I can confirm that for my case - when I (female) removed my picture from Okcupid, it had the (desirable, then) effect that I didn't get any messages whatsoever anymore, over the space of ~6 months. I might have gotten a non-zero amount if I hadn't stated on my profile that I wasn't looking for relationships at the time, but even with that clear statement I still got messages every once in a while during the time I had the picture up. I didn't try experimenting with a more/less attractive picture.

I got the impression that many people just look at the profile and don't even check the relationship status at the top of the profile.

I'd have liked you to phrase the first sentence as "I wouldn't recommend online dating to men."

I mean, I'm aware that there are 10-15% women on this site, but let's not accidentally exclude them. Especially for nerdy/geeky/intellectual women, okcupid is in my experience a really great place. I got the impression that I was able to find people that were much more similar to me than anyone else I knew from my university environment - which lead to a few friendships and my longest relationship to date.

It's true that my male friends' experiences were usually less successful. It doesn't have to be your only strategy though.

Christian and Richard already addressed your concerns well. Yes, this was a community event, not a conference. We wanted people to find friends and create (deep) connections - you don't get that nearly as much with intellectual conversations.

We're not rational agents, but sophisticated apes, more or less. Most people have social needs for security, closeness, empathy, sharing emotions and so on. We were trying to address that by introducing the relating games and a space for relaxing and cuddling, while (hopefully) not pressuring anyone to participate. It seems that overall we succeeded at this.

As tkadlubo says, most people choose to visit as guests. Otherwise you are free to create an account on tinychat.com and visit the chat after logging in, which is what I do. It allows you to PM people and potentially become a moderator, neither of which are necessary for just participating in the pomodoros.

(replying here for visibility)

By the way, Malcolm has fulfilled some of the Study Hall users' wishes by embedding the tinychat hall in his Complice website: http://lesswrong.com/lw/lqz/announcing_the_complice_less_wrong_study_hall/

Unfortunately it's still tinychat and therefore just as buggy, but it now has a timer! And you can see tasks of other users! That means that breaks are cut off somewhat more abruptly, but they no longer run over. Overall the hall got more awesome! Password stays "lw", you don't need to be a Complice user to access the site.

The new room can be found here.

How would one implement such a thing? Who should I ask to make it happen? I presume someone responsible for the site content, but I don't know who to ask.

... to take this onto a more action-oriented level.

Technically that wasn't correct at the time you wrote it (since there were 47 attendants at last year's LWCW), but we now certainly have enough to break that record!

I don't think it's obvious that would be the best approach.

This forum is as internal as it gets without asking potential candidates via email or in person.

Both approaches are valid, but they optimize to attract different people. The gist that I get from this job ad is that they are looking for someone who is a good assistant while being passionate about effective altruism, willing to help indirectly rather than promote their own ego and eager to find creative ways to improve themselves and Bostrom's workflow. My guess is that they would prefer someone less experienced to a person for whom this is just another assistant job, provided that the less experienced person views the role as a challenge to grow into. If the thing that they are optimizing for is work experience/existing skills, I agree that it would be better to match the writing style to standardized assistant job ads. In that case, they might as well post it on the matching sites. Best would be obviously to have someone who fills all the criteria perfectly, but it's going to be hard to come by a person with extensive experience who does not already have a better project to work on or is willing to accept what I'm sure will be a very low salary.

The description as is was much more interesting to me than a standard job ad would have been. I don't think I would have applied if it had read like the standard job ad. That said, I am not trying to argue the description is perfect, just that I prefer the type of description.

tl;dr: If you want excited people to apply, don't post a boring job ad.

Thank you for voicing your worries. It's important we discuss this aspect as well, and I hadn't taken that into account when I posted the comment about "sidekicks".

The "sexual innuendo" part was surprising to me - I (female, 24y) didn't get that impression from reading the post and neither did any of the smart, young people I showed it to. Maybe we were talking with people in different social circles (my friends are already EAs for the most part). You're right that phrasing it as "sidekick" makes it look more cultish. I'm not sure what the tradeoff is between making a joke/attracting people for whom this sounds appealing and not appearing sketchy/culty.

I would assume that it's phrased in a very general way because it's not actually determined yet. It depends on what the candidate is able to do well. Nonetheless, more examples could have been given. Would you have preferred that?

Do you have suggestions to rephrase the quoted parts? I have trouble coming up with something more professional that says the same thing myself.