Work
This page shows completed work that I have done. Most of the data is from Vipul Naik’s contract work portal. I have also included other tasks not part of contract work. There are other tasks that are not considered “complete” but which have significant work done on them; these are not included unless payment is processed for completing some portion of the overall work (e.g. ongoing development for the donations list website or adding rows to some timeline). I have also not included a lot of schoolwork and minor tasks.
For the “Notes” column, some of the rows are entered by Vipul and some by me, so the “voice” of writing will be different. The way to tell who wrote a particular row is to look at the “Payment” column: if the value there is 0, I wrote it, and if it is a positive number, Vipul wrote it. I realize this is not the best user experience, but I don’t really want to go back and rewrite all the notes for the contract work columns, so you will just have to live with it.
Source code for the script that prints this page is available.
Hovering over the Payment column will show a tooltip giving the payer.
If you prefer a less overwhelming experience, you might want to check out my portfolio page instead.
Showing 424 tasks sorted by completion date. With JavaScript enabled, it is possible to sort by each column (unless the window is too narrow, in which case the table collapses into a “definition list” format for easier viewing).
| Task receptacle | Venue | Completion date | Payment | Topic | Format | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Timelines wiki hosting and maintenance and feature enhancement | Timelines wiki | 2023-12-31 | 420.0 | Timeline content | Code | The total payment of $420 breaks down as follows: $220 on hosting cost (excluding actual spending on hosting, that has been reimbursed separately) (this is up from $180 last year, with the increase mostly reflecting inflation adjustment) and $200 for a combination of: the periodic updates to the main page table, as well as custom improvement work including work on the switch to GA 4 and the update to the main page table logic to pull from GA 4 (this is up from $60 last year, due to both inflation adjustment and the additional GA 4 work that had no equivalent last year). |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2023-12-15 | 25.07 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 131 minutes at $11.50/hour. Work done 2023-12-14 and 2023-12-15. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2023-11-20 | 1.5 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 8 minutes at $11.50/hour. Work done 2023-11-20. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2023-11-20 | 0.34 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 2 minutes at $11.50/hour. Work done 2023-11-20. |
| Review of timeline of immunology via screenshare | Timelines wiki | 2023-11-10 | 11.15 | Timeline content | Private communication | Spent 58 minutes at $11.50/hour. Work done 2023-11-10. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2023-10-31 | 0.58 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 3 minutes at $11.50/hour assisting Sebastian. Work done 2023-10-23 to 2023-10-31. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2023-10-25 | 0.81 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 4 minutes at $11.50/hour. Work done 2023-10-25. |
| N/A | Timelines wiki | 2023-10-25 | 10.54 | Timeline content | N/A | Spent 55 minutes at $11.50/hour. Meeting with Vipul and Sebastian on 2023-10-25. This is the Timelines wiki portion of the meeting. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2023-10-25 | 11.31 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 59 minutes at $11.50/hour. Meeting with Vipul and Sebastian on 2023-10-25. This is the Org Watch portion of the meeting, and also includes tech tips to Sebastian. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2023-09-25 | 3.8 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 20 minutes at $11.50/hour assisting Sebastian. Work done 2023-09-06 to 2023-09-25. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2023-09-07 | 0.23 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 1 minute at $11.50/hour. Work done 2023-09-07. |
| Backup failure investigation | Timelines wiki | 2023-09-03 | 9.78 | Timeline content | N/A | Spent 51 minutes at $11.50/hour. Work done 2023-09-03. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2023-08-05 | 1.15 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 6 minutes at $11.50/hour assisting Sebastian. Work done 2023-08-05. |
| AI Watch | AI Watch | 2023-08-02 | 3.8 | AI safety | Code | Spent 20 minutes at $11.50/hour. Work done 2023-08-02. See [1] for the change. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2023-07-17 | 0.35 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 2 minutes at $11.50/hour. Work done 2023-07-17. |
| Filter out non-AI stuff from AI Watch | AI Watch | 2023-06-28 | 3.11 | AI safety | Code | Spent 16 minutes at $11.50/hour. Work done 2023-06-21 and 2023-06-28. This includes collaboration with Vipul on not showing non-AI stuff in AI Watch. See [2] for the commits. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2023-06-27 | 39.33 | Organizational structures and dynamics | Code | Spent 205 minutes at $11.50/hour. Work done 2023-06-20 to 2023-06-27. This includes the addition of a check and work on an archival script. See [3] for the commits. |
| Switch analytics projects to GA 4 | analytics.vipulnaik.com | 2023-06-25 | 111.02 | Analytics | Code | Spent 449 minutes at $11.50/hour with a 5-hour minimum, plus $25. Work done 2023-05-21 to 2023-05-22 and 2023-06-21 to 2023-06-25. See [4] for the commits. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2023-06-09 | 1.15 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 6 minutes at $11.50/hour. Work done 2023-06-09. |
| Server script updates | Timelines wiki | 2023-06-02 | 20.47 | Timeline content | Code | Spent 107 minutes at $11.50/hour with a 1-hour minimum and 2-hour maximum. Work done 2023-06-02. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2023-05-21 | 7.71 | Organizational structures and dynamics | Code | Spent 40 minutes at $11.50/hour. Work done 2023-05-13 and 2023-05-21. This includes additions to README.md and a fix to a page title. See [5] for the commits. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2023-05-16 | 10.12 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 53 minutes at $11.50/hour. Work done 2023-05-15 and 2023-05-16 assisting Sebastian. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2023-05-13 | 16.68 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 87 minutes at $11.50/hour in the Org Watch portion of the meeting with Vipul and Sebastian on 2023-05-13. |
| N/A | Timelines wiki | 2023-05-13 | 5.18 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 27 minutes at $11.50/hour in the Timelines wiki portion of the meeting with Vipul and Sebastian on 2023-05-13. |
| ChatGPT 4 testing of prompts from "To err is neural" | None | 2023-04-08 | 11.5 | Artificial intelligence/Machine learning | Prose | Spent 29 minutes on 2023-04-08 at $11.50/hour with a minimum of $11.50 (equivalent to 1 hour) and a maximum of $34.50 (equivalent to 3 hours). The task was the rerunning of Vipul’s prompts of [6] on ChatGPT 4. See [7] and [8] for the session logs. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2023-03-05 | 14.95 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 78 minutes at $11.50/hour. Work done 2023-03-04 and 2023-03-05. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2023-02-24 | 3.11 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 16 minutes at $11.50/hour. Work done 2023-02-24. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2023-01-30 | 4.02 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 21 minutes at $11.50/hour assisting Sebastian. Work done 2023-01-02 and 2023-01-30. |
| Timelines wiki hosting and maintenance and feature enhancement | Timelines wiki | 2023-01-02 | 23.0 | Timeline content | Code | Work on improving the efficiency of the daily backup process. Spent 95 minutes at $11.50/hour with a 2-hour minimum. Work done 2023-01-02. |
