This is something we’re still trying to figure out since taking over the project earlier this year (and it is, for good reasons, the most common question I get when talking to users about the board). For many people the other boards will already do a good job if you’re looking for these types of roles. We’re still evaluating the amount of resources we want to spend on improving the board, alongside talking to students and group members to better understand what they find useful.

My thinking on the unique value of the Opportunities board is still developing, but here are some ways I’m thinking about the board being useful:

• A less intimidating space for the specific audience it’s targeting. Many group organisers use the board to show group members or people who just heard about EA.
• By focusing only on part-time roles we may be able to get much more breadth here than the other boards are able to, including opportunities that don’t fit neatly on a job board. I’m especially optimistic about finding ways to source more local opportunities outside of US and Europe (something 80k isn’t focusing on right now but which @Conor Barnes 🔶 mentioned has been requested)
• I could also imagine the EA brand and EA website being more effective at driving traffic than e.g. Probably Good, which may mean we should in fact not be strongly niched but instead also start showing full time roles (especially with 80k’s move towards more AI Safety roles)
• More exposure to good opportunities seems valuable in general. Some people will come across 80k or Probably Good, others will find the Opportunities board. We’ve already heard impact stories from people who found a role here they wouldn’t otherwise have seen, either because it wasn’t on the other boards, or because they weren’t looking there at the time.

I’m still exploring if this is the right niche and how to communicate it more clearly. For now I’m fairly optimistic the board is helping people find work they otherwise wouldn’t, which makes me excited to keep developing and growing it.

Any tips for writing about EA ideas in general? Curious about common mistakes you see people make, like commonly used framings or word choices that don't resonate with a broader audience.

Like @Toby Tremlett🔹 I did a quick initial vote and will come back and edit my vote once I've read more marginal funding posts + see who's in the lead. 

(Another plug here for the Spotify playlist we created with the marginal funding posts in case you (like me) prefer listening to posts)

🎧 We've created a Spotify playlist with this years marginal funding posts. 

Posts with <30 karma don't get narrated so aren't included in the playlist.

I'd love this too, thanks both for pushing this forward. I think it'd be great to have a space similar to the Groups resource centre, but for comms about EA (including visualisations like these). Would probably make sense to host on https://effectivealtruism.org so that journalists, policy makers, etc. can also find and use them. This work could fit within the realms of redesigning effectivealtruism.org too, since a big part of that work is to better communicate EA to the world...

Drew this one for @Toby Tremlett🔹, who took some liberties with "animal":

I’m part of a working group at CEA that’s started scoping out improvements for effectivealtruism.org. Our main goals are:

1. Improve understanding of what EA is (clarify and simplify messaging, better address common misconceptions, showcase more tangible examples of impact, people, and projects)
2. Improve perception of EA (show more of the altruistic and other-directedness parts of EA alongside the effective, pragmatic, results-driven parts, feature more testimonials and impact stories from a broader range of people, make it feel more human and up-to-date)
3. Increase high-value actions (improve navigation, increase newsletter and VP signups, make it easier to find actionable info)

For the first couple of weeks, I’ll be testing how the current site performs against these goals, then move on to the redesign, which I’ll user-test against the same goals.

If you’ve visited the current site and have opinions, I’d love to hear them. Some prompts that might help:

• Do you remember what your first impression was?
• Have you ever struggled to find specific info on the site?
• Is there anything that annoys you?
• What do you think could be confusing to someone who hasn't heard about EA before?
• What’s been most helpful to you? What do you like?

If you prefer to write your thoughts anonymously you can do so here, although I’d encourage you to comment on this quick take so others can agree or disagree vote (and I can get a sense of how much the feedback resonates).

Some of these features were released last month but only announced now (post reactions and the author improvements). Some features we’re launching together to reduce the amount of times users feel surprised by things changing (right sidebar on the Frontpage, “Recent discussion” redesign, Best of page, etc.). There are pros and cons to both continuous releases and bundled releases, this time we did a bit of both.

Forum team update: Shortform is now called “Quick takes”, has a section on the Frontpage, and changed in some other smaller ways. 

Here’s what’s new:

• Shortform is now called “Quick takes” (Shortform was confusing to many people)
• There’s a section for Quick takes on the Frontpage to improve visibility (you can still post Quick takes that don’t show up on the Frontpage; just deselect the “Frontpage” tag). Those will only show up in the separate view
• Some other design changes to make things clearer and easier to use:
  • There’s an input field in the section on the Frontpage, so you can add a Quick take there directly
  • Improvements to the page where all of an author’s Quick takes are shown
  • Other visual changes to the Quick takes and the creation flow

Rationale/context:

In some cases, Forum users want to share (and read) less polished ideas or other content that doesn’t seem like a full post on the Forum. Shortform was designed years back to fill this gap, but the Shortform feature was tucked away, hard to read, and had a name that most users didn’t understand. 

Over the past few months, we’ve been exploring ways to encourage lower-barrier discussions, culminating in this latest version of Quick takes.

As always, we’d love feedback on these changes. You can comment on my Quick take (or email us if you prefer). We’ll also monitor how this feature gets used and improve it over time.

I appreciate this observation, this is something I'd like to keep an eye on. The reason I changed it is because many newer users we spoke to didn't understand why some comment bubbles were blue and some not. I assumed this to be because turning something blue when unread isn't a commonly used design pattern elsewhere on the internet (unless it's a blue circle next to the unread thing). My hope with the new design is that it will be more easily understood as "new and unread" since it uses a pattern more widely known to mean that. That said, I agree with you that it's less eye-catching than before, and if you feel like you constantly miss new comments due to this change, I'd love to know