PauseAI•11mo ago

Onboarding Process Reset

This project needs a small group of volunteers for a re-write of the overall process of onboarding, as well as drafting and publishing some templates.

The process needs to follow a structure which pulls people in via the website join page (getting airtable information) and then directs towards the discord. We also want to integrate more regular community welcome meetings, and have an easy early action for people to participate in digitally. Finally, the process needs to (where possible) connect people to their National Chapter for in-person events.

We need to add detail to the above process to outline the 'Join Pathway' of new members, as well as drafting and publishing the following:
- a revised Website join page
- a easy online action draft (petition/open letter etc)
- Revised discord welcome questions
- automated email to new members (draft here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1niiA12cw4oi_5nwRYMdh9TJLQvbMrgIffoKMcD1Gb8k/edit?usp=sharing)
- draft runsheet for the standard community welcome meeting (reference to be attached below)
- calendar for meeting times

This project will involve a 30 minute catch up per week until completed and approximately one half day focused work to contribute meaningfully to planning and drafting.

Ultimate product sign off by Will, Ella and Joep

wispy-yellowOP•2/26/25, 3:38 PM

@Will Petillo @Pato Vercesi

colossal-harlequin•2/26/25, 8:35 PM

(Since there will be implementation work on the website, I'd love to lurk in the catch-up. I'm unlikely to do the implementation myself, but can try to help you find an invested team member.)

sacred-rose•2/27/25, 3:57 PM

Okay, so a particular question that I have is:
Do we take down all available links in multiple places about the Discord or just put a barrier of entry on the website that first you need to fill the form?

sacred-rose•2/27/25, 3:57 PM

Also, do we want to block people from being able to create invites to send their friends?

sacred-rose•2/27/25, 10:36 PM

Do we want more emails?
Or do we want the emails of everyone who joins the Discord from here and out?

wispy-yellowOP•2/27/25, 10:37 PM

Both I think

sacred-rose•2/27/25, 10:39 PM

Is this because Onboarding has been shown to work better through emails than through DMs?
I don't want to question everything but although it feels better to get everyone's emails maybe it's not as useful as we think.

sacred-rose•2/27/25, 10:40 PM

@Will Petillo do you think people who were onboarded through emails ended up being more active than the ones onboarded through Discord?

Ssacred-rose @Will Petillo do you think people who were onboarded through emails ended up bei...

dual-salmon•2/27/25, 11:02 PM

Average Discord join < Average Email signup < Filtered Discord join by "wants to help" role.

dual-salmon•2/27/25, 11:06 PM

The value of website/email signups is to:
1) Unify the signup process so that everyone is initiated in the same way, rather than some Discord, some email, and some both. It makes more sense to start with email than the other way because the website can easily gatekeep Discord but not the other way.
2) Get email addresses. This is useful for mass, coordinated activations (petitions, protests, etc.) as well as for maintaining long-term, low level engagement with all signups via the newsletter.

sacred-rose•2/28/25, 6:50 AM

I see little value about 1, and I have doubts about 2.
How useful is to actually have their emails? Last time we said "we don't have a simple way to make people unsubscribe from them so let's create a post in the newsletter".
And the newsletter post got 7 likes and 1 repost. How many signatures we think we got from it?
Also, personally i'm not getting notifications about emails from Substack, I don't know why maybe is just me. That is a whole separate conversation we can have.

I suspect we got a lot more signatures by the @ everyone in the Discord, of course with the caveat that we have almost thrice the amount of people here

sacred-rose•2/28/25, 6:51 AM

.
I'm not gonna lie, I do see a big benefit with having more emails in case there are warning signs

sacred-rose•2/28/25, 6:54 AM

.
Maybe we need to discuss more Substack vs emailing directly and I could be convinced that we can email directly and that would be better for progressive growth.

sacred-rose•2/28/25, 7:20 AM

.
I don't know I'm really uncertain about how many signatures we got from the @ everyone and the substack post.

Looking at the data and assuming it's determining the date of the signatures with in UTC+0, both the Discord and Substack announcement happened 2 hours before midnight, Discord the 22th and Substack the 31st.

The 22th and 23th we got 65 and 90 signatures.
The 31st and 1st we got 36 and 32 signatures.

