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by MichaelA🔸
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2022 update: This is now superseded by a new version of the same open thread.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.

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MichaelA🔸6
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Retreat or Retreats

I think there are a fair few EA Forum posts about why and how to run retreats (e.g., for community building, for remote orgs, or for increasing coordination among various orgs working in a given area). And I think there are a fair few people who'd find it useful to have these posts collected in one place.

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Pablo
Makes sense; I'll create it. By the way, we should probably start a new thread for new Wiki entries. This one has so many comments that it takes a long time to load.
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MichaelA🔸
Thanks! And good idea - done
MichaelA🔸4
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Quadratic voting or Uncommon voting methods or Approval voting or something like that or multiple of these

E.g., this post could get the first and/or second tag, and posts about CES could get the second and/or third tag

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Pablo
Created. I may try to expand the description to also cover quadratic funding. (Both quadratic voting and quadratic funding are instances of quadratic payments, at least in Buterin's framing, so we could use the latter for the name of the entry. I used 'quadratic voting' because this is the name that people usually associate with the general idea.)  
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Pablo
The content of the old EA Concepts page is now part of the cost-effectiveness entry. However, it may be worth creating a separate entry on distribution of cost-effectivenss and moving that content there. I'll do that tomorrow if no one objects by then.
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Stefan_Schubert
Sorry, I hadn't seen that. I now added the "cost-effectiveness" tag to the first of these three articles, since that even has "cost-effectiveness" in the title. The other two articles are actually about differences in performance between people. Potentially that should have its own tag. But it's also possible that that is too small a topic to warrant that. I'd also be happy for an article on distribution of cost-effectiveness.
Pablo11
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Thanks. I'll take a look at the articles later today. My sense is that discussion of variation in performance across people is mostly of interest insofar as it bears on the question of distribution of cost-effectiveness, so I'd be tempted to use the distribution of cost-effectiveness tag for those articles, rather than create a dedicated entry.

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MichaelA🔸4
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Alignment tax

Here I'm more interested in the Wiki entry than the tag, though the tag is probably also useful. Basically I primarily want a good go-to link that is solely focused on this and gives a clear definition and maybe some discussion.

This is probably an even better fit for LW or the Alignment Forum, but they don't seem to have it. We could make a version here anyway, and then we could copy it there or someone from those sites could.

Here are some posts that have relevant content, from a very quick search:

... (read more)
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Pablo
Here's the entry. I was only able to read the transcript of Paul's talk and Rohin's summary of it, so feel free to add anything you think is missing.
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Pablo
Thanks, Michael. This is a good idea; I will create the entry. (I just noticed you left other comments to which I didn't respond; I'll do so shortly.)
MichaelA🔸2
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READI Research

https://www.readiresearch.org/ 

My guess is that this org/collective/group doesn't (yet) meet the EA Wiki's implicit notability or number-of-posts-that-would-be-tagged standards, but I'm not confident about that. 

Here are some posts that would be given this tag if the tag was worth making:

... (read more)
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MichaelA🔸2
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Tags for some local groups / university groups

I'd guess it would in theory be worth having tags for EA Cambridge and maybe some other uni/local groups like EA Oxford or Stanford EA. I have in mind groups that are especially "notable" in terms of level and impact of their activities and whether their activities are distinct/novel and potentially worth replicating. E.g., EA Cambridge's seminar programs seem to me like an innovation other groups should perhaps consider adopting a version of, and with more confidence they seem like a good example of a certain ... (read more)

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JasperGo9
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Biosurveillance

A central pillar for biodefense against GCBRs and an increasingly feasible intervention with several EAs working on it and potentially cool projects emerging in the near future. Possibly too granular as a tag since there's not a high volume of biosecurity posts which would warrant the granular distinction. But perhaps valuable from a Wiki standpoint with a definition and a few references. I can create an entry, if the mods are okay with it.

Example posts:

... (read more)
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Pablo
Hi Jasper, I agree that this would be a valuable Wiki article, and if you are willing to write it, that would be fantastic.
MichaelA🔸5
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Megaprojects

Would want to have a decent definition. I feel like the term is currently being used in a slippery / under-defined / unnecessary-jargon way, but also that there's some value in it. 