| Timelines wiki hosting and maintenance and feature enhancement | Timelines wiki | 2022-12-31 | 300.0 | Timeline content | Code | This includes hosting and maintenance costs of $20/month (total $240) and main page updates at $5/month ($60). |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2022-12-24 | 5.42 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 34 minutes at $9.50/hour. Work done 2022-12-24 and involving some updates to Future of Life Institute data; see [9] for details. |
| N/A | None | 2022-11-18 | 1.14 | Wikipedia | Private communication | Spent 7 minutes at $9.50/hour helping Vipul figure out some stuff related to the setup of wikidossier (hosted at [10] currently). Work done 2022-11-18. |
| Cause Prioritization Wiki | Cause Prioritization Wiki | 2022-10-30 | 50.51 | Cause prioritization | Domain renewal | Details: $17.17 - causeprioritization.com, $17.17 - causeprioritisation.com, $16.17 - causeprioritisation.org. Issa shouldered the cost of renewing the main domain causeprioritization.org himself. |
| N/A | AI Watch | 2022-10-23 | 3.14 | AI safety | N/A | Spent 20 minutes at $9.50/hour. Work done 2022-10-23. This comprises work dealing with an inbound email. |
| N/A | Timelines wiki | 2022-10-22 | 19.0 | Timelines | N/A | Spent 2 hours at $9.50/hour. This was a meeting with Vipul and Sebastian that reviewed the situation with timelines, with much of it focused on recent work and planned future work by Sebastian on timelines for the Future Fund Regranting Program. Work done 2022-10-22. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2022-10-15 | 1.43 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 9 minutes at $9.50/hour assisting Sebastian. Work done 2022-10-15. |
| N/A | Timelines wiki | 2022-09-17 | 36.58 | Timelines | N/A | Spent 3 hours 51 minutes at $9.50/hour. This was a meeting with Vipul and Sebastian that reviewed the situation with timelines, with much of it focused on recent work and planned future work by Sebastian on timelines for the Future Fund Regranting Program. Work done 2022-09-17. |
| N/A | Timelines wiki | 2022-09-06 | 8.55 | Timelines | Prose | Review of various timelines wiki meta pages. Spent 54 minutes at $9.50/hour. Work done 2022-09-06. |
| Timeline of existential risk | Timelines wiki | 2022-09-05 | 8.74 | Global catastrophic risks | Prose | Review of the timeline. Spent 55 minutes at $9.50/hour. See [11] for some notes generated by the work. Work done 2022-09-05. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2022-08-20 | 11.59 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 73 minutes at $9.50/hour on part of a meeting with Vipul and Sebastian that was devoted to Org Watch processes and figuring out a priority list of organizations. The rest of the meeting was about Timelines wiki. Work done 2022-08-20. |
| N/A | Timelines wiki | 2022-08-20 | 6.94 | Timelines | N/A | Spent 44 minutes at $9.50/hour. This was part of a meeting with Vipul and Sebastian discussing Timelines wiki, including Sebastian’s work on timelines for the Future Fund Regranting Program. Work done 2022-08-20. |
| Timeline of private foundations | Timelines wiki | 2022-08-11 | 18.0 | Philanthropy | Timeline | Last edit 2021-04-26 and payment finalization 2022-08-11. The original plan was to add 60 rows for $90 for the first pass of the timeline, but Issa lost interest after adding the first 15 rows. Completed version at [12] (2021-04-26 21:22 UTC, 5311 bytes, 15 rows in full timeline). |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2022-08-02 | 1.14 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 7 minutes at $9.50/hour assisting Sebastian. Work done 2022-08-02. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2022-07-25 | 9.5 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 60 minutes at $9.50/hour assisting Sebastian. Work done 2022-07-06 to 2022-07-25. |
| Timeline of AI timelines | Timelines wiki | 2022-07-12 | 7.41 | AI safety | Prose | Spent 47 minutes at $9.50/hour. Work done 2022-07-12. This work was the creation of an outline of the timeline for Sebastian to expand upon later. Completed outline at [13] (2022-07-12 22:29 UTC, 3024 bytes, 21 bullet points in outline) |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2022-07-08 | 19.19 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 121 minutes at $9.50/hour on one meeting with Vipul and Sebastian working on processes for improving the quality of existing Org Watch data and creating higher-quality Org Watch data in the future. Work done 2022-07-08. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2022-07-08 | 6.94 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 44 minutes at $9.50/hour; this mostly involved refactoring to reduce duplication between Makefile and reload-db.sh, as well as updates to the SQL file list. Work done 2022-07-07 and 2022-07-08. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2022-06-30 | 16.63 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 105 minutes at $9.50/hour assisting Sebastian. Work done 2022-06-02 to 2022-06-30. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2022-06-18 | 3.52 | Organizational structures and dynamics | Data | Spent 22 minutes at $9.50/hour; this mostly involved pulling in new database changes and making Makefile updates. Work done 2022-06-18. |
| N/A | Donations list website | 2022-06-16 | 10.74 | Philanthropy | N/A | Spent 68 minutes at $9.50/hour. Work on reviewing some scripts to monitor foundation grants. Work done 2022-06-16. |
| Timeline of Machine Intelligence Research Institute | Timelines wiki | 2022-06-15 | 2.41 | AI safety | Timeline | Work done 2022-06-15. See diff at [14] These were updates to historical events for the organization, based on new information received. The pay rate is $4.375/hour (same as the rate for AI safety subwiki work). |
| Timeline of effective altruism | Timelines wiki | 2022-06-09 | 210.0 | Effective altruism | Timeline | Completed version at [15] (2022-06-09 08:29 UTC, 75 rows in full timeline, 49,978 bytes). Issa had worked on this timeline back in 2019, and then lost interest in it for a while. There is now a tentative plan for Sebastian to take over the timeline, so Issa decided to officially stop his work on the timeline and collect payment. The payment is $60 + $7.50/hour for 20 hours worked on the timeline (compared to a cap of 32 hours per the original agreement). |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2022-06-04 | 35.44 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 224 minutes at $9.50/hour across two meetings with Vipul and Sebastian working on processes for improving the quality of existing Org Watch data and creating higher-quality Org Watch data in the future. Work done 2022-06-03 and 2022-06-04. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2022-05-30 | 33.73 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 213 minutes at $9.50/hour. This includes coordination with a potential funder for Org Watch. Work done 2022-05-15 to 2022-05-30. |
| N/A | Donations list website | 2022-05-12 | 6.84 | Philanthropy | N/A | Work replying to an inbound query somewhat related to DLW. Work done 2022-05-12. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2022-05-01 | 6.65 | Organizational structures and dynamics | Data | Spent 42 minutes at $9.50/hour assisting Sebastian. Work done 2022-05-01. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2022-04-30 | 1.71 | Organizational structures and dynamics | Data | Spent 11 minutes at $9.50/hour assisting Sebastian. Work done 2022-04-04 to 2022-04-30. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2022-04-27 | 7.79 | Organizational structures and dynamics | Code | This includes work on tweaking the dark mode previously implemented, as well as other minor fixes. Work done 2022-04-10 to 2022-04-27. |
| Add theme changer | Donations list website | 2022-04-10 | 18.81 | Philanthropy | Code | Work done 2022-04-10 at [16] extending dark mode, previously developed for AI Watch / Org Watch, to the donations list website. |