Of course the 23th there were other outreachs going on, like DMs and Norway FB group, but emails don't seem that promising from over here, given that we had like 800+/-80 subscribers I think when we share that in Subtack

sacred-rose•2/28/25, 7:22 AM

TL;DR: I think putting a barrier on Discord is fine, but we should analyze our newsletter reach.

wispy-yellowOP•3/2/25, 9:34 PM

Agree @Pato Vercesi but also keen to experiment with different content and form and see how that shapes engagement too?

efficient-indigo•3/4/25, 9:44 AM

Hi everyone. After a chat with Ella today, I have decided to volunteer for this onboarding process reset project. I am also joining the on boarding team; Will is going to show me the ropes shortly.

wispy-yellowOP•3/5/25, 6:37 PM

Hi everyone - first project meeting: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/event?action=TEMPLATE&tmeid=NGQ3cGczc240dWpqbG1ycWs4ZmVmYnNkanEgZWxsYUBwYXVzZWFpLmluZm8&tmsrc=ella%40pauseai.info @Will Petillo @Wheels (Mark Brown)

@Pato Vercesi @anthonybailey.net

Google Calendar - Sign in to Access & Edit Your Schedule

Access Google Calendar with a Google account (for personal use) or Google Workspace account (for business use).

sacred-rose•3/6/25, 3:31 AM

I clicked the link.. and I think I created the event? I'm not sure. Now I have the event on my calendar but you're not in it Ella

Wwispy-yellow Hi everyone - first project meeting: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/event?...

sacred-rose•3/6/25, 3:33 AM

Can you share the Google Meet?

colossal-harlequin•3/6/25, 7:07 PM

As discussed @Ella Hughes, same.

wispy-yellowOP•3/6/25, 7:32 PM

Onboarding process project
March 10, 2025
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/gbc-qwxs-sro

wispy-yellowOP•3/6/25, 7:32 PM

@Archie would you be interested here?

skinny-azure•3/6/25, 7:34 PM

I think so, but I'm also in the "Growing PauseAI" project and I'm not sure it's possible for me to do both at the moment. I can answer definitively on friday though!

wispy-yellowOP•3/6/25, 7:35 PM

no worries

sacred-rose•3/7/25, 12:34 AM

https://discord.gg/pauseai-1100491867675709580?event=1347366495629611028 I'm making them 45 min long... Not sure if that's right

sacred-rose•3/7/25, 12:34 AM

But the cool thing about events it's that you can add to your calendar easier

Wwispy-yellow @Archie would you be interested here?

skinny-azure•3/7/25, 5:54 PM

Unfortunately I won't be able to regularly contribute due to time constraints

wispy-yellowOP•3/10/25, 6:32 PM

starting out call now

sacred-rose•3/10/25, 7:49 PM

One thing that I don't know how to solve, it's that onboarding seems by far the team with the most responsibilities, they have to reach out to a lot of people, pretty soon after they join, and, as we get bigger, they may need to do it increasingly.
The fact that they need to give a good first impression of the movement and make them active and knowing about the teams and follow-up with people...
It's a lot and I cannot think of good ways to solve it.
I guess we should at least consider it the main team to direct volunteers and resources to.

sacred-rose•3/10/25, 7:50 PM

.
Also we could do multiple testing on how to approach new members but that needs a bunch of previous planning probably

wispy-yellowOP•3/10/25, 7:52 PM

https://docs.google.com/document/d/18fZfj9D22B78JHcuvxM1tvnBjYdmckaOSdrUYKuzc6s/edit?usp=sharing

Ssacred-rose One thing that I don't know how to solve, it's that onboarding seems by far the ...

efficient-indigo•3/11/25, 1:31 AM

as a follow-up thought, yes I can understand now how crucial onboarding is. There seems to be a bit of a Catch-22 however when it comes to suggesting that new volunteers join the onboarding team: if you have just signed up to volunteer, how do you have enough knowledge of the organisation and its culture to be effective at on boarding? On the other hand, we have to start somewhere. If there were strong active national chapters, it might make sense for most on boarding to happen within that national chapter. But many countries have zero active members (as far as I can tell). So we have to be able to build relationships with new volunteers across vast distances

this raises the question, for parts of the world with few active volunteers, does that make sense to organise based on groupings that aren't national. For example, if there's no Active volunteers in New Zealand at the moment, but tomorrow someone from Auckland signs up tomorrow, maybe it makes sense for them to be on boarded buy a Pause AI Australasia community. As more people joined in Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Polynesia, then maybe National chapters would form.

I guess geography may not always be the best basis on which to group people. Actually, during our meeting, I was reminded of Will’s amazing essay that he just showed me which is absolutely brilliant and is already framing how I see on boarding (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SRYb5W2dQNSbSTT6mupUGJ1SVCElBOFcYd-p4LbISGk/edit?usp=sharing) . He describes different world views and value systems within the AI safety community and drawers analogies to Hogwarts houses. Actually, I do think that essentially the onboarding team is a Pause AI Sorting Hat.

efficient-indigo•3/11/25, 1:35 AM

I realise Will was definitely not suggesting that we segregate based on our ideologies, but there may be other sensible non-geographic groupings , for example, how much time you have to contribute, whether you enjoy working synchronously or asynchronously. Even arbitrary groupings can have the benefit of load balancing the responsibility for tracking volunteers, motivating them, keeping them active, following up, etc.

sacred-rose•3/11/25, 2:29 AM

Yeah, I agree, it's not that good for new members to go into the onboarding team.