Example posts: 

Related entries:

Constraints on effective altruism

Scalably using labour

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MichaelA🔸6
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ETA: Now created

Corporate governance

Example of a relevant post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5MZpxbJJ5pkEBpAAR/the-case-for-long-term-corporate-governance-of-ai

I've mostly thought about this in relation to AI governance, but I think it's also important for space governance and presumably various other EA issues. 

I haven't thought hard about whether this really warrants an entry, nor scanned for related entries - just throwing an idea out there.

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MichaelA🔸4
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Brain-computer interfaces

See also the LW wiki entry / tag, which should be linked to from the Forum entry if we make one: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/brain-computer-interfaces

Relevant posts:

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Pablo
Looks good. I've now created the entry and will add content/links later.
MichaelA🔸4
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Time-money tradeoffs or Buying time or something like that

For posts like https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/g86DhzTNQmzo3nhLE/what-are-your-favourite-ways-to-buy-time and maybe a bunch of other posts tagged Personal development

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Pablo
Cool, I created the entry here. I may add some text soon.
Eevee🔹4
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Criticism of the EA community

For posts about what the EA community is like, as opposed to the core ideas of EA themselves. Currently, these posts get filed under Criticism of effective altruism even though it doesn't quite fit.

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Eevee🔹
Update: I have created Criticism of the effective altruism community.
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Aaron Gertler 🔸
Seems like a good idea! If we have three criticism tags covering "causes", "organizations", and "community", then having a general "criticism of EA" tag doesn't seem to make sense. The best alternative seems like "criticism of EA philosophy". If I don't hear objections from Pablo/Michael, I'll make that change in a week or so and re-tag relevant posts.
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MichaelA🔸
So the plan is to have 4 tags, covering community, causes, organizations, and philosophy? Is so, that sounds good to me, I think. If the idea was to have just three (without philosophy), I'd have said it feels like there's something missing, e.g. for criticism of the ITN framework or ~impartial welfarism or the way EA uses expected value reasoning or whatever.
MichaelA🔸4
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Arms race or Technology race or Arms/technology race something like that

Related entries

AI governance | AI forecasting | armed conflict | existential risk | nuclear warfare | Russell-Einstein Manifesto

--

I think such an entry/tag would be at least somewhat attention hazardous, so I'm genuinely unsure whether it's worth creating it. Though I think it'd also have some benefits, the cat is somewhat out of the bag attention-hazard-wise (at least among EAs, who are presumably the main readers of this site), and LessWrong have apparently opted for such a tag (focu... (read more)

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Pablo
Yes, I actually have a draft prepared, though it's focused on AI, just like the LW article. I'll try to finish it within the next couple of days and you can let me know when I publish it if you think we should expand it to cover other technological races (or have another article on that broader topic).
MichaelA🔸4
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Survey or Surveys

For posts that: 

  1. discuss results from surveys,
  2. promote surveys, and/or
  3. discussing pros and cons and best practices for using surveys in general and maybe for specific EA-relevant areas (e.g., how much can we learn about technology timelines from surveys on that topic? how best can we collect and interpret that info?). 

I care more about the first and third of those things, but it seems like in practice the tag would be used for the second. I guess we could discourage that, but it doesn't seem important.

"Survey" seems more appropriate... (read more)

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Pablo
Yeah, makes sense. There's some overlap with Data, but my sense is that having this other entry is still justified. I don't have a preference for plural vs. singular.
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MichaelA🔸
Ok, now created.
MichaelA🔸2
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Diplomacy

Might overlap too much with things like international relations and international organizations?

Would partly be about diplomacy as a career path.

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Pablo
Probably worth it, if there are enough relevant posts and/or if there's discussion here or elsewhere about diplomacy as a career path. 
MichaelA🔸4
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Coaching or Coaching & therapy or something like that

Basically I think it'd be useful to have a way to collect all posts relevant to coaching and/or therapy as ways to increase people's lifetime impact - so as meta interventions/cause areas, rather than as candidates for the best way to directly improve global wellbeing (or whatever). So this would include things like Lynette Bye's work but exclude things like Canopie.