| Implement arbitrary income feature | Contract work for Vipul Naik | 2022-04-02 | 2.97 | Taxes | Code | Work done 2022-04-02 at [17] to implement additional functionality for the tax guidance page; this functionality was mainly for Issa’s own use but Vipul promised to cover the time cost. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2022-03-27 | 3.61 | Organizational structures and dynamics | Data | Spent 23 minutes at $9.50/hour on some data fixes (including file renames). Work done 2022-03-11 to 2022-03-27. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2022-03-15 | 1.62 | Organizational structures and dynamics | Data | Spent 10 minutes at $9.50/hour assisting Sebastian. Work done 2022-03-15. |
| Limit display on the AI Watch and Org Watch homepages to top 300 + ties with the 300th | Org Watch | 2022-01-30 | 12.07 | Organizational structures and dynamics | Code | Work done 2022-01-30. Work on [18] |
| N/A | AI Watch | 2022-01-04 | 6.65 | AI safety | N/A | Work done 2022-01-04. This comprises work talking to a potential new contributor to AI Watch. |
| Timelines wiki hosting and maintenance and feature enhancement | Timelines wiki | 2021-12-31 | 300.0 | Timeline content | Code | This includes hosting and maintenance costs of $20/month (total $240) and main page updates at $5/month ($60). |
| Implement optional dark mode on AIW / OW | Org Watch | 2021-12-29 | 19.28 | Organizational structures and dynamics | Code | Work done 2021-12-19 to 2021-12-29. Most of the work was for [19] for initial work on dark mode for AI Watch and Org Watch. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2021-12-29 | 4.47 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 28 minutes at $9.50/hour assisting Sebastian. Work done 2021-12-15 to 2021-12-29. |
| N/A | AI Watch | 2021-12-28 | 6.46 | AI safety | N/A | Work done 2021-12-28. This comprises work talking to a potential new contributor to AI Watch. |
| N/A | People repo | 2021-12-28 | 1.97 | People | Prose | People watching work is capped at 10 hours per month, with a rate of $4.375/hour. The specifics of the work are chosen by Issa Rice, and are not directed or reviewed by Vipul Naik except in very broad terms. The work for this month was done on 2021-12-28. |
| Separate out reset and read by table in Makefile | Donations list website | 2021-12-24 | 6.84 | Philanthropy | Code | Work done 2021-12-24. Work at [20] for [21] |
| N/A | AI Watch | 2021-11-08 | 4.47 | AI safety | N/A | Work done 2021-11-08. This comprises work talking to a potential new contributor to AI Watch. |
| Cause Prioritization Wiki | Cause Prioritization Wiki | 2021-11-03 | 48.51 | Cause prioritization | Domain renewal | Details: $15.99 - causeprioritization.com, $15.99 - causeprioritisation.com, $15.99 - causeprioritisation.org, plus taxes. Issa shouldered the $15.99 cost of renewing the main domain causeprioritization.org himself. |
| N/A | None | 2021-11-02 | 21.38 | None | N/A | Discussion of various topics including Timelines wiki, Org Watch, and subwiki with Sebastian and Vipul. 2 hours 15 minutes at $9.50/hour. Work done 2021-11-02. |
| N/A | AI Watch | 2021-10-26 | 31.83 | AI safety | N/A | Work done 2021-10-02 to 2021-10-26. This comprises work talking to a potential new contributor to AI Watch. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2021-10-03 | 0.76 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 5 minutes at $9.50/hour assisting Sebastian. Work done 2021-10-03. |
| N/A | AI Watch | 2021-09-30 | 50.07 | AI safety | N/A | Spent 5 hours 16 minutes. Work done 2021-09-02 to 2021-09-30. This comprises work talking to a potential new contributor to AI Watch. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2021-09-12 | 2.19 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 14 minutes at $9.50/hour assisting Sebastian. Work done 2021-09-12. |
| N/A | AI Watch | 2021-08-30 | 25.18 | AI safety | N/A | Spent 2 hours 39 minutes. Work done 2021-08-27 to 2021-08-30. This comprises work talking to a potential new contributor to AI Watch. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2021-07-20 | 1.14 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 3 minutes at $9.50/hour assisting Sebastian. Work done 2021-07-18 to 2021-07-20. |
| Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System | Personal website | 2021-07-14 | 200.0 | Learning | Orbit Q&A | Andy Matuschak commissioned Issa Rice to take the article [22] by Donella Meadows and add Orbit cards. Orbit is a spaced repetition software at [23] led by Andy Matuschak. This project was an effort to allow Andy himself to experience a mnemonic text and think about design decisions for Orbit. |
| On top-pages.php, print the h-index for every month | analytics.vipulnaik.com | 2021-07-10 | 38.0 | Analytics | Code | Work done 2021-07-10. Payment at max($38, $9.50/hour * time spent). |
| Show original currency info in notes column | Donations list website | 2021-06-16 | 24.03 | Philanthropy | Code | Spent 2 hours 32 minutes at $9.50/hour. Work on [24] for [25] (currency info display). Work done 2021-06-09 to 2021-06-16. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2021-06-11 | 10.64 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 1 hour 7 minutes at $9.50/hour including 35 minutes assisting Sebastian. Work done 2021-06-02 to 2021-06-11. |
| Explore the creation of graphical timelines for donors; Rename "Open Philanthropy Project" -> "Open Philanthropy" | Donations list website | 2021-06-04 | 38.0 | Philanthropy | Code | Spent 3 hours for max($38, $9.50 * number of hours). Work on [26] and [27] started last year (2020-12-16 to 2020-12-18) and wrapped up 2021-06-04. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2021-05-31 | 1.24 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 8 minutes at $9.50/hour. Work done 2021-05-31. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2021-04-28 | 0.48 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 3 minutes at $9.50/hour assisting Sebastian. Work done 2021-04-28. |
| N/A | People repo | 2021-04-23 | 3.15 | People | Prose | People watching work is capped at 10 hours per month, with a rate of $4.375/hour. The specifics of the work are chosen by Issa Rice, and are not directed or reviewed by Vipul Naik except in very broad terms. The work for this month was done on 2021-04-23. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2021-03-26 | 5.99 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 38 minutes at $9.50/hour assisting Sebastian. Work done 2021-03-09 to 2021-03-26. |
| N/A | People repo | 2021-03-17 | 3.85 | People | Prose | People watching work is capped at 10 hours per month, with a rate of $4.375/hour. The specifics of the work are chosen by Issa Rice, and are not directed or reviewed by Vipul Naik except in very broad terms. The work for this month was done on 2021-03-17. |
| Timeline of AI safety | LessWrong | 2021-02-07 | 18.72 | AI safety | Prose | Reviewed timeline of AI safety and shared it on LessWrong after Vipul incorporated review feedback. 1 hour 58 minutes at $9.50/hour (within 3-hour time limit). Work done 2021-02-05 to 2021-02-07. |
| N/A | None | 2021-02-06 | 9.22 | Personal stuff for Vipul | Private communication | Work done 2021-02-05 and 2021-02-06. The work involved review of a private document for Vipul at $9.50/hour. |
| N/A | Donations list website | 2021-01-25 | 0.95 | Philanthropy | N/A | Spent 6 minutes at $9.50/hour. Work done 2021-01-25. This was to help answer some questions over email. |
| Why "cause area" as the unit of analysis? | Effective Altruism Forum | 2021-01-24 | 9.75 | Cause prioritization | Prose | Started and completed January 24, 2021. 1 hour 57 minutes at $5/hour (this is the agreed-upon rate for cause prioritization work that is agreed upon in advance). Much of the underlying work that led to this blog post had been done in April 2018. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2021-01-05 | 6.65 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Spent 42 minutes at $9.50/hour assisting Sebastian. Work done 2021-01-05. |
