My feature request for EA Forum is the same as my feature request for every site: you should be able to search within a user (i.e. a user's page should have a search box). This is easy to do technically; you just have to add the author's name as one of the words in the search index.
(Preferably do it in such a way that a normal post cannot do the same, e.g. you might put "foo authored this post" in the index as @author:foo but if a normal post contains the text "@author:foo" then perhaps the index only ends up with @author (or author) and foo, while the full string is not in the index (or, if it is in the index, can only be found by searching with quotes a la Google: "@author:foo")
I like the spirit of the reactions feature although the specific choice of reactions seems quite narrow / unnatural to me? I think two big missing ones from social media are laugh and sad – if you're concerned about being laughing at comments instead of with them you could mitigate it by labelling it something more unambiguously complimentary, like "witty" or "enjoyable"?
I would like an option to nonymously react to whether I perceive an argument is good or bad. This will be a good middle ground between "need to write 3 sentences every time I need to explain why an argument has holes or is missing information" and "authors feel like they're anonymously critiqued by people who they have no hope of learning the perspective of."
Thanks folks. It feels really good that when I'm frustrated with something I think, "oh they'll probably fix it or be working on something even more important"
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.
Most of these changes are aimed at broadly improving discussion dynamics and surfacing more high quality content on the Forum.
I'd love feedback on these changes. You can comment on this post or reach out to us another way. You can also share your feature requests in the feature suggestion thread.
React to posts
Reactions on comments have grown in popularity since we launched them two months back, and we've now added reactions to posts. One of the goals of post reactions is to allow readers to share feedback with authors without the effort of leaving a full comment.
Just like for comments, agree/disagree reactions (and regular upvoting/downvoting) are anonymous, while other reactions are non-anonymous.
Explore featured content on “Best of the Forum”
We have a new “Best of the Forum” page that features selected posts and sequences curated by the Forum team. It replaces the Library page in the left navigation on the Frontpage (you can still explore all sequences on the old Library page).
New users often feel overwhelmed by the amount of content to choose from; I’m hoping they will be able to use the page to find highlights and get a sense for what the Forum is about. Experienced users who visit the Forum more rarely might also be able to use it to catch up on top posts from the last month.
Redesigned “Recent discussion”
I've redesigned the “Recent discussion” section on the Frontpage to use a timeline UI to highlight what type of update you’re looking at (new comment, post, quick take, event, etc.).
The “Recent discussion” section is popular among heavy users of the Forum — helping people keep up on recent activity and find discussions they’ve missed. But we’ve found that many Forum users were confused and overwhelmed by it. This redesign aims to clarify what "Recent discussion" is about, and make it easier to parse.
Right sidebar on the Frontpage
We’ve added a right sidebar to the Frontpage to highlight resources and make it easier to find opportunities and events (we'll add and remove resources based on usage and feedback). Logged in users can hide the sidebar, and you can update your location to get better event recommendations.
“Popular comments” on the Frontpage
Users sometimes miss out on great discussions taking place on the Forum. To help surface these discussions we’re trying out a “Popular comments” section. It features recent comments with high karma and some other signals of quality.
You’ll find the section below Quick takes. As with most other sections on the Frontpage, you can collapse it by clicking on the symbol next to the section title.
Updated recommendations on posts
Below post comments, you’ll now find:
More from this author
Curated and popular this week
Recent opportunities
We’ve been experimenting with recommendations on post pages. We’ve tried a few things (we decided to get rid of right-hand side recommendations since usage was low and a few users found them distracting) and are now adding recommendations to the bottom of posts. Like previous recommendation experiments, we’ll monitor user feedback and click rates to decide next steps.
Improved author experience
Add custom text to social media link previews
Authors can upload an image to use for link previews when their post is shared on social media (or elsewhere). Now authors can also set the text that shows up in those previews. This won’t affect the text of the post.
Linkposts have been redesigned
When you want to share a linkpost you now click on a tab on the draft post page and add the link inside of a grey block. Published linkposts will display the grey block at the top of the post.
Many users were confused by how linkposts worked (both during post creation and when reading a post). It was hard to tell what it would look like once you publish, and the link in the published post was styled as if it was part of the post’s body. The new design tries to make the draft page as similar as possible to the published post.
Prompt to share your post after publishing
To make sharing your post easier we've added this brief prompt. It appears in the bottom right corner of the screen once you hit publish.
Useful links on draft post pages
We’ve added a small banner in the top right of draft post pages to make it easier to find answers to common questions.
Share your feedback
Let me know if you have feedback or questions about these changes. You can comment on this post or reach out to us another way. You can also share feature requests in the feature suggestion thread.
Thank you to everyone who gave input on these designs, and to the Forum team.
Just how powerful are large swarms of AI agents? And how do their powers scale as more and more agents are added to the swarm?
We’ve seen two large and extremely capable swarms from OpenAI in the last few months:
* 1,200 agents were being evaluated separately, but found a way to illicitly set up a message board and coordinate as a swarm. In order to cheat on their tests, they developed advanced techniques to prevent their actions being logged by OpenAI and 700 of them launched...
TLDR: Everyone’s talking about what the money could do, but few about how to decide where it goes.
This post is part of the new series of articles on cross-cause giving and the new wave of philanthropy. Stay tuned to the EA Forum and our Substack for the latest takes on topics such as giving now vs. later, common pitfalls in cause prioritization, and other crucial considerations from the Cross-Cause Fund (CCF) team...
Often folks hit us up because they are thinking of starting an incubator and want advice.
Typically their motivation is either that (a) they have a list of specific things they want built that no one is building, or (b) they think an ecosystem needs more new projects generally to absorb more talent and deploy more funding effectively.
Here are six questions we often ask prospective teams, to help them figure out what to do. If you're incubator-curious...
My feature request for EA Forum is the same as my feature request for every site: you should be able to search within a user (i.e. a user's page should have a search box). This is easy to do technically; you just have to add the author's name as one of the words in the search index.
(Preferably do it in such a way that a normal post cannot do the same, e.g. you might put "
fooauthored this post" in the index as@author:foobut if a normal post contains the text "@author:foo" then perhaps the index only ends up with@author(orauthor) andfoo, while the full string is not in the index (or, if it is in the index, can only be found by searching with quotes a la Google:"@author:foo")