In my experience, it tends to make sense to think of coaching and therapy together in this context, as many people offer both services, ... (read more)

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Pablo
Yes, makes a lot of sense. Not sure why we don't have such a tag already. Weak preference for coaching over coaching & therapy.
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MichaelA🔸
Ok, now created, with coaching as the name for now
MichaelA🔸7
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Independent impressions or something like that

We already have Discussion norms and Epistemic deference, so I think there's probably no real need for this as a tag. But I think a wiki entry outlining the concept could be good. The content could be closely based on my post of the same name and/or the things linked to at the bottom of that post.

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Stefan_Schubert
I agree that it would be good to describe this distinction in the Wiki. Possibly it could be part of the Epistemic deference entry, though I don't have a strong view on that.
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Pablo
How about something like beliefs vs. impressions?
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MichaelA🔸
Yeah, that title/framing seems fine to me
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Pablo
After reviewing the literature, I came to the view that Independent impressions, which you proposed, is probably a more appropriate name, so that's what I ended up using.
MichaelA🔸4
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Management/mentoring, or just one of those terms, or People management, or something like that

This tag could be applied to many posts currently tagged Org strategy, Scalably using labour, Operations, research training programs, Constraints in effective altruism, WANBAM, and effective altruism hiring. But this topic seems sufficiently distinct from those topics and sufficiently important to warrant its own entry.

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Pablo
Sounds good. I haven't reviewed the relevant posts, so I don't have a clear sense of whether "management" or "mentoring" is a better choice; the latter seems preferable other things equal, since "management" is quite a vague term, but this is only one consideration. In principle, I could see a case for having two separate entries, depending on how many relevant posts there are and how much they differ. I would suggest that you go ahead and do what makes most sense to you, since you seem to have already looked at this material and probably have better intuitions. Otherwise I can take a closer look myself in the coming days.
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MichaelA🔸
Ok, I've now made this, for now going with just one entry called Management & mentoring, but flagging on the Discussion page that that could be changed later. 
MichaelA🔸6
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United Kingdom policy & politics (or something like that)

This would be akin to the entry/tag on United States politics. An example of a post it'd cover is https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yKoYqxYxo8ZnaFcwh/risks-from-the-uk-s-planned-increase-in-nuclear-warheads 

But I wrote on the United States politics entry's discussion page a few months ago:

I suggest changing the name and scope to "United States government and politics". E.g., I think there should be a place to put posts about what actions the US government plans to take or can take, h

... (read more)
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Pablo
Yeah, makes sense. I just created the new article and renamed the existing one. There is no content for now, but I'll try to add something later.
Aaron Gertler 🔸4
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We've now redirected almost all of EA Concepts to Wiki entries. A few of the remaining concepts (e.g. "beliefs") don't seem like good wiki entries here, so we won't touch them.

However, there are a couple of entries I think could be good tags, or good additions to existing tags:

  1. Charity recommendations
  2. Focus area recommendations

It seems good to have wiki entries that contain links to a bunch of lists of charity and/or focus area recommendations. Maybe these are worked into tags like "Donation Choice"/"Donation Writeup", or maybe they're separate.

(Wherever the... (read more)

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Pablo
Charity evaluators, e.g. GiveWell and Animal Charity Evaluators, have Wiki entries with sections listing their current recommendations. One option is to make the charity recommendations entry a pointer to existing Wiki entries that include such sections. Alternatively, we could list the recommendations themselves in this new Wiki entry, perhaps organizing it as a table that shows, for each charity, which charity evaluators recommend it.
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Pablo
Yeah, how about communities adjacent to effective altruism?
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Stefan_Schubert
Sounds good! Thanks.
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Pablo
I created a stub. As usual, feel free to revise or expand it.
Eevee🔹2
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Open society

The ideal of an open society - a society with high levels of democracy and openness - is related to many EA causes and policy goals. For example, open societies are associated with long-run economic growth, and an open society is conducive to the "long reflection." This tag could host discussion about the value of open societies, the meaning of openness, and how to protect and expand open societies.