| Org Watch | Org Watch | 2021-01-04 | 7.6 | Organizational structures and dynamics | Code | Spent 48 minutes at $9.50/hour. Work done 2021-01-04. Work on [28] and [29] |
| Backups | None | 2020-12-31 | 105.0 | Wikipedia/Backup | Code and data | Payment for maintaining the process that does daily backups of Wikipedia content, at $2/week for 52 weeks, from 2020-01-01 to 2020-12-31, with an extra dollar because of the extra day beyond 52 weeks |
| Timelines wiki hosting and maintenance and feature enhancement | Timelines wiki | 2020-12-31 | 300.0 | Timeline content | Code | This includes hosting and maintenance costs of $20/month (total $240) and main page updates at $5/month ($60). |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2020-12-29 | 42.28 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Work done 2020-12-12 to 2020-12-29 at $9.50/hour. This work was done to continue to help Sebastian with his Org Watch work. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2020-12-27 | 91.96 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Work done 2020-12-13 to 2020-12-27 at $9.50/hour. This work was done to help Amana Rice, a new Org Watch contributor. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2020-12-15 | 4.09 | Organizational structures and dynamics | N/A | Work done 2020-12-10 to 2020-12-15 at $9.50/hour. |
| On an organization page, have a programmatically populated section for "similar organizations" | Org Watch | 2020-12-14 | 30.0 | Organizational structures and dynamics | Code | Work done 2020-12-14 at a rate of max{$30, $9.50/hour * time spent} on [30] |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2020-11-27 | 25.85 | Organizational structure and dynamics | N/A | Work done 2020-11-07 to 2020-11-27 at $9.50/hour. This includes 45 minutes in a video call with Vipul and Sebastian on 2020-11-07, and further work helping Sebastian with his Org Watch work. |
| N/A | People repo | 2020-11-07 | 4.46 | People | Prose | People watching work is capped at 10 hours per month, with a rate of $4.375/hour. The specifics of the work are chosen by Issa Rice, and are not directed or reviewed by Vipul Naik except in very broad terms. The work for this month was done on 2020-11-07. |
| Cause Prioritization Wiki | Cause Prioritization Wiki | 2020-10-29 | 45.97 | Cause prioritization | Domain renewal | Details: $14.99 - causeprioritization.com, $14.99 - causeprioritisation.com, $15.99 - causeprioritisation.org (.org domains cost an extra dollar). Issa shouldered the $15.99 cost of renewing the main domain causeprioritization.org himself. |
| N/A | People repo | 2020-10-18 | 4.07 | People | Prose | People watching work is capped at 10 hours per month, with a rate of $4.375/hour. The specifics of the work are chosen by Issa Rice, and are not directed or reviewed by Vipul Naik except in very broad terms. The work for this month was done from 2020-10-15 to 2020-10-18. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2020-10-10 | 46.36 | Organizational structure and dynamics | N/A | Work done 2020-10-02 to 2020-10-10 at $9.50/hour. This work was done to continue to help Sebastian with his Org Watch work. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2020-09-12 | 38.48 | Organizational structure and dynamics | N/A | Work done 2020-09-01 to 2020-09-12 at $9.50/hour. This work was done to continue to help Sebastian with his Org Watch work. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2020-08-31 | 46.74 | Organizational structure and dynamics | N/A | Work done 2020-08-02 to 2020-08-31 at $9.50/hour. This work was done to help Sebastian continue onboarding as an Org Watch contributor. |
| N/A | Org Watch | 2020-07-27 | 128.54 | Organizational structure and dynamics | N/A | Work done 2020-07-04 to 2020-07-27 at $9.50/hour. This includes 90 minutes in a video call with Vipul and Sebastian, and further work helping Sebastian onboard as an Org Watch contributor. |
| N/A | Donations list website | 2020-07-13 | 12.16 | Philanthropy | Code | Work to fix a backend script. Work done 2020-07-10 to 2020-07-13. |
| AI safety category on Issawiki | AI safety wiki | 2020-07-06 | 1.75 | AI safety | Prose | AI safety wiki work is currently hosted at [31] with the goal to eventually move it to a canonical standalone AI safety wiki (either one created by the LessWrong team or a subwiki set up by Vipul). Wiki-wide revision history can be seen at [32] but there does not seem to be a link to view changes just to stuff in the AI safety category. Compensation for the work is $4.375/hour, capped at 10 hours per month. |
| N/A | None | 2020-07-06 | 2.0 | Server | N/A | Answers to some questions about work done by Issa back in January 2020 |
| AI safety category on Issawiki | AI safety wiki | 2020-06-30 | 32.38 | AI safety | Prose | AI safety wiki work is currently hosted at [31] with the goal to eventually move it to a canonical standalone AI safety wiki (either one created by the LessWrong team or a subwiki set up by Vipul). Wiki-wide revision history can be seen at [32] but there does not seem to be a link to view changes just to stuff in the AI safety category. Compensation for the work is $4.375/hour, capped at 10 hours per month. |
| N/A | People repo | 2020-06-26 | 12.16 | People | Prose | People watching work is capped at 10 hours per month, with a rate of $4.375/hour. The specifics of the work are chosen by Issa Rice, and are not directed or reviewed by Vipul Naik except in very broad terms. The work for this month was done from 2020-06-04 to 2020-06-26. |
| Jonathan Blow | People repo | 2020-05-29 | 19.91 | People | Prose | People watching work is capped at 10 hours per month, with a rate of $4.375/hour. The specifics of the work are chosen by Issa Rice, and are not directed or reviewed by Vipul Naik except in very broad terms. The work for this month was done from 2020-05-01 to 2020-05-29 and mostly focused on a post [33] seeking a bounty for interesting thinkers. Work also included the publication of [34] (which was not directed or requested by Vipul Naik). |
| Improve the way we deal with renamings for donors and donees | Donations list website | 2020-05-19 | 14.54 | Philanthropy | Code | Work done 2020-05-18 and 2020-05-19 |
| wikiHow view count data analysis | wikiHow | 2020-05-03 | 22.5 | Data | Notes | Completed May 3, but most of the actual work done 2018-09-08 to 2018-09-13: wikiHow view count data analysis for 3 hours at $7.50/hour |
| Jonathan Blow | People repo | 2020-04-27 | 43.75 | People | Prose | People watching work is capped at 10 hours per month, with a rate of $4.375/hour. The specifics of the work are chosen by Issa Rice, and are not directed or reviewed by Vipul Naik except in very broad terms. The work for this month was done from 2020-04-22 to 2020-04-27 and mostly focused on learning more about video game designer Jonathan Blow and collecting quotes by him. A side-effect of this would be the Wikiquote article [34] although the article itself would be published in May 2020, and is not part of the work being paid for. |
| AI Watch | AI Watch | 2020-04-19 | 5.41 | AI safety | Code and data | Work done 2020-04-11 and 2020-04-19 at $9.50/hour. This comprises work on [35] (2020-04-11), [36] (2020-04-19), and [37] (2020-04-19). |
| Coronavirus notes | None | 2020-03-29 | 89.25 | Global health/Coronavirus | Notes | Work done 2020-03-13 to 2020-03-29 at $17.50/hour. This was preliminary research related to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic that could potentially inform further work by Issa or Vipul; however, based on the preliminary research, we decided to not continue further for now |
| Move to a safe query structure for all the queries at contractwork.vipulnaik.com | Contract work for Vipul Naik | 2020-01-21 | 50.0 | Safe query | Code | Work done on 2020-01-20 and 2020-01-21. Payment determined as max{$125, $8.50/hour * 3.17 hours} |
| Move completely to a safe query structure on donations.vipulnaik.com | Donations list website | 2020-01-20 | 75.0 | Philanthropy | Code | Work done on 2020-01-20. Payment determined as max{$75, $9.50/hour * 3.41 hours} |
