I came to define myself as a non-standard Effective Altruist. I've always been interested in Effective Altruism, way before I've even heard of EA. When I was younger, I simply thought I was altruist, and that what people did was ... noise at best. Basically, naive ways to relieve one's conscience and perpetuate one's culture.
Since primary school I thought about global problems and solutions to these problems. So much so that the word "project" internally connotes "project solving some global problems". As such, EA should have interested me.
However, it didn't. The main reason was that I saw EA as some other charitists. I've always been skeptical toward charity, the reason being "They think too small" and "There are too much funding in standard solutions rather than in finding new ones".
I think this exemplifies a problem about EA's communication.
Most people I know got to know Effective Altruism through EffectiveAltruism.org.
Because of that website, these people see EA as a closed organization that help people to direct funds to better charities and find better careers.
That was my opinion of EA until I saw the grant offer : a closed organization with already defined solutions wouldn't fund new ideas. As such, I changed my outlook of EA. I researched a bit more about it, and found an open and diverse community.
But I am busy person, therefore I have to use filters before putting more time in researching about something. I made my impression from :
What convinced me of that impression was the website's content :
I didn't stop there, and I read more of that website, but it was along those same lines.
Counting me, my friends and people I met on LW and SSC, this directly led to losing 10-15 potential altruists in the community. Given that we were already interested in applying rationality to changing the world and my situation is not isolated (the aforementioned website is the first hit for "Effective Altruism" on Google), I do think that it is an important issue to EA.
Well, about the website :
But more than changing the website, I think that lacking to EA is a platform dedicated to collective thinking about new ideas.
Projects don't happen magically : people think, come to an idea, think more about that idea, criticize it, and if all goes well, maybe build a plan out of it, gather, and begin a project together.
If we truly want new projects to emerge, having such a platform is of utmost importance.
The current forum doesn't cut it : it isn't meant to that end. It's easier to build a forum dedicated to that than try to artificially support a balance between "New Ideas" posts and "Information Sharing" posts so that none of these get overshadowed. The same problem applies to existing reddit boards and facebook groups.
That platform should contain at least the following :