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Pablo
I agree that the concept of an open society as you characterize it has a clear connection to EA. My sense is that the term is commonly used to describe something more specific, closely linked to the ideas of Karl Popper and the foundations of George Soros (Popper's "disciple"), in which case the argument for adding a Wiki entry would weaken. Is my sense correct? I quickly checked the Wikipedia article, which broadly confirmed my impression, but I haven't done any other research.
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Eevee🔹
Yeah, maybe something broader like "democracy" or "liberal democracy." Perhaps we could rename the "direct democracy" tag to "democracy"?
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Aaron Gertler 🔸
The direct democracy tag is meant for investments in creating specific kinds of change through the democratic process. But people are using it for other things now anyway -- probably it's good to have a "ballot initiatives" tag and rename this tag to "democracy" or something else. Good catch!
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Pablo
Here's what I did: * I renamed direct democracy to ballot initiative. * I added two new entries: democracy and safeguarding liberal democracy. The first covers any posts related to democracy, while the second covers specifically posts about safeguarding liberal democracy as a potentially high-impact intervention. I still need to do some tagging and add content to the new entries.
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Pablo
I agree. I'll deal with this tomorrow (Thursday), unless anyone wants to take care of it.
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Stefan_Schubert
Yes, I think your sense is correct.
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MichaelA🔸
I do see this concept as relevant to various EA issues for the reasons you've described, and I think high-quality content covering "the value of open societies, the meaning of openness, and how to protect and expand open societies" would be valuable. But I can't immediately recall any Forum posts that do cover those topics explicitly. Do you know of posts that would warrant this tag? If there aren't yet posts that'd warrant this tag, then we have at least the following (not mutually exclusive) options: 1. This tag could be made later, once there are such posts 2. You could write a post of those topics yourself 3. An entry on those topics could be made * It's ok to have entries that don't have tagged posts * But it might be a bit odd for someone other than Pablo to jump to making an entry on a topic as one of the first pieces of EA writing on that topic? * Since wikis are meant to do things more like distilling existing work. * But I'm not sure. * This is related to the question of to what extent we should avoid "original research" on the EA Wiki, in the way Wikipedia avoids it * See also 4. Some other entry/tag could be made to cover similar ground
Aaron Gertler 🔸6
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Career profiles (or maybe something like "job posts"?)

Basically, writeups of specific jobs people have, and how to get those jobs. Seems like a useful subset of the "Career Choice" tag to cover posts like "How I got an entry-level role in Congress", and all the posts that people will (hopefully) write in response to this.

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EdoArad
What about posts that discuss personal career choice processes (like this)?
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MichaelA🔸
My personal, quick reaction is that that's a decently separate thing, that could have a separate tag if we feel that that's worthwhile. Some posts might get both tags, and some posts might get just one. But I haven't thought carefully about this. I also think I'd lean against having an entry for that purpose. It seems insufficiently distinct from the existing tags for career choice or community experiences, or from the intersection of the two.
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MichaelA🔸
Yeah, this seems worth having! And I appreciate you advocating for people to write these and for us to have a way to collect them, for similar reasons to those given in this earlier shortform of mine. I think career profiles is a better term for this than job posts, partly because: * The latter sounds like it might be job ads or job postings * Some of these posts might not really be on "jobs" but rather things like being a semi-professional blogger, doing volunteering, having some formalised unpaid advisory role to some institution, etc. OTOH, career profiles also sounds somewhat similar to 80k's career reviews. This could be good or bad, depending on whether it's important to distinguish what you have in mind from the career review format. (I don't have a stance on that, as I haven't read your post yet.)
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MichaelA🔸
Actually, having read your post, I now think it does sound more about jobs (or really "roles", but that sounds less clear) than about careers. So I now might suggest using the term job profiles. 
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Aaron Gertler 🔸
Thanks, have created this. (The "Donation writeup" tag is singular, so I felt like this one should also be, but LMK if you think it should be plural.)
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Pablo
Either looks good to me. I agree that this is worth having.
MichaelA🔸4
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Update: I've now made this entry.