| Plan to reduce my Linode cost, to be executed by end of 2021 | None | 2020-01-19 | 79.29 | Server | Documentation | Work done on 2020-01-18 and 2020-01-19. Payment determined based on a $10/hour rate ($78.20), and also including reimbursement of costs for a Linode machine run through the day ($1.09). Output of this iteration of work at [38] |
| Timelines wiki maintenance and feature enhancement | Timelines wiki | 2020-01-15 | 125.0 | Timeline content | Code | Work done on 2020-01-15. Payment determined as max{$125, $8.50/hour * 2.88 hours}. Issues worked on are [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] |
| Explore the creation of graphical timeline for donors, donees, and donor-donee pairs based on intended_funding_timeframe_in_months | Donations list website | 2020-01-08 | 39.9 | Philanthropy | Code | Work done on 2020-01-08. See [45] for a summary of the work done. This is part of a multi-month effort on the issue |
| Backups | None | 2019-12-31 | 105.0 | Wikipedia/Backup | Code and data | Payment for maintaining the process that does daily backups of Wikipedia content, at $2/week for 52 weeks, from 2019-01-01 to 2019-12-31, with an extra dollar because of the extra day beyond 52 weeks |
| Timelines wiki hosting and maintenance and feature enhancement | Timelines wiki | 2019-12-31 | 240.0 | Timeline content | Code | This includes hosting and maintenance costs of $20/month (total $180), main page updates at $5/month ($45), and $15 to cover the half month. |
| Fix regex for donor and donee document list matching | Donations list website | 2019-12-19 | 8.84 | Philanthropy | Code | Fix for a regex bug [46] at the request of Vipul; all work done within one day 2019-12-19 |
| analytics.vipulnaik.com | analytics.vipulnaik.com | 2019-12-15 | 175.0 | Analytics | Code | Work done from October 25 to December 15, 2019. The work was on issues [47] [48] [49] [50] and [51] of which the bulk of effort was on the last issue; this makes available the top viewed pages by month for each site. Payment calculated as max($175, 20.10 hours * $8.50/hour) |
| Timelines wiki maintenance and feature enhancement | Timelines wiki | 2019-11-30 | 125.0 | Timeline content | Code | Work done between November 28 and November 30, 2019. Rate determined as max($125, 5.05 hours * $8.50). Issues include [52] [53] and [54] |
| Cause Prioritization Wiki | Cause Prioritization Wiki | 2019-11-11 | 46.51 | Cause prioritization | Domain renewal | Details: $15.17 - causeprioritization.com, $15.17 - causeprioritisation.com, $16.17 - causeprioritisation.org (.org domains cost an extra dollar). Issa shouldered the $16.17 cost of renewing the main domain causeprioritization.org himself |
| Is it harder to become a MIRI mathematician in 2019 compared to in 2013? | LessWrong | 2019-10-28 | 0.0 | AI safety | Prose | – |
| People repo | People repo | 2019-10-23 | 350.0 | People | Notes | 96 hours of work (12 working days of 8 hours each) over the time period of February 6, 2018 to October 23, 2019. The original payment agreement was 10 working days of 8 hours each at $35/day, but we increased it by 2 days in exchange for Vipul going out and collecting some information of potential interest to Issa. |
| Deliberation as a method to find the “actual preferences” of humans | LessWrong | 2019-10-22 | 0.0 | AI safety | Prose | – |
| What are the differences between all the iterative/recursive approaches to AI alignment? | LessWrong | 2019-09-20 | 0.0 | AI safety/iterated amplification | Prose | – |
| Explore the creation of graphical timeline for donors, donees, and donor-donee pairs based on intended_funding_timeframe_in_months | Donations list website | 2019-09-18 | 11.4 | Philanthropy | Code and comments | Exploratory work related to graphical timelines. The results are recorded in the comments on [26] |
| Funding chains in the x-risk/AI safety ecosystem | Effective Altruism Forum | 2019-09-09 | 0.0 | AI safety | Prose | – |
| Cause X Guide | Effective Altruism Forum | 2019-09-01 | 50.0 | Cause prioritization | Prose | A comment by Issa Rice on Joey’s post “Cause X Guide” on the Effective Altruism Forum wins a $50 comment prize awarded by the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA); see [55] for the prize announcement |
| AI Watch | AI Watch | 2019-08-16 | 1.27 | AI safety | Code and data | See [56] for the commit |
| Recruiting assistance for Future of Humanity Institute | None | 2019-08-07 | 95.1 | AI safety/Global catastophic risks | Notes | The part in August 2019 of work done helping Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) with recruitment. Payment is from the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative (BERI) via the BERI/FHI collaboration. Work done from 2019-08-01 to 2019-08-07 |
| Inversion of theorems into definitions when generalizing | LessWrong | 2019-08-04 | 0.0 | Mathematics | Prose | – |
| Recruiting assistance for Future of Humanity Institute | None | 2019-07-31 | 498.75 | AI safety/Global catastophic risks | Notes | The part in July 2019 of work done helping Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) with recruitment. Payment is from the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative (BERI) via the BERI/FHI collaboration. Work done from 2019-07-10 to 2019-07-31 |
| search.gov | None | 2019-07-13 | 30.0 | Technology | Prose | Assembling of a draft Wikipedia-like page for search.gov. Work was done for 3 hours at $10/hour on 2019-07-13 |
| Computing data project | Computing data project | 2019-07-09 | 36.0 | Computer science | Data | Periodic data refresh for the data in CDP. The rate for this data refresh work is $10/hour for up to 10 hours, higher than the usual $7.50/hour for general CDP work. Work was done on 2019-07-08 and 2019-07-09 |
| Org Watch | Org Watch | 2019-07-05 | 0.79 | Organizational structures and dynamics | Data | Answering some questions from Vipul related to work on Org Watch in June |
| None | Devec/Demography data portal | 2019-07-04 | 18.04 | Global development | Code | Some work on [57] Work was done on 2019-07-04 at standard rates for Devec/Demography data portal of $9.75/hour |
| Donations list website | Donations list website | 2019-06-30 | 14.06 | Philanthropy | Code and data | See [58] for the work done. Work was done between 2019-06-20 and 2019-05-30 |
| Computing data project | Computing data project | 2019-06-30 | 4.65 | Computer science | N/A | Investigation of benchmarking tools; this is related to [59] Work was done on 2019-06-30 |
| Org Watch | Org Watch | 2019-06-28 | 253.75 | Organizational structures and dynamics | Data | Periodic data refresh for organization data in Org Watch (OW). Because of the unpleasantness of data entry as well as the economies of scale from bunching this work together, this work is paid at a higher rate than the normal rate for Org Watch work of $9.50/hour. First 10 hours at $22/hour and remaining time at $15/hour; work from 2019-06-23 to 2019-06-28 See [60] for more work details |
| None | Devec/Demography data portal | 2019-06-22 | 1.66 | Global development | N/A | Some discussion with Vipul about the portal, data sources, and potential further work. Work was done on 2019-06-22 |
| Computing data project | Computing data project | 2019-06-19 | 21.7 | Computer science | Data | Periodic data refresh for the data in CDP. The rate for this data refresh work is $10/hour for up to 10 hours, higher than the usual $7.50/hour for general CDP work. Work was done on 2019-06-18 and 2019-06-19 |
| Wikipedia Views country breakdown | Wikipedia Views | 2019-06-05 | 20.66 | Wikipedia | Code | Work done on 2019-06-04 and 2019-06-05 for some residual cleanup and fixes related to [61] |
| AI Watch | AI Watch | 2019-05-22 | 109.06 | AI safety | Code and data | See [62] for the work done. Work was done between 2019-05-02 and 2019-05-22. Although all the time spent is counted under AI Watch, some of the work was for the related Org Watch |
| Do the math, then burn the math and go with your gut | LessWrong Wiki | 2019-05-15 | 0.0 | Rationality | Prose | – |
| Donations list website | Donations list website | 2019-05-13 | 69.92 | Philanthropy | Code and data | See [63] for the work done. Work was done between 2019-05-01 and 2019-05-13 |
