{"items": [{"author": "\u05e0\u05d7", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818101890132", "anchor": "fb-818101890132", "service": "fb", "text": "How do you think organizations *should* come forward about their mistakes? How is organization accountability different from individual?", "timestamp": "1476473730"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818101890132&reply_comment_id=818115023812", "anchor": "fb-818101890132_818115023812", "service": "fb", "text": "→ In the case of organizations that primarily exist for public benefit, I think they should have as much be public by default as possible. Strategy documents, budget, spending, board meetings, mailing lists, issue trackers, source control, postmortems, event write-ups, meeting minutes, etc. Things that need to be restricted to only some people (personnel issues, interorganizational disputes, user data, etc) should be handled in fora that are specifically set of for those things only.
But we can't have this unless we can build a norm where people don't get jumped on, at least not until sharing is widespread enough that we can identify the actually egregious incidents.", "timestamp": "1476475789"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818101890132&reply_comment_id=818120762312", "anchor": "fb-818101890132_818120762312", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Some examples, for things somewhat under my control:
* A lot of BIDA stuff could be more open, but I haven't generally been able to get the rest of the board to sign onto this. For example, I'd like our attendance, financials, dance reports, how-to documents, and meeting minutes to all be public by default. Instead at this point I've generally only been able to publish examples and graphs but not tables. [1][2][3]
[1] https://www.jefftk.com/p/bida-dance-reports
[2] https://www.jefftk.com/.../bida-health-attendance-and...
[3] https://www.jefftk.com/.../raw-attendance-and-financial...
* Basically all the code we write at work is open [4][5] but most of our code reviews are internal. This is mostly a tool-quality issue: the internal google code review tools are much better than the one on github, and I think my coworkers are right in thinking that the cost of using the worse tool is not worth the increase in transparency. Github keeps improving theirs, however, so I hope we'll be able to switch at some point. Discussion and planning also tends to happen on internal mailing lists, with people generally using the public pagespeed-dev list [6] when they remember to, or when a discussion needs to be external. Issue tracking [7][8] and prioritization [9] are fully external, except for security issues which can't be.
[4] https://github.com/pagespeed/mod_pagespeed
[5] https://github.com/pagespeed/ngx_pagespeed/
[6] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pagespeed-dev
[7] https://github.com/pagespeed/mod_pagespeed/issues
[8] https://github.com/pagespeed/ngx_pagespeed/issues
[9] https://github.com/.../mod.../wiki/Work-Prioritization", "timestamp": "1476477756"}, {"author": "Howie", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818112079712", "anchor": "fb-818112079712", "service": "fb", "text": "[Speaking just for me. Not my employer.]
Agree with all of this. But there's also a risk on the other extreme where transparency becomes so highly valued in itself that it becomes an all purpose defense that reduces accountability for the substantive failure. I'm not sure how to do a good job hitting this balance.", "timestamp": "1476474813"}, {"author": "Richard", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818112079712&reply_comment_id=818468844752", "anchor": "fb-818112079712_818468844752", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I'm not too worried about your last sentence. If an organization fails, and then discloses that it failed because cut corners on some industry-accepted standard of practice, then the organization will be pilloried no matter how much transparency they provide.", "timestamp": "1476585380"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818112079712&reply_comment_id=818527846512", "anchor": "fb-818112079712_818527846512", "service": "fb", "text": "→ @Richard: I'm much less worried about EA organizations failing in a \"publicly exploding\" sense, but instead in a \"fails to be anywhere near as effective as it could be\" sense.", "timestamp": "1476618457"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818112079712&reply_comment_id=818527991222", "anchor": "fb-818112079712_818527991222", "service": "fb", "text": "→ For most organizations trying to do good in the world (charities etc) it's very easy to keep failure internal because no one is checking up on them. EA organizations have somewhat more oversight, but still they could have failures, not make them public them, and continue appearing to function well.", "timestamp": "1476618545"}, {"author": "Richard", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818112079712&reply_comment_id=818616673502", "anchor": "fb-818112079712_818616673502", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff Kaufman , that's a good point. I suppose that some kinds of failure would be measurable. E.g., an org that distributes low-price mosquito nets might show a poor ratio of donations per per net distributed. The worrisome part is about failures that only staff would know about, e.g. the org decides not to distribute nets in a hard-to-reach village. Maybe review of meeting minutes would show such a thing, or maybe open standards would mean that such discussions never take place at documented meetings.", "timestamp": "1476644827"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818114484892", "anchor": "fb-818114484892", "service": "fb", "text": "I think the best equilibrium is:
a) Outsiders apply a reasonable standard of skepticism towards unverified claims.