Requests for proposals or something like that

To cover posts like https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EEtTQkFKRwLniXkQm/open-philanthropy-is-seeking-proposals-for-outreach-projects 

This would be analogous to the Job listings tags, and sort of the inverse of the Funding requests tag.

This overlaps in some ways with Get involved and Requests (open), but seems like a sufficiently distinct thing that might be sufficiently useful to collect in one place that it's worth having a tag for this.

This could also be an entry t... (read more)

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MichaelA🔸4
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Update: I've now made this entry.

Semiconductors or Microchips or Integrated circuit or something like that

The main way this is relevant to EA is as a subset of AI governance / AI risk issues, which could push against having an entry just for this.

That said, my understanding is that a bunch of well-informed people see this as a fairly key variable for forecasting AI risks and intervening to reduce those risks, to the point where I'd say an entry seems warranted.

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MichaelA🔸6
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Update: I've now made this entry.

Consultancy (or maybe Consulting or Consultants or Consultancies)

Things this would cover:

... (read more)
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Pablo
Yeah, I made a note to create an entry on this topic soon after Luke published his post. Feel free to create it, and I'll try to expand it next week (I'm a bit busy right now).
MichaelA🔸2
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Update: I've now made this entry.

Alternative foods or resilient foods or something like that

A paragraph explaining what I mean (from Baum et al., 2016):

nuclear war, volcanic eruptions, and asteroid impact events can block sunlight, causing abrupt global cooling. In extreme but entirely possible cases, these events could make agriculture infeasible worldwide for several years, creating a food supply catastrophe of historic proportions. This paper describes alternative foods that use non-solar energy inputs as a solution for these catastrophes. For example,

... (read more)
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Pablo
I'm in favor. Very weak preference for alternative foods until resilient foods becomes at least somewhat standard.
Pablo2
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I now feel that a number of unresolved issues related to the Wiki ultimately derive from the fact that tags and encyclopedia articles should not both be created in accordance with the same criterion. Specifically, it seems to me that a topic that is suitable for a tag is sometimes too specific to be a suitable topic for an article.

I wonder if this problem could be solved, or at least reduced, by allowing article section headings to also serve as tags. I think this would probably be most helpful for articles that cover particular disciplines, such as psycho... (read more)

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Aaron Gertler 🔸
These are reasonable concerns, but adding hundreds of additional tags and applying them across relevant posts seems like it will take a lot of time. As a way to save time and reduce the need for new tags, how many of your use cases do you think would be covered if multi-tag filtering was supported? That is, someone could search for posts with both the "psychology" and "career choice" tags and see posts about careers in psychology. This lets people create their own "fine-grained taxonomy" without so many tags needing to have a bunch of sub-tags.
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MichaelA🔸
I think something along these lines feels promising, but I feel a bit unsure precisely what you have in mind. In particular, how will users find all posts tagged with an article section heading tag? Would there still be a page for (say) social psychology like there is for psychology, and then it's just clear somehow that this page is a subsidiary tag of a larger tag? Inspired by that question, I think maybe a more promising variant (or maybe it's what you already had in mind) is for some article section headings to be hyperlinked to a page whose title is the other page's section heading and whose contents is that section from the other page, below which is shown all the tags with that section heading tag. Then if a user edits the section or the "section's own page", the edit automatically occurs in the other place as well.  And from "the section's own page" there's something at the top that makes it clear that this entry is a subsidiary entry of a larger entry and people can click through to get back to the larger one. Maybe the "something at the top" would look vaguely like the headers of posts that are in sequences? Maybe then you could even, like with sequences, click an arrow to the right or left to go to the page corresponding to the previous or following section of the overarching entry? Stepping back, this seems like just one example of a way we could move towards more explicitly having a nested hierarchy of entries where the different layers are in some ways linked together. I imagine there are other ways to do that too, though I haven't brainstormed any yet.
Pablo4
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Meta: perhaps this entry should be renamed 'Propose and vote on potential entries' or 'Propose and vote on potential tags/Wiki articles'? We generally use the catch-all term 'entries' for what may be described as either a tag or a Wiki article.