| Wikipedia Views country breakdown | Wikipedia Views | 2019-05-09 | 21.08 | Wikipedia | Code | Work done on 2019-05-08 and 2019-05-09 for [61] |
| Org Watch | Org Watch | 2019-04-30 | 41.96 | Organizational structures and dynamics | Code | Work mostly involved adding display support for organization documents, adding a table of contents, and miscellaneous UI tweaks. See [64] for the work done. Work was done between 2019-04-01 and 2019-04-30 |
| Donations list website | Donations list website | 2019-04-28 | 166.73 | Philanthropy | Code and data | See [65] for the work done. Work was done between 2019-04-08 and 2019-04-28 |
| None | Computing data project | 2019-04-23 | 7.63 | Computer science | N/A | Strategy discussion with Vipul on plans for eventually resuming this project. Work was done 2019-04-15 to 2019-04-23 |
| Degree of duplication and coordination in projects that examine computing prices, AI progress, and related topics? | LessWrong | 2019-04-23 | 0.0 | AI safety | Prose | – |
| Donations list website | Donations list website | 2019-03-27 | 33.09 | Philanthropy | Code and data | See [66] for the work done. Work was done between 2019-03-10 and 2019-03-27 |
| Org Watch | Org Watch | 2019-03-27 | 106.24 | Organizational structures and dynamics | Code | Work involved finishing up some pending issues filed in [67] See [68] for the work done. Work was done between 2019-03-17 and 2019-03-27 |
| None | Devec/Demography data portal | 2019-03-23 | 1.79 | Global development | N/A | Strategy discussion with Vipul on plan for eventually resuming this project |
| None | Computing data project | 2019-03-23 | 4.38 | Computer science | N/A | Strategy discussion with Vipul on plans for eventually resuming this project |
| Timelines wiki hosting and maintenance and feature enhancement | Timelines wiki | 2019-03-20 | 300.0 | Timeline content | Code | This includes hosting and maintenance costs of $20/month (total $240), plus monthly updates and ongoing improvements to [69] at $5/month (total $60) |
| Comparison of decision theories (with a focus on logical-counterfactual decision theories) | LessWrong | 2019-03-16 | 0.0 | Decision theory | Prose | A blog post comparing decision theories like UDT, FDT, and TDT, which are frequently discussed on LessWrong. |
| Timeline of Machine Intelligence Research Institute | Timelines wiki | 2019-03-11 | 27.0 | AI safety | Timeline | Completed March 11, 2019; covers work since the last payment on February 24, 2018. Payment for page as of [70] and specifically for the diff [71] (89,249 bytes to 96,505 bytes) |
| Donations list website | Donations list website | 2019-02-26 | 42.47 | Philanthropy | Code and data | Most of the focus was on adding various kinds of donation statistics that are particularly useful for large donors who have made lots of donations. Work was done between 2019-02-02 and 2019-02-26 |
| Multiple pages | Learning subwiki | 2019-02-23 | 33.13 | Learning | Prose | Creation of and augmentation of many pages on learning subwiki. Work done 2019-02-12 to 2019-02-23 |
| Multiple pages | Learning subwiki | 2019-01-23 | 15.19 | Learning | Prose | Creation of and augmentation of many pages on learning subwiki. Work done 2019-01-07 to 2019-01-23 |
| Donations list website | Donations list website | 2019-01-21 | 75.23 | Philanthropy | Code and data | Most of the focus was on writing code to process grants lists for a number of foundation donors. See issues #89 to #107 (not all of them were completed or worked on within the month of January). Work was done between 2019-01-10 and 2019-01-21 |
| Backups | None | 2018-12-31 | 113.0 | Wikipedia/Backup | Code and data | Payment for maintaining the process that does daily backups of Wikipedia content, at $2/week for 56.5 weeks, from 2017-12-02 to 2018-12-31 |
| Donations list website | Donations list website | 2018-12-27 | 8.76 | Philanthropy | Code and data | Most of the focus was on adding metadata for a number of donees. Work was done between 2018-12-05 and 2018-12-27 |
| Multiple pages | Learning subwiki | 2018-12-24 | 77.06 | Learning | Prose | Creation of and augmentation of many pages on learning subwiki. Work done 2018-12-06 to 2018-12-24 |
| analytics.vipulnaik.com | analytics.vipulnaik.com | 2018-12-15 | 150.0 | Analytics | Code and data | Setup work for a public website [72] that records Google Analytics data for a number of websites. Pay for this was set as max{$150, $8.50/hour * Time spent}. 12.92 hours were spent on the first phase of work, so the $150 was binding. Work done 2018-11-26 to 2018-12-15. GitHub repository at [73] |
| GraphQL tutorial for LessWrong and Effective Altruism Forum | LessWrong | 2018-12-08 | 120.0 | Web use | Prose | Work done 2018-11-16 to 2018-12-08; see history at [74] Although work on the post and the associated tools took more time than the 16 hours indicated for payment, the paid time was capped at 16 hours. The post was added to the LW Open Source Guide [75] by Raymond Arnold |
| Donations list website | Donations list website | 2018-11-29 | 53.98 | Philanthropy | Code and data | Most of the focus was on adding metadata for a number of donees. Work was done between 2018-11-06 and 2018-11-29 |
| Multiple pages | Learning subwiki | 2018-11-29 | 306.56 | Learning | Prose | August: 4th; September: 10th to 20th; October: 6th to 26th; November: 2nd to 29th. $70 for the first 8 hours at $8.75/hour, and $236.56 for the next 37 hours 51 minutes at $6.25/hour. |
| None | Cause Prioritization Wiki | 2018-10-31 | 45.15 | Technological progress and stagnation | Prose | Work done October 29 to October 31. Most of the work was preliminary reading and research into the Great Stagnation hypothesis, with no immediate visible public output |
| List of effective altruism-related projects | Cause Prioritization Wiki | 2018-10-28 | 37.6 | Effective altruism | Table | Work done October 27 and October 28. It had a number of related goals, including identifying good donation targets, donor motivations and strategies, and projects in and around the effective altruism movement that might be good donation targets. Ultimately, after some work by Issa on the list, we decided it made sense to wait a bit longer for more public disclosure of EA Grants before returning to looking at this |
| Contract work for Vipul Naik | Contract work for Vipul Naik | 2018-10-24 | 50.0 | Graphical presentation | Code | The availability of graphs was extended to a number of other pages on the contract work website. Pay was set at max{$8.50 * number of hours, $50}. Since the work was completed in less than 2 hours, payment of $50 was selected. GitHub issue [76] and pull request [77] |
| Donations list website | Donations list website | 2018-10-22 | 66.44 | Philanthropy | Code and data | Most of the focus was on adding metadata for a number of donees. Work was done between 2018-10-05 and 2018-10-22 |
| Org Watch | Org Watch | 2018-10-17 | 16.13 | Organizational structures and dynamics | Code and data | Work done primarily between 2018-10-06 and 2018-10-17 |
| None | None | 2018-10-11 | 51.25 | None | Prose | Continued research on career opportunities and their impact, along the lines of 80,000 Hours. Work done between 2018-10-02 and 2018-10-11 |
| Write Facebook Graph Search Queries | wikiHow | 2018-10-04 | 101.13 | Web use | Prose | Work done September 30 to October 4. Completed version at [78] and mirror at [79] |
| Escher painting mind | LessWrong Wiki | 2018-10-04 | 0.0 | Rationality | Prose | I noticed this term being used in several of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s writings, and became frustrated that there was no location that collected all of these. |
| None | None | 2018-09-30 | 158.31 | None | Prose | Preliminary research on career opportunities and their impact, along the lines of 80,000 Hours. Work done between 2018-09-22 and 2018-09-30 |
| N/A | None | 2018-09-24 | 10.0 | Miscellaneous | Total payment for reaching out to people with relevant questions, suggestions, and comments | |
