The Nonlinear Library EA - Announcing Draft Amnesty Week (March 11-17) by tobytrem
Feb 27, 2024
05:17
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Announcing Draft Amnesty Week (March 11-17), published by tobytrem on February 27, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
TL;DR
The Forum will hold a Draft Amnesty Week from March 11th-17th.
Draft Amnesty Week is a chance to share unpolished drafts, posts you aren't sure you agree with, and drafts which have become too
ugh-y to finish.
We'll host smaller events and threads in the weeks before, to help you come up with ideas, prioritise your drafts, and polish anything that needs polishing. Keep an eye out (and read more below).
This is a variation on an event the Forum team ran in 2022:
see more here.
How does Draft Amnesty Week work?
Optionally - you take part in the buildup events this week and next week, to come up with ideas for posts to write, and find time to draft them.
During Draft Amnesty Week (March 11-17), you publish your draft post(s). To make it clear that they are a part of the Draft Amnesty event, you can put this table[1] at the top of your post, and tag the post with the Draft Amnesty Week tag. There'll be a banner up on the Forum.
Even if you don't post, you can give authors feedback! Vote, comment; help us all highlight the best ideas from the event.
After the week has ended, I'll write a round-up post reviewing some of the best submissions.
Why run Draft Amnesty Week?
Firstly, because I suspect that many of you have interesting outlines or half-drafted posts in your google drives. Draft Amnesty Week is a time when we have social permission to release these into the world (and to press your friends and colleagues into doing the same).
Linch's post from last time is a great example of an incomplete post which is much better out and published than in and unseen.
Secondly, because our last
Draft Amnesty event went really well. We got valuable posts like Clifford's
Lessons learned from Tyve, and a post on
lessons for AI governance from early electricity regulation, which would likely not have been made public at the time, if it wasn't for the event.
Timetable
This week (Feb 26 to March 3): Collecting Ideas
I've posted a question thread, asking: "What posts would you like someone to write?"
(like this past edition). Draft Amnesty Week is a great opportunity to have a crack at providing one of these posts, even if you aren't confident you can do a perfect job.
March 4-10: Writing Week
I'm running two events on the
EA gather.town
for Forum users to get together and hack together some drafts.
The first will be on March 5th from 10am-12pm UTC. Sign up here.
The second will be on March 7th from 6-8pm UTC. Sign up here.
I'll also post a thread asking "What posts are you considering writing?" (like
this one). This is an opportunity to gauge how excited the Forum is about your different ideas, and prioritise between them.
Draft Amnesty Week (March 11-17)
This is the week when we will actually post our drafts
Draft Amnesty Week FAQ
How draft-y is too draft-y?
My main recommendation is that 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:
"I was going to write something about how this problem applies to the problem of moral knowledge here, but reading this
Encyclopedia page because aversive, so I'm skipping over it for now"
However, it wouldn't be as valuable for the reader to see a bullet point such as:
"Insert moral knowledge stuff"
If you want a second pair of eyes, DM me and I'll look at your draft.
What if I don't want to see Draft Amnesty posts?
If you would like to opt out of seeing Draft Amnesty posts, go to the Frontpage, and follow the steps in the GIF below:
I'm worried my draft isn't high quality enough, should I still post it?
Short answer - yes.
Long answer - the karma system is designed to show people posts which the Forum community judge...
TL;DR
The Forum will hold a Draft Amnesty Week from March 11th-17th.
Draft Amnesty Week is a chance to share unpolished drafts, posts you aren't sure you agree with, and drafts which have become too
ugh-y to finish.
We'll host smaller events and threads in the weeks before, to help you come up with ideas, prioritise your drafts, and polish anything that needs polishing. Keep an eye out (and read more below).
This is a variation on an event the Forum team ran in 2022:
see more here.
How does Draft Amnesty Week work?
Optionally - you take part in the buildup events this week and next week, to come up with ideas for posts to write, and find time to draft them.
During Draft Amnesty Week (March 11-17), you publish your draft post(s). To make it clear that they are a part of the Draft Amnesty event, you can put this table[1] at the top of your post, and tag the post with the Draft Amnesty Week tag. There'll be a banner up on the Forum.
Even if you don't post, you can give authors feedback! Vote, comment; help us all highlight the best ideas from the event.
After the week has ended, I'll write a round-up post reviewing some of the best submissions.
Why run Draft Amnesty Week?
Firstly, because I suspect that many of you have interesting outlines or half-drafted posts in your google drives. Draft Amnesty Week is a time when we have social permission to release these into the world (and to press your friends and colleagues into doing the same).
Linch's post from last time is a great example of an incomplete post which is much better out and published than in and unseen.
Secondly, because our last
Draft Amnesty event went really well. We got valuable posts like Clifford's
Lessons learned from Tyve, and a post on
lessons for AI governance from early electricity regulation, which would likely not have been made public at the time, if it wasn't for the event.
Timetable
This week (Feb 26 to March 3): Collecting Ideas
I've posted a question thread, asking: "What posts would you like someone to write?"
(like this past edition). Draft Amnesty Week is a great opportunity to have a crack at providing one of these posts, even if you aren't confident you can do a perfect job.
March 4-10: Writing Week
I'm running two events on the
EA gather.town
for Forum users to get together and hack together some drafts.
The first will be on March 5th from 10am-12pm UTC. Sign up here.
The second will be on March 7th from 6-8pm UTC. Sign up here.
I'll also post a thread asking "What posts are you considering writing?" (like
this one). This is an opportunity to gauge how excited the Forum is about your different ideas, and prioritise between them.
Draft Amnesty Week (March 11-17)
This is the week when we will actually post our drafts
Draft Amnesty Week FAQ
How draft-y is too draft-y?
My main recommendation is that 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:
"I was going to write something about how this problem applies to the problem of moral knowledge here, but reading this
Encyclopedia page because aversive, so I'm skipping over it for now"
However, it wouldn't be as valuable for the reader to see a bullet point such as:
"Insert moral knowledge stuff"
If you want a second pair of eyes, DM me and I'll look at your draft.
What if I don't want to see Draft Amnesty posts?
If you would like to opt out of seeing Draft Amnesty posts, go to the Frontpage, and follow the steps in the GIF below:
I'm worried my draft isn't high quality enough, should I still post it?
Short answer - yes.
Long answer - the karma system is designed to show people posts which the Forum community judge...