Toby Tremlett🔹

Content Manager @ CEA
5377 karmaJoined Working (0-5 years)Oxford, UK

Bio

Participation
2

Hello! I'm Toby. I'm Content Manager at CEA. I work with the Online Team to make sure the Forum is a great place to discuss doing the most good we can. You'll see me posting a lot, authoring the EA Newsletter and curating Forum Digests, making moderator comments and decisions, and more. 

Before working at CEA, I studied Philosophy at the University of Warwick, and worked for a couple of years on a range of writing and editing projects within the EA space. Recently I helped run the Amplify Creative Grants program, to encourage more impactful podcasting and YouTube projects. You can find a bit of my own creative output on my blog, and my podcast feed.

How I can help others

Reach out to me if you're worried about your first post, want to double check Forum norms, or are confused or curious about anything relating to the EA Forum.

Sequences
2

Best of: Existential Choices Week
Existential Choices: Reading List

Comments
403

Topic contributions
72

Again I'd say it depends on whether anything bad happens the longer you wait - I'd personally want to make sure I'd got feedback from Sinergia before I published. Sounds like they are quite happy to look at it with a fairly short turnaround, but my first step would be to send the piece to them and ask them how long they need to properly respond to it. 

Maybe I am misunderstanding, I took this email as saying that you were sending them the post before posting in order for them to review, and clarify anything that needs clarifying (I also understand this as the point of sending the article for their review anyway- doesn't seem like there is much point if they don't have time to respond?)

The assumption is that since you are asking for their response, it's in their court to tell you how long a response would take. Maybe that's wrong, and you didn't mind whether or not they had time to send you a response, but that's the implication of their email.  

Here's the request you're looking for:

"after reviewing them, we will inform you of the time required to provide our response".

A couple other points in response:

  • "If 24 hours was sufficient for our volunteers, we believed it would be fair for Sinergia as well." feels like a false equivalency. They have many other pressing priorities, and responding to your criticisms takes time and probably knowledge of multiple programmes, which might take time to coordinate.
  • Some of your email communications came across as pretty hostile (or at least low-trust), and some were friendly and collaborative. I think this might explain some of the differences in how people respond to you. For example, the email before the call where you asked for written consent from all participants seemed like a very low-trust and (if you were already inclined to think that way, as someone who had received critique may be) hostile move. When journalists (who are a good model here) write articles, they often allow interviews 'on background' (i.e. interviews where they can use the context they learn, but not name or quote the source). I'd personally recommend that in a case like this - otherwise the interviewee won't be able to speak freely/ correct themselves etc... in fear of being taken out of context. I think you'll get a better response from organisations if you adopted more of a vibe of 'trust but verify' rather than the current position, which seems to begin by assuming bad faith (whether you actually do or not, this is the vibe). 

[edited because I published with half a sentence at the end] Also, wanted to add that again, I'm very glad that you're responding to the opinions of others on this, and giving Sinergia more time to respond. Thanks again for being open to changing your mind. 

I love that there is a disagree react: "hmm... no, seems like the most cost-effective economic growth boosting intervention is not in fact cat mascots"

Hi VettedCauses. (Disclaimer: not posting this as a mod, though I am one).

The 24-hour deadline doesn't seem ideal from your perspective or from theirs. The benefit of sharing a draft with a charity is two-directional: you learn further context which can stop you from publishing uninformed arguments/ make your case stronger and they get to respond in a timely manner (ideally at the same time the critique is published) meaning that your critiques will be more likely to be taken constructively. I get the impression that you are underweighting the benefits to you. 24 hours is very short notice for a busy charity, and barely gives them more notice than just publishing the post. To get the benefits of sharing the draft, I'd strongly recommend (as Jason also suggests in the comments) liaising with the charity to find out how long they need to respond appropriately before you publish. 

Unless there is something in the post which needs to be urgently announced (i.e. it's particularly action-relevant in the next couple of days) or holding off for longer seriously decreases the odds of you publishing the critique at all, I don't see the case for publishing now without feedback.

PS - thank you for being open to changing your approach with these articles. It's really important to have independent and thoughtful evaluations of charities (it's part of what we are here for), and I'm grateful that you're willing to adjust your methods based on feedback from the Forum readers and the charities. 

This is something we should think about more as a mod team- I'll discuss it with them.

Our current politics policy is still this. But it arguably wasn't designed with our current situation in mind. In my view, it'd be a bad thing if discussions on the Forum became too tied to the news cycle (It generally seems true that once something is on the news, you are at least several years too late to change it), our impact has historically not been had by working in the most politically salient areas (neglectedness isn't a perfect proxy but it still matters). However, it'd also be wrong if the Forum couldn't discuss politically salient issues while they are going on, and there is something readers could do to stop them. 

FWIW in this particular situation (and I haven't conferred with the mod team) I don't see this thread as being against Forum rules, because the participants could reasonably believe (or for that matter, not believe) that preventing authoritarian takeover in the US is a relevant cause area to EA. 

To be clear - which some people appreciate:

  • I disagree reacted because I don't support you falling off a motorcycle.
  • I laugh reacted because that's quite funny.

Thanks for giving feedback! I looked at this particular quick take again before April Fool's to make sure we'd fixed the issue. Thanks to @JP Addison🔸 for writing the code to make the tags visible.  

You guys overused the button... so we're putting Bulby on bed rest for a bit. 

Look at the poor guy:
Generated image

Load more