| Donations list website | Donations list website | 2018-09-21 | 39.1 | Philanthropy | Code and data | Work on MIRI top donors updates and BERI grants. Work done between 2018-09-01 and 2018-09-21. See [80] and check the September 2018 commits for more information |
| Org Watch | Org Watch | 2018-09-19 | 68.85 | Organizational structures and dynamics | Code and data | Work done primarily between 2018-09-13 and 2018-09-19 adding data for The Good Food Institute and Effective Altruism Foundation and making other minor edits; see [81] and check the September 2018 commits for more. |
| Navigate to Web Pages Efficiently Without Using Navigation Menus | wikiHow | 2018-09-10 | 118.13 | Web use | Prose | Worked August 23 to September 10, including post-publication improvement. Completed version at [82] and mirror at [83] |
| Get Traffic Analytics for a Website You Don't Own | wikiHow | 2018-09-09 | 18.9 | Web use | Prose | Minor improvements requested by Vipul, see [84] for diff. Work done on 2018-09-08 and 2018-09-09 |
| Donations list website | Donations list website | 2018-08-30 | 215.0 | Philanthropy | Code and data | Work on a bunch of issues related to importing grants databases for different donors into the donations list website. See comments made in August 2018 on [85] for more information. Dates of work ranged from August 5 to August 30 |
| Computing data project | Computing data project | 2018-08-27 | 9.0 | Computer science | Code and data | Addition of some more provider data (Amazon Lightsail) and other related work. Work done on August 27 |
| Donations List Website: tutorial and request for feedback | Effective Altruism Forum | 2018-08-24 | 65.0 | Philanthropy | Prose | Blog post explaining the Donations List Website through a tutorial, and asking for feedback about how people use it and what kinds of improvements they would most appreciate. The tutorial part of the blog post was also mirrored in updates to the README [86] Payment here includes payment both for work on the post and time spent replying to a comment by Milan, see [87] Work (including the comment reply) happened between August 18 and August 24, though the post was published August 21 |
| None | None | 2018-08-03 | 109.0 | AI safety | Prose | Some research, reading, and writing related to AI safety and adjacent topics like decision theory. Payment at $9.75/hour was based on time matching against work on the computing data project (CDP). The corresponding hours for CDP that were matched against had been worked in July |
| Org Watch | Org Watch | 2018-07-31 | 17.0 | Organizational structures and dynamics | Code and data | A little bit of work adding more data for some already added orgs. Work begun end of July and continued in August; this payment is for the part of work till the end of July |
| Donations list website | Donations list website | 2018-07-31 | 146.0 | Philanthropy | Code and data | Work on a bunch of issues related to importing grants databases for different donors into the donations list website. See comments made in July 2018 on [85] for more information. |
| Computing data project | Computing data project | 2018-07-29 | 408.0 | Computer science | Code and data | Basic setup and initial data entry to do comparison across different cloud providers for compute, storage, and network. Payment for work done throughout the month. Check [88] for the dates that work was done |
| None | None | 2018-07-26 | 295.0 | AI safety | Prose | Some research, reading, and writing related to AI safety and adjacent topics like decision theory. Payment at $9.75/hour was based on time matching against work on the computing data project (CDP) |
| Timeline of Foundational Research Institute | Timelines wiki | 2018-07-16 | 50.0 | Animal welfare | Timeline | Completed version at [89] (2018-07-16 17:08 UTC, 10413 bytes, 19 rows) |
| Donations list website | Donations list website | 2018-06-30 | 55.0 | Philanthropy | Code and data | Work on a bunch of issues related to importing grants databases for different donors into the donations list website. See comments made in June 2018 on [85] for more information. |
| Org Watch | Org Watch | 2018-06-30 | 396.0 | Organizational structures and dynamics | Code and data | Work on a new site: Org Watch [90] building on the same code and data format used for AI Watch [91] The idea of the new site is to expand coverage to organizations and positions outside AI safety. Work at a pay rate of $60 per 8-hour day, or $7.50/hour |
| Timeline of Google Brain | Timelines wiki | 2018-06-13 | 75.0 | AI | Timeline | Completed version at [92] (2018-06-13 00:59 UTC, 17419 bytes, 24 rows) |
| Donations list website | Donations list website | 2018-05-31 | 78.0 | Philanthropy | Code and data | Work on a bunch of issues related to importing grants databases for different donors into the donations list website. See comments made in May 2018 on [85] for more information. |
| AI Watch | AI Watch | 2018-05-29 | 100.0 | Organizational structures and dynamics | Code and data | 2 days (total 16 hours: May 28 and May 29) of work to add more data and summarization tools for people at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute: [93] |
| Devec/Demography data portal | Devec/Demography data portal | 2018-05-28 | 36.0 | Global development | Code | Helping Vipul set up devec hosting, and some bugfixes and improvements in the process. See [94] for more details |
| Org repo | None | 2018-05-27 | 30.0 | Organizational structures and dynamics | Prose | Preliminary study of the growth trajectory of select organizations. This was an early precursor to Org Watch |
| Timeline of Center for Human-Compatible AI | Timelines wiki | 2018-05-10 | 30.0 | AI safety | Timeline | Completed version at [95] (2018-05-11 00:35 UTC, 7179 bytes, 11 rows) |
| Timeline of the rationality community | Timelines wiki | 2018-05-09 | 70.0 | Rationality improvement | Timeline | Completed version at [96] (2018-05-10 05:19 UTC, 23790 bytes, 42 rows) |
| Timeline of OpenAI | Timelines wiki | 2018-05-08 | 100.0 | AI safety | Timeline | Completed version at [97] (2018-05-08 23:02 UTC, 28771 bytes, 37 rows) |
| Progress report starting 2018-04-14 | Cause Prioritization Wiki | 2018-05-03 | 400.0 | Cause prioritization | Prose | 10 days of self-directed work on a taxonomy of cause prioritization. Work started 2018-04-14, ended 2018-05-03. Prior plan was included, and actual progress described, at [98] |
| Initial work on next round on cause prioritization work, subsequently aborted | Cause Prioritization Wiki | 2018-05-03 | 33.0 | Cause prioritization | Prose | Initial exploration/report generation to prepare for the next 10-day period of work on cause prioritization. However, after discussion Vipul determined that the time is not yet ripe for that next stage of work, so this was aborted. Payment was applied at $40/day |
| Donations list website | Donations list website | 2018-04-30 | 250.0 | Philanthropy | Code and data | Work on a bunch of issues related to importing grants databases for different donors into the donations list website. See comments made in April 2018 on [85] for more information. |
| List of classifications of philanthropy | Cause Prioritization Wiki | 2018-04-27 | 0.0 | Philanthropy | Table | In the process of thinking about how to better classify cause areas on the wiki, I discovered several existing classifications of philanthropy, so I decided to make a list with some notes on each. |
| Wikipedia Clickstream | Wikipedia Views | 2018-04-25 | 70.0 | Wikipedia | Code | Work done on April 21 and April 25, 2018. The work built on previous work with the clickstream dataset to streamline the monthly update process, now that the Wikimedia Foundation is publishing the datasets every month. See [99] for the issue specifics |
| Progress report 2018-03-08 to 2018-03-29 | Cause Prioritization Wiki | 2018-04-14 | 400.0 | Cause prioritization | Prose | 10 days of self-directed work on the Cause Prioritization Wiki, at $40/day. No prior plan was announced, but a summary and evaluation of work done is at the link. Work started 2018-03-08. Work other than the report completed 2018-03-29, report finished 2018-04-14 |
