EA - Contact people for the EA community by Julia Wise

The Nonlinear Library

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: Contact people for the EA community, published by Julia Wise on September 6, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
This post is an update of an older post originally from 2018. If you're familiar with our older policies, we suggest looking at our
new confidentiality policy before bringing us sensitive information. This post reflects one part of the team's broader work.
We (Julia Wise, Catherine Low, and Charlotte Darnell) are the community liaisons at the
Community Health and Special Projects team at the Centre for Effective Altruism. If you've encountered a problem in the community, we'd like to help!
Ways to contact us
The best way to reach all of us is the
community health contact form (can be anonymous)
Julia:
[e-mail] or anonymous
form
Catherine: [e-mail] or anonymous
form
Charlotte:
[e-mail] or anonymous
form
How we might be able to help
Here are some circumstances in which you might contact us:
To discuss something you experienced in the EA community that made you uncomfortable
To get advice about a difficult community or interpersonal problem you (or your project/group/organization) is facing
To let us know if you believe a person or organization in EA has engaged in harmful behavior (harassment, mean behavior, dishonesty, etc)
Examples of work we've done since the team started in 2015:
Advising organizers of EA groups and online spaces on handling problems or conflicts
Supporting community members trying to get help for another community member who's having a mental health crisis
Talking to people about problems their behavior has caused and what we think they should do differently
Working with the CEA events team to restrict people from events based on past serious problem behavior
Please have a low bar for getting in touch! Even if we don't have time for an in-depth discussion with you, any information you can give us is useful data that could help us to spot patterns of problems in the community.
If you contact us, here's what might happen next
These are common responses, rather than a complete list or what will definitely happen.
If you have questions about confidentiality or what kinds of steps we might take, we'll aim to answer those first.
If you send us information but don't have any requests, we might just acknowledge your message, or we might follow up with questions.
We'll listen to the concern you want to share. It's ok if your thoughts are unstructured or if you're not sure what should happen next!
We might help you brainstorm ways you or your group can manage the problem.
We might share considerations that might be important for your decision-making, like
Different perspectives on the concern
Possible positive and negative consequences of different actions
How similar concerns have played out in the past in our experience
We'll talk through possible steps, like
Us talking to the person who caused the problem about changes we think they should make
You or us informing others, like a local group organizer, about the problem
Steps CEA might take in its own programs, like not admitting someone to our conferences
Referring you to other institutions that could provide help, like HR departments, legal
resources, or law enforcement
Sometimes after discussing the situation, people decide they don't want any steps taken now, but might want steps if more problems arise.
We'll discuss any other steps we need to take (e.g. if we think someone is at serious risk, as discussed below in the confidentiality section).
Confidentiality
We know people who bring us sensitive situations care a lot about what happens with the information. If you get in touch, please tell us what level of confidentiality you want. We might ask your permission to share information so that we ...