Somehow I'm the first to commit publicly to posting my draft. Makes your job easier to keep me accountable though.
I'll be tidying up but probably posting unfinished my post about why I think people should move their bank accounts to a bank that more aligns with their beliefs.
Thanks for organizing this! :)
Minor thing, but this post says the week ends on October 19 while the banner on the Forum homepage says it ends on October 18. I assume it's fine to post on October 19?
Yes please! This has come up before, there are some non-overlapping conventions here about how to represent spans of dates. I'll fiddle with the banner to make it clearer. Thanks!
How do you get the yellow box with the draft amnesty text to put at the top?
The box is on the tag page here. Apologies - I removed it because it formatted weirdly in email.
It also formats weirdly on mobile
This year, I’m holding a second Draft Amnesty Week (October 13-19), a week for publishing un-finished, below-standard, uncertain, or long-languishing posts.
You can read the Draft Amnesty posts from March, here.
If you want to make sure you stay up to date on Forum events like this, you can follow our EA Forum events Google calendar.
PS- In the (sometimes lazy, but ultimately functional) spirit of Draft Amnesty, much of this post is adapted from the last Draft Amnesty announcement.
To help people get ideas for draft amnesty posts, there are two threads pinned on the Frontpage, for people to write about:
You can use these posts to get ideas, encouragement, or accountability.
Draft Amnesty is about posting drafts you have sitting around. It's also about drafting ideas you've had for a while but don't have the time or inclination to properly turn into posts.
If you want some people to draft with (during this week or whenever), I'd recommend writing a quick take, and organising to meet people in EA Gather town at a particular time. I may also set up a thread for Forum users to organise Gather co-writing sessions, if there is enough interest.
I'll be at EAG NYC at the end of the week. If I see you, you'd best believe I'll be asking you for drafts.
Draft Amnesty begins...
If you have any questions which aren’t answered here, please ask them in the comments below, or message me. No question is too small for a message.
Draft Amnesty is an event which has run ~annually on the Forum for a few years. Many readers of the forum have some draft posts sitting in a Google Drive somewhere — posts that are too hard to finish, posts without clear conclusions, or posts that otherwise don’t live up to their normal standards. Draft Amnesty is an opportunity to let those posts out, with the reputational cover of it being 'Draft Amnesty Week'.
The Draft Amnesty we ran early this year garnered 52 posts, including 14 at or above 50 karma. That makes it a stand-out week for good Forum content (but don’t let that stop you from posting something you aren’t sure is good - many of the top posters felt the same).
I’m interested whether the Forum audience could use a second Draft Amnesty Week. Will we get a similar number of posts?
During Draft Amnesty Week, anyone can publish a post, as draft-y or polished as you like, tagged Draft Amnesty Week (2025) (We'll use the same tag as March's event). The only thing necessary to mark it as a Draft Amnesty post is the tag, but if you like, you can also copy the table (from this link) which allows you to contextualise your post for the readers.
These posts will be marked as Draft Amnesty posts on the frontpage, with a coloured "Draft Amnesty" tag. If readers don't want to see Draft Amnesty posts, they can filter them out, as shown on the GIF below in the post (i.e. you won't be annoying anyone who only wants to see polished posts).
Many posts last year were very draft-y while still being valuable. For example, see these posts with bullet point notes, collections of ideas, and full essay outlines.
Draft Amnesty posts can be fully polished. Draft Amnesty is also an excellent opportunity to post something you aren't sure is suitable for the Forum, or you aren't sure you still endorse, even if it is a polished post. For example, last year I posted this post, which was actually very polished (I'd spent months on it) - but which I wouldn't have posted without the nudge from Draft Amnesty.
Draft Amnesty posts can sometimes be too draft-y. The reader should be able to understand your writing, even if it is incomplete, unpolished, or skeletal. For example, it is okay to have a bullet point such as:
However, it wouldn’t be as valuable for the reader to see a bullet point such as:
If you want a second pair of eyes- dm me.
Short answer — yes please.
Long answer — the karma system is designed to show people posts that the forum community judges are valuable for forum readers. It isn't always perfect, and good posts with niche audiences aren't always given much karma. But if you are unsure whether people will find your draft valuable, you can defer to the karma system to decide. If you're finding yourself wavering on the decision, please lean towards posting!
Some more forum writing encouragement can be found in Lizka's thoughts on writing on the Forum (though she isn't writing with Draft Amnesty Week in mind).
If you want an unbiased arbiter, dm me, and I'll look at your draft.
If you would like to opt out of seeing Draft Amnesty posts, go to the Frontpage, and follow the steps in the GIF below (adjusted for the Draft Amnesty (2025) tag):
Thanks for asking. Still Shrek. Still no one, not even dreamworks, has complained.
If you like, you can use the comments to commit to posting drafts. Just say something like "I'll post my draft about X" and then I'll check in with you later, to see if you need some accountability.
(semi-commitment for accountability)
I'm considering writing more about how a big part of AI safety seem to be implicitly built upon an underlying worldview and we have rarely challenged that worldview.