| Summer recruitment plans | None | 2018-04-13 | 50.0 | Contract work for Vipul Naik | Prose | Exploration of strategies to find people who might work with us over the summer. However, we ultimately decided not to pursue this further in 2018. Initially agreed on $50 for 8 hours of work; Issa ended up spending an extra half hour on it |
| Timelines wiki popularization | Timelines wiki | 2018-04-13 | 119.0 | Timelines wiki | Prose | Brainstorming various ideas on improving content and engagement with Timelines wiki. One of the outcomes of this was the creation of the Timelines wiki subreddit [100] Timelines wiki Reddit to which Issa has been posting regularly. Budget was for four days (32 hours) at $6.25/hour of which 19 were used; Issa has flexibility to spend, report, and get paid for the remaining 13 hours later |
| Holden Karnofsky | Wikiquote | 2018-04-06 | 0.0 | Philanthropy | Prose | After writing the Wikiquote page for Wei Dai, I was in the mood to write another similar page, so I picked Holden Karnofsky (who I knew had some good quotes). |
| Wei Dai | Wikiquote | 2018-04-05 | 0.0 | Rationality improvement | Prose | I spent a lot of time reading old LessWrong discussions in the course of writing some of my timelines and learning about decision theory, and realized there were enough good Wei Dai quotes for a page. |
| N/A | None | 2018-04-01 | 10.0 | Miscellaneous | Total payment for reaching out to people with relevant questions, suggestions, and comments | |
| Donations list website | Donations list website | 2018-03-31 | 70.0 | Philanthropy | Code and data | Work on a bunch of issues related to importing grants databases for different donors into the donations list website. See comments made in March 2018 on [85] for more information. |
| Timelines wiki hosting and maintenance and feature enhancement | Timelines wiki | 2018-03-20 | 320.0 | Timeline content | Code | This includes hosting and maintenance costs of $20/month (total $240), plus payment for additional work, such as automating the main page table and making sure it is updated: [69] |
| Timeline of Future of Humanity Institute | Timelines wiki | 2018-03-18 | 300.0 | AI safety | Timeline | Completed version at [101] (2018-03-18 18:48 UTC, 91994 bytes, 150 rows) |
| Timelines wiki main page | Timelines wiki | 2018-03-10 | 5.0 | Maintenance | Table | Rerun of [69] script so Vipul can access updated numbers for pay to Sebastian |
| Cause Prioritization Wiki | Cause Prioritization Wiki | 2018-03-07 | 450.0 | Cause prioritization | Prose | 10 days of self-directed work on the Cause Prioritization Wiki, at $45/day. See [102] for the corresponding commits |
| Donations list website | Donations list website | 2018-02-28 | 350.0 | Philanthropy | Code and data | Work on a bunch of issues related to importing grants databases for different donors into the donations list website. See comments made in February 2018 on [85] for more information. |
| List of discussions between Paul Christiano and Wei Dai | Cause Prioritization Wiki | 2018-02-28 | 0.0 | AI safety | Table | As I’ve been reading more discussions of AI safety, I’ve been getting interested in the disagreements between Paul Christiano and Wei Dai, so I decided to make a list for easy reference. As of this writing, many of the “Topics covered” and “Summary” fields are not filled; I hope to fill these as I process the discussions. This page was created under general work on the Cause Prioritization Wiki (stipend plus $45 per 8 hours), for which pay will be entered separately. |
| Timeline of Machine Intelligence Research Institute | Timelines wiki | 2018-02-24 | 25.0 | AI safety | Timeline | Payment for page as of [103] and specifically for the diff [104] (82,663 bytes to 89,249 bytes) |
| Timeline of Wei Dai publications | Timelines wiki | 2018-02-16 | 0.0 | Rationality | Timeline | I’ve been getting interested in Wei Dai’s posts on LessWrong and other forums, so decided to make this timeline. Since the early everything-list posts were not easily accessible, I decided to host these through GitHub Pages. Vipul Naik allowed me to count this as work time for him, plus $35 per 8 hours of work on the timeline. |
| Timeline of Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative | Timelines wiki | 2018-02-09 | 50.0 | AI safety | Timeline | Completed version at [105] (2018-02-09 18:49 UTC, 10881 bytes, 19 rows) |
| Optimization daemons | LessWrong Wiki | 2018-02-08 | 0.0 | AI safety | Prose | A short page about optimization daemons, since there didn’t seem to be a single page that linked out to all other discussions. |
| Donations list website | Donations list website | 2018-01-31 | 675.0 | Philanthropy | Code and data | Work on a bunch of issues related to importing grants databases for different donors into the donations list website. See comments made in January 2018 on [85] for more information. |
| N/A | None | 2018-01-16 | 10.0 | Miscellaneous | Total payment for reaching out to people with relevant questions, suggestions, and comments | |
| People repo | People repo | 2018-01-13 | 380.0 | People | Notes | Third and fourth 4-day batches (at $50/day and $45/day) of writing up notes about different people we are interested in. See the commit [106] for background |
| Donations list website | Donations list website | 2017-12-30 | 260.0 | Philanthropy | Code and data | Work on a bunch of issues related to importing grants databases for different donors into the donations list website. See comments made in December 2017 on [85] for more information. |
| People repo | People repo | 2017-12-29 | 400.0 | People | Notes | First two 4-day batches (at $50/day) of writing up notes about different people we are interested in. See the commit [106] for background |
| Devec/Demography Data Portal | Devec/Demography data portal | 2017-12-14 | 165.0 | Global development | Code | Work on setting up the interface of the Devec/Demography data portal, from 2017-12-08 to 2017-12-14. Launch of the portal is pending review by Vipul |
| Computing data project | Computing data project | 2017-12-09 | 250.0 | Computer science | Code | Basic data entry and setup for a project to track computing prices over time. The project was paused for a while without producing a complete launchable product or website. Work was from 2017-11-18 to 2017-12-09 |
| Devec/Demography Data Portal | Devec/Demography data portal | 2017-12-07 | 475.0 | Global development | Code | Continued work on data porting to SQL; this extends the previously mentioned work ending 2017-10-30 of importing datasets and cleaning them up. This entry counts the part of the work after 2017-10-30 and till 2017-12-07 |
| Backups | None | 2017-12-03 | 212.0 | Wikipedia/Backup | Code and data | Payment for maintaining the process that does daily backups of Wikipedia content, at $4/week for 53 weeks |
| Timeline of evolutionary thought | Timelines wiki | 2017-12-02 | 25.0 | Biology | Timeline | Completed version at [107] (2017-12-03 00:57 UTC, 4828 bytes, 20 rows) |
| Wikipedia spotlight | Wikipedia spotlight | 2017-11-30 | 700.0 | Wikipedia | Prose | Still unpublished retrospective document of our experience with paid editing on Wikipedia. Payment is out of a total budget of $1000 for the project. It includes time spent from March to June, and two days in November. The November time alone is 15 hours; the previous time is not explicitly logged. The remaining work worth $300 is expected to take about six days |
| N/A | None | 2017-11-21 | 10.0 | Miscellaneous | Total payment for reaching out to people with relevant questions, suggestions, and comments | |
| Devec/Demography Data Portal | Devec/Demography data portal | 2017-11-17 | 40.0 | Global development | Code | SQL query optimization work on 2017-11-16 and 2017-11-17 related to the Devec/Demography data portal |
| Devec subwiki | Devec subwiki | 2017-11-16 | 350.0 | Global development | Code | Continuation of preliminary reading in development economics work; this covers the batch of reading from 2017-10-07 to 2017-11-16. A previous payment was added for work from 2017-09-06 to 2017-10-06 |
| N/A | None | 2017-11-11 