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MichaelA🔸
Yeah, I considered that a few weeks ago but then (somewhat inexplicably) didn't bother doing it. Thanks for the prod - I have now done it :) 
Pablo2
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I am considering turning a bunch of relevant lists into Wiki entries. Wikipedia allows for lists of this sort (see e.g. the list of utilitarians) and some (e.g. Julia Wise) have remarked that they find lists quite useful. The idea occurred to me after a friend suggested a few courses I may want to add to my list of effective altruism syllabi. It now seems to me that the Wiki might be a better place to collect this sort of information than some random blog. Thoughts?

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MichaelA🔸
Quick thoughts: * I think more lists/collections would be good * I think it's better if they're accessible via the Forum search function than if they're elsewhere * I think it's probably better if they're EA wiki entries than EA Forum posts or shortforms because that makes it easier for them to be collaboratively built up * And this seems more important for and appropriate to a list than an average post * Posts are often much more like a particular author's perspective, so editing beyond copyediting would typically be a bit odd (that said, a function for making suggestions could be cool - but that's tangential to the main topic here) * I don't think I see any other advantage of these lists being wiki entries rather than posts or shortforms * I think the only disadvantages of them being lists are that then we might have too many random or messy lists that have an air of official-ness or that the original list creator gets less credit for their contributions (their name isn't attached to the list) * But the former disadvantage can apply to entries in general and so we already need sufficient policies, other editors, etc. to solve it, so doesn't seem a big deal for lists specifically * And the former disadvantage can also apply to entries in general and so will hopefully be partially solved by things like edit counters, edit karma, "badges", or the like * So overall this seems worth doing Less important: * Various "collections" on my own shortform might be worth making into such entries * Though I think actually most of them are better fits for the bibliography pages of existing entries * (And ~ a month ago I added a link to those collections, or to all relevant items from the collections, to the associated entries that existed at the time)
MichaelA🔸4
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Update: I've now made this entry

career advising or career advice or career coaching or something like that

We already have career choice. But that's very broad. It seems like it could be useful to have an entry with the more focused scope of things like:

  • How useful do various forms of career advising tend to be?
  • What are best practices for career advising?
  • What orgs work in that space?
    • E.g., 80k, Animal Advocacy Careers, Probably Good, presumably some others
  • How can one test fit for or build career capital in career advising?

This would be analogous to how we hav... (read more)

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Pablo
Yes, definitely. I already had some scattered notes on this. There's also the 80k podcast episode: Wiblin, Robert & Keiran Harris (2019) The team trying to end poverty by founding well-governed ‘charter’ cities, 80,000 Hours, March 31. An interview with Mark Lutter and Tamara Winter from the Charter Cities Institute.
Stefan_Schubert6
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Effective Altruism on Facebook and Effective Altruism on Twitter (and more - maybe Goodreads, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc). Alternatively Effective Altruism on Social Media, though I probably prefer tags/entries on particular platforms.

A few relevant articles:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8knJCrJwC7TbhkQbi/ea-twitter-job-bots-and-more

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6aQtRkkq5CgYAYrsd/ea-twitterbot

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mvLgZiPWo4JJrBAvW/longtermism-twitter

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BtptBcXWmjZBfdo9n/ea-fa... (read more)

