2022 update: This is now superseded by a new version of the same open thread.
(I have no association with the EA Forum team or CEA, and this idea comes with no official mandate. I'm open to suggestions of totally different ways of doing this.)
Update: Aaron here. This has our official mandate now, and I'm subscribed to the post so that I'll be notified of every comment. Please suggest tags!
2021 update: Michael here again. The EA's tag system is now paired with the EA Wiki, and so proposals on this post are now for "entries", which can mean tags, EA Wiki articles, or (most often) pages that serve both roles.
The EA Forum now has tags, and users can now make tags themselves. I think this is really cool, and I've now made a bunch of tags.
But I find it hard to decide whether some tag ideas are worth including, vs being too fine-grained or too similar to existing tags. I also feel some hesitation about taking too much unilateral action. I imagine some other forum users might feel the same way about tag ideas they have, some of which might be really good! (See also this thread.)
So I propose that this post becomes a thread where people can comment with a tag idea there's somewhat unsure about, and then other people can upvote it or downvote it based on whether they think it should indeed be its own tag. Details:
- I am not saying you should always comment here before making a tag. I have neither the power nor the inclination to stop you just making tags you're fairly confident should exist!
- I suggest having a low bar for commenting here, such as "this is just a thought that occurred to me" or "5% chance this tag should exist". It's often good to be open to raising all sorts of ideas when brainstorming, and apply most of the screening pressure after the ideas are raised.
- The tag ideas I've commented about myself are all "just spitballing".
- Feel free to also propose alternative tag labels, propose a rough tag description, note what other tags are related to this one, note what you see as the arguments for and against that tag, and/or list some posts that would be included in this tag. (But also feel free to simply suggest a tag label.)
- Feel free to comment on other people's ideas to do any of the above things (propose alternative labels, etc.).
- Make a separate comment for each tag idea.
- Probably upvote or downvote just based on the tag idea itself; to address the extra ideas in the comment (e.g., the proposed description), leave a reply.
- Maybe try not to hold back with the downvotes. People commenting here would do so specifically because they want other people's honest input, and they never claimed their tag idea was definitely good so the downvote isn't really disagreeing with them.
Also feel free to use this as a thread to discuss (and upvote or downvote suggestions regarding) existing tags that might not be worth having, or might be worth renaming or tweaking the scope of, or what-have-you. For example, I created the tag Political Polarisation, but I've also left a comment here about whether it should be changed or removed.
This seems plausibly useful to me.
Obviously it’d overlap a lot with the Forecasting tag. But if it’s the case that several posts include Elicit forecasts but most posts tagged Forecasting don’t include Elicit forecasts, then I imagine a separate tag for Elicit forecasts could be useful. (Basically, what I’m thinking about is whether there would be cases in which it’d be useful for someone to find / be sent a collection of links to just posts with Elicit forecasts, with the Forecasting tag not covering their needs well.)
But maybe a better option would be to mirror LessWrong in having a tag for posts about forecasting and another tag for posts that include actual forecasts (see here)? (Or maybe the latter tag should only include posts that quite prominently include forecasts, rather than just including them in passing here and there.) Because maybe people would also want to see posts with Metaculus forecasts in them, or forecasts from Good Judgement Inc, or just forecasts from individual EAs but not using those platforms. And I’d guess it’d make more sense to have one tag where all of these things can be found than to try to have a separate tag for each.
(That’s just my quick thoughts in a tired state, though.)
It could also be handy to have a tag for posts relevant to “Ought / Elicit” - I think it’d probably be good to bundle them together but note Elicit explicitly - similarly to how there’s now tags for posts relevant to each of a few other orgs (e.g. Rethink Priorities, FHI, GPI, QURI). So maybe the combination of a tag for posts that contain actual forecasts and a tag for Ought / Elicit would serve the role a tag for posts containing Elicit forecasts would?