CBG message to EA Group Organizers

Harri Besceli message to EA Group Organizer Facebook Group on March 29, 2018. Original link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/956362287803174/permalink/1408733179232747/

Update on the EA groups platform https://app.effectivealtruism.org/groups/

I (CEA) won't be developing the EA Groups Platform over the next six weeks. After 6 weeks it's likely (eg. 75%) that we'll resume working on this, but we'll reassess the priority of this relative to other EA group support projects at the time.
Currently the groups list is incomplete, and the majority of groups don't have management permissions for their groups, and are not notified of people signing up to their group mailing list via the platform. Because the half-finished state seems to be worse than nothing, I'll be taking the list down until work on this is resumed.

The primary reasons for delaying work on the platform are a) other EA group support projects (most notably the EA Community Grants process) taking priority and b) changing views of the value of the platform (I now think the platform as a stand-alone piece of infrastructure will be less valuable, than previously, and that a large part of the value will be having this integrated with other group support infrastructure such as funding applications, affiliation etc.).

I made a few mistakes in working on this project:
1) Consistently underestimating the time required to take the groups platform to a usable state.
2) Failing to communicate the progress and status of the project.

The combination of the above has meant that:
1) People signing up to groups members lists haven't been put into contact with the respective groups.
2) People have been consistently waiting for the platform's functionality, which hasn't been forthcoming. Plausibly this has also negatively interfered with LEANs efforts with managing the effective altruism hub.

I apologise for the above. I'm hesitant to promise better calibration on time estimates for completion of group support projects in future, I'll make sure to communicate with group leaders about the status of similar projects in future, so that if a decision is made to deprioritise a particular project, group leaders will know as soon as possible.
I'll post an overview of CEA's current EA group support priorities within the next two weeks.