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MichaelA🔸
At first glance, I'd prefer to have Effective altruism on social media, or maybe actually just Social media, rather than the more fine-grained ones. (Also, I do think something in this vicinity is indeed worth having.) Reasoning: * I'm not sure if any of the specific platforms warrant an entry * If we have entries for the specific platforms, then what about posts relevant to effective altruism on some other platform? * We shouldn't just create an entry for every other platform there's at least one post relevant to, nor should we put them all under one of the other single-platform-focused tags. * But having an entry for Facebook, another for Twitter, and another for social media as a whole seems like too much? * Regarding dropping "Effective altruism on" and just saying "Social media": * Presumably there are also posts on things like the effects of social media, the future trajectory of it, or ways to use it for good or intervene in it that aren't just about writing about EA on it? * E.g., https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/842uRXWoS76wxYG9C/incentivizing-forecasting-via-social-media * And it seems like it'd be good to capture those posts under the same entry? * Though maybe an entry for social media and an entry for effective altruism on social media are both warranted? Though also note that there's already a tag for effective altruism in the media, which has substantial overlap with this. But I think that's probably ok - social media seems a sufficiently notable subset of "the media" to warrant its own entry. (Btw, for the sake of interpreting the upvotes as evidence: I upvoted your comment, though as I noted I disagree a bit on the best name/scope.)
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MichaelA🔸
(Just wanted to send someone a link to a tag for Social media or something like that, then realised it doesn't exist yet, so I guess I'll bump this thread for a second opinion, and maybe create this in a few days if no one else does)
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Pablo
I don't have accounts on social media and don't follow discussions happening there, so I defer to you and others with more familiarity.
MichaelA🔸2
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Something like regulation

Intended to capture discussion of the Brussels effect, the California effect, and other ways regulation could be used for or affect things EAs care about.

Would overlap substantially with the entries on policy change and the European Union, as well as some other entries, but could perhaps be worth having anyway.

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MichaelA🔸2
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Update: I've now made this entry.

software engineering

Some relevant posts:

Related entries

artificial intelligence... (read more)

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Pablo
Looks good to me.
MichaelA🔸6
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Maybe we should have an entry for each discipline/field that's fairly relevant to EA and fairly well-represented on the Forum? Like how we already have history, economics, law, and psychology research. Some other disciplines/fields (or clusters of disciplines/fields) that could be added:

  • political science
  • humanities
    • I think humanities disciplines/fields tend to be somewhat less EA-relevant than e.g. economics, but it could be worth having one entry for this whole cluster of disciplines/fields
  • social science
    • But (unlike with humanities) it's probably better to h
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Pablo
I'm overall in favor. I wonder if we should take a more systematic approach to entries about individual disciplines. It seems that, from an EA perspective, a discipline may be relevant in a number of distinct ways, e.g. because it is a discipline in which young EAs may want to pursue a career,  because conducting research in that discipline is of high value, because that discipline poses serious risks, or because findings in that discipline should inform EA thinking. I'm not sure how to translate this observation into something actionable for the Wiki, though, so I'm just registering it here in case others have thoughts along these lines.
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MichaelA🔸
Yeah, I do think it seems worth thinking a bit more about what the "inclusion criteria" for a discipline should be (from the perspective of making an EA Wiki entry about it), and that the different things you mention seem like starting points for that. Without clearer inclusion criteria, we could end up with a ridiculously large number of entries, or with entries that are unwarranted or too fine-grained, or with entries that are too coarse-grained, or with hesitation and failing to create worthwhile entries. I don't immediately have thoughts, but endorse the idea of someone generating thoughts :D
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Stefan_Schubert
I agree that humanities disciplines tend to be less EA-relevant than the social sciences. But I think that the humanities are quite heterogeneous, so it feels more natural to me to have entries for particular humanities disciplines, than humanities as a whole. But I'm not sure any such entries are warranted; it depends on how much has been written.
MichaelA🔸2
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Vetting constraints

Maybe this wouldn't add sufficient value to be worth having, given that we already have scalably using labour and talent vs. funding constraints.

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Pablo
I think there should definitely be a place for discussing vetting constraints. My only uncertainty is whether this should be done in a separate article and, if so, whether talent vs. funding constraints should be split. Conditional on having an article on vetting constraints, it looks to me that we should also have articles on talent constraints and funding constraints. Alternatively, we could have a single article discussing all of these constraints.
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MichaelA🔸
I think I agree that we should either have three separate entries or one entry covering all three. I'm not sure which of those I lean towards, but maybe very weakly towards the latter?
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MichaelA🔸
Just discovered Vaidehi made a collection of discussions of constraints in EA, which could be helpful for populating whatever entries get created and maybe for deciding on scopes etc.