This may be too harsh but I think it's fine if there's not that much support for inactive countries, as, sadly, probably just a handful of nations are the ones who have the actual power to initiate a treaty.

sacred-rose•3/11/25, 2:30 AM

And we have chapters in those places

sacred-rose•3/11/25, 2:30 AM

So focus on helping those national chapters to onboard people there may be the right choice

dual-salmon•3/11/25, 5:10 AM

Agree that new members don't go to onboarding, I'd give it a least a month or so, depending on level of activity. I've been adding people to this team by DM'ing people who have been especially active on the server, especially in ways that foster community. That means an additional role here is to keep an eye out for those kinds of individuals. I've tried internal recruiting via the help-wanted channel, but that rarely gets any replies.

dual-salmon•3/11/25, 5:52 AM

Glad you liked the essay! I had been meaning to post it on LessWrong to make it easier to find/share, have just done that now.

Ssacred-rose So focus on helping those national chapters to onboard people there may be the r...

efficient-indigo•3/11/25, 4:29 PM

Interesting. Yes that may well be. I did spend a lot of time wondering whether it was worth trying to organise here in Australia. I would think we would really need a clear policy on this. The website encourages people to start local communities wherever they are in the world. If that's not the best use of their time we shouldn't be encouraging it . On the other hand, small nations still have seats at the UN

wispy-yellowOP•3/12/25, 6:10 AM

Hi guys
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1du_wbQgTPnwNKJxhKEE430y22wxOM8vopn36fQ6jU2M/edit?usp=sharing
Please edit away and add your thoughts. Looks very complete maybe but really just my hot reckons - please critique

wispy-yellowOP•3/17/25, 6:19 PM

@Tom Bibby

awake-maroon•3/19/25, 7:19 PM

Is there already any software stuff that you want to have changed?

Aawake-maroon Is there already any software stuff that you want to have changed?

efficient-indigo•3/19/25, 11:15 PM

Hi. If you have a look in that Google document that Ella linked to , you will see some comments she left asking about technical feasibility of automated emails with certain personalisations. My guess was that it was possible somehow, but it would be great if you could comment

awake-maroon•3/20/25, 11:13 AM

Thanks, done

Wwispy-yellow Hi guys https://docs.google.com/document/d/1du_wbQgTPnwNKJxhKEE430y22wxOM8vopn36...

yucky-gold•3/22/25, 6:55 AM

Are we really en-route to a vote-based corporate structure (the 5$ contribution voting rights part) considering Joep has the final say as the actual person bearing the final legal responsibility for PauseAI public actions?

How is that gonna work? What am I missing?

yucky-gold•3/22/25, 7:15 AM

We look forward to working alongside you as we build a movement for responsible AI development that truly represents the public interest. Together, we can ensure that this transformative technology develops in a way that's safe, beneficial, and democratically governed. See you in the Discord!"

Sorry. I'd quit upon hearing this.

There is only ONE reason for all of us being here to be frank, and it's NOT ... an unethical not sufficiently responsible but otherwise awesome "transformative technology" AI development that doesn't just quite represent the public interest, it not quite beneficial and democratically governed as we'd preferably like. ...

We're here because superintelligent AI is about to murder everyone we love in the coming few years.
That language is for some corporate presentation, not PauseAI galvanizing onboarding.

dual-salmon•3/22/25, 7:29 AM

Re voting: my understanding is that leadership (including Joep with final say), would decide on questions that are useful for the org to have a stance on but where it is not obvious which is the right one based on core values alone.

Re opening message sounding corporate: let's cover this at the onboarding meeting this Monday.

wispy-yellowOP•3/24/25, 12:15 AM

Hi @AlexAlarga - good feedback! yes, lets discuss - I'm trying to hit the balance of being open enough to people who might not yet have bought into x-risk but understand risks in job market/privacy etc, but open to chatting this through! on voting, its something we are exploring to try and motivate more engaged mindset - again keen for challenging thoughts

Wwispy-yellow Hi @AlexAlarga - good feedback! yes, lets discuss - I'm trying to hit the balanc...

yucky-gold•3/24/25, 6:01 PM

I see our main job in actually spreading awareness about x-risk. There are other groups to do with job loss and copyright infringement, privacy etc. Btw I wonder if we're still having regular general voicechat meetups here on Discord or we discarded that?
I'll attach one screenshot of many "hints" at problems with Pause that I've stumbled into.

Onboarding Process Reset

TL;DR: I think putting a barrier on Discord is fine, but we should analyze our newsletter reach.

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TL;DR: I think putting a barrier on Discord is fine, but we should analyze our newsletter reach.