd want to write up a user's guide for the feature. I appreciate the comment. When we were setting up the Forum it wasn't top priority, but very plausibly the landscape has changed. Without making a public commitment (😛), I wouldn't be surprised if that fix got prioritized – it does seem useful for encouraging people to post.
Hey JP, don't worry I won't hold you to anything :-) I know you guys have a lot on. I think the feature of setting your own moderation guidelines at a certain karma level is a good one. It encourages top posters and also encourages the whole community to take more responsibility for good quality conversations. If you did get the chance to figure out how this was currently working on the EA Forum (e.g. at what karma level to individuals get what moderation features) and perhaps enact something similar to the LessWrong version that would be cool. Let me know what you end up deciding to do.
I forgot to say this when I deployed it, but own-post moderation is now available. See this part of the LessWrong FAQ for how it works:
https://www.lesswrong.com/faq#What_moderation_actions_can_I_take_on_my_own_posts_
That's great! Thanks for sorting that so quickly and for letting me know.
Are upvotes anonymous or is there a way to view who upvoted your comments / posts? I'm not saying it should be one way or another, just curious.
Upvotes (and downvotes) are anonymous.
Is there a tutorial for the markdown editor? Atm I am trying to figure out how to include an internal link (a link to a header in the same post) ... but not sure what that should look like.
The Forum doesn't have built-in support for internal links, in either editor.
Internal links take the form of PostURL#subheading_title_with_spaces_represented_by_underscores, with punctuation and extra spaces taking the form of additional underscores.
You can also right-click on a subheading and select "copy link address" to get the URL on your clipboard. Or just click the subheading and see what URL shows up in your address bar.
If you want to push for an internal links feature, use this thread (not sure if someone else has suggested yet, you may want to look around a bit).
Ok I added a +1 for an existing comment suggesting this
How long can posts be edited for?
Depends on your AI timelines.
There's no limit to when you can edit a post.
Are there any rules, worries or encouragements about comments?
commenting, encouraging commenting on posts, inviting comments from experts from within EA community and outside experts, commenting on posts by colleagues, being kind to first-time posters etc?
The comment-thread UI is weird and unwieldy on desktop - I can't scroll up to see earlier stuff, I can only scroll down.
Okay. Biggest concern: If this is meant to be forum rules, it's not where it needs to be. I have not seen a TOS or a set of rules before I got an account, and as a forum veteran I was looking for those.
Second-biggest concern: Social norms are not universal. Netiquette varies by website. What exactly do you mean by 'rude'?
Finally, this looks like it could be compressed a lot. (Bolding sections so you can skim more easily is actually a bad sign.) I like rules a lot better if they're concise - fitting into one screen.
(Note: No longer a moderator, just thinking out loud.)
If this is meant to be forum rules, it's not where it needs to be. I have not seen a TOS or a set of rules before I got an account, and as a forum veteran I was looking for those.
The "About the Forum" page is linked from the main menu, which appears on every page of the Forum. I assume that the title made it sound like it wasn't worth checking to look for rules, which is helpful to know.
Things that could make the rules easier to find, in case moderators want to try a change:
Social norms are not universal. Netiquette varies by website. What exactly do you mean by 'rude'?
Are there any sites that you think do a good job of defining terms like "rude"?
I checked a few places with good reputations. Here's r/ChangeMyView, which keeps things really simple but has flourished nonetheless:
Here's Hacker News, which offers more specific advice than the above, but generally seems to be at a similar level of specificity/simplicity to the EA Forum:
Quora has this, and is much more thorough than the Forum (the "Be Nice, Be Respectful" page is very detailed).
Do you favor something like their approach? It's more "universal", maybe, but also much less concise — and it seems like those things will always trade off with each other.
Even a scrollover requires that the user be actively trying to explore the site on a meta level - and the mobile-based UX has made finding the sitenav bar a nontrivial endeavor! I would at least put it as the 'before you start typing' background.
r/ChangeMyView is, by its' very subject, going to dodge most of the reasons a forum would need to enforce policies like this. The approach also seems quite dependent on moderators.
Hacker News has the best debate policy I've ever seen. I do have a soft spot for snark, but I can live without it. Thank you for introducing me to it!
Quora looks so elitist. 'Correct' grammar and punctuation? No-explanation 'hate speech'? Also, most of their content policy is only incorporated by linking it, which is a huge pet peeve of mine. (I'm the sort of person who tries to actually read any contract I agree to, and lying about how long the TOS is feels so disrespectful.)
This was very interesting, thank you!
Note: "If you want to add one or more co-authors to your post, you’ll need to contact the Forum team..." is no longer the easiest way to add co-authors, so might want to be updated accordingly.
And by the way, thanks for adding this new feature!
Thanks for the notice — looks like we just merged this feature from LW! Thrilled to now be removing this from the post.
As of April 2022, this has been replaced by the new "How to use the Forum" sequence.
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I can't find a set of instructions for how to format my post. I'm using a laptop with Chrome. There are no buttons for creating headings etc, and no instructions. To be honest, I'm finding it very stressful.
As an update, I realized it's a markdown editor, looked up instructions of how to format stuff, and hated every minute of it. It's such a disincentive for me to post stuff!
If you go to "Edit account", there's a check box that says "Activate markdown editor". If you un-check that one (I would've expected it to be unchecked by default, but maybe it isn't) you get formatting options just by selecting your text.
Yeah, it's definitely unchecked by default. We are currently working on an editor rework that should get rid of this annoyance. We currently need to allow users to switch to markdown to make it possible for mobile users to properly edit stuff, but that shouldn't be a problem anymore after we are done with the rework.
Ugh, thank you. What a nightmare!