b) Orgs respond to this incentive when determining how much to disclose.
c) Orgs that want to maximize impact also consider value to their mission of having mistakes pointed out.", "timestamp": "1476475478"}, {"author": "Alice", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818114484892&reply_comment_id=818141096562", "anchor": "fb-818114484892_818141096562", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Skepticism is costly. If we could find a way to establish a high trust norm that would be very valuable.", "timestamp": "1476480632"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818114484892&reply_comment_id=818142069612", "anchor": "fb-818114484892_818142069612", "service": "fb", "text": "→ A justified high-trust norm probably involves a lot of disclosure on (c) grounds, but in that case criticism of mistakes is a benefit anyway.", "timestamp": "1476481311"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818114484892&reply_comment_id=818142119512", "anchor": "fb-818114484892_818142119512", "service": "fb", "text": "→ And throwing all our resources in a pit and setting it on fire is much, much more costly than skepticism.", "timestamp": "1476481375"}, {"author": "Kathy", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818114484892&reply_comment_id=821439671192", "anchor": "fb-818114484892_821439671192", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Con artists go exploiting wherever it's easier to go about undetected just like cat burglars or pick pockets. For that reason, I find the idea of a high trust norm unsettling.", "timestamp": "1477841101"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818114484892&reply_comment_id=821441073382", "anchor": "fb-818114484892_821441073382", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Why would that be easier in a high-trust setting?", "timestamp": "1477841715"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818114484892&reply_comment_id=821442031462", "anchor": "fb-818114484892_821442031462", "service": "fb", "text": "→ To clarify - it seems to me like high-trust pretty much requires high-openness to work. Someone with a secret, divergent agenda should stick out pretty clearly in that case.", "timestamp": "1477841857"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818114579702", "anchor": "fb-818114579702", "service": "fb", "text": "(a) seems like the missing factor here, & without it there will always be perverse incentives.", "timestamp": "1476475527"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818121820192", "anchor": "fb-818121820192", "service": "fb", "text": "Counterargument, to some extent: https://www.google.com/.../12732252/against-transparency...", "timestamp": "1476478200"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818121820192&reply_comment_id=818123806212", "anchor": "fb-818121820192_818123806212", "service": "fb", "text": "→ This probably doesn't apply to budgets, but may apply to things like meeting notes: you may be better off not forcing discussions that people don't want public into other venues.", "timestamp": "1476478391"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818121820192&reply_comment_id=818125023772", "anchor": "fb-818121820192_818125023772", "service": "fb", "text": "→ With meeting notes, I'm happy for there to be public portions and private portions, ideally with tools that make this easy for the people creating them. I definitely don't want to force things into unrecorded media by pushing too hard!", "timestamp": "1476478683"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818121820192&reply_comment_id=818133067652", "anchor": "fb-818121820192_818133067652", "service": "fb", "text": "→ (The main argument I take from the Yglesias piece is that mandating transparency for all uses of a medium gets people that have things that need to not be public, or people who don't value transparency, to move to other media that aren't so transparent. So my response is \"don't mandate that!\")", "timestamp": "1476478786"}, {"author": "Carl", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818121820192&reply_comment_id=818138890982", "anchor": "fb-818121820192_818138890982", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Megan McArdle response to that piece:
https://www.bloomberg.com/.../if-business-is-open-to...", "timestamp": "1476479755"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818121820192&reply_comment_id=818150153412", "anchor": "fb-818121820192_818150153412", "service": "fb", "text": "→ @Carl: private companies do use less convenient non recorded media instead of email to avoid having things become public (primarily in lawsuits), and it's annoying. They also only keep email for short times for similar reasons.", "timestamp": "1476483258"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818121820192&reply_comment_id=818150906902", "anchor": "fb-818121820192_818150906902", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Also, Yglessias' point is that people respond to enforced unwelcome transparency in one medium by switching to others in a way that has downsides, while I'm mostly talking about transparency in situations where people wish others in their position were more open.", "timestamp": "1476483694"}, {"author": "Alice", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=818121820192&reply_comment_id=821443593332", "anchor": "fb-818121820192_821443593332", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff Kaufman When I was in high school, the School Board minutes were public by default, but the Board could vote to enter a non-public session (which also required that observers leave) and was (as far as I know) done whenever a specific person was discussed, and only then.", "timestamp": "1477842156"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/818094210522?comment_id=989269169532", "anchor": "fb-989269169532", "service": "fb", "text": "The responses to https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/.../long-term-future... include both a bunch of people pushing the incentives the wrong way and few highly upvoted comments (ex: Ben's https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/.../long-term-future...) which are reminding people to think about the effects of what they're saying.", "timestamp": "1554991870"}]}