Thanks for your thoughtful criticism. Could you point out the worst abuses of my tone? I'm happy to modify it to improve things if anyone has specific suggestions from the text.

Also, you're incredibly fortunate to have learned nothing from my summary. I suggest that in your case (and probably others who agreed with you), you're a Less Wrong legend. Heck, you're #6 all-time in comment karma! For reference, Yvain is #8. Anyone who's been here long enough to be that right, that often, will find (almost) nothing new in this article. But if you had counter-factually never seen Less Wrong and arrived here in the past month or two, amazing as it may seem, you likely wouldn't know the majority of this "basic" information.

Did you at least get a little out of points #8 and #10? Those were the two bits that were actually my own original contributions and not generally part of the Less Wrong cannon. Also, several of the links in #5 are unique to me including the heading link which didn't exist before I posted my friend Dennis' presentation online. Also, did anyone who read this actually sign up for any of ActiveInboxHQ.com, Mint.com or 43things.com? I would be tremendously less effective without each of those. They help on different time frames (daily, monthly, and yearly respectively).

Again, I'm sorry if this post is mostly repetitive and unnecessary for those of us who have been here awhile. But as FormallyknownasRoko points out, this article somehow didn't exist. Just like Roko, I needed to point a smart friend with no background in this stuff to something about optimal philanthropy. I felt like linking them straight to Anna's "Back of the Envelope" talk from 2009 or Eliezer's "Money the unit of caring" were both "too zoomed in" a spot to dump someone who didn't have an overview of why they might want to be an optimal philanthropist to begin with.

Anyway, I think this article is actually really important to get right. So your issue with the tone is very important and I'd like to address it if you think it would be a stumbling block for outside readers as well. Please point out the most egregious links and phrasings and I'll seriously consider revising them. I'd love to have this piece improved by the collective optimizing power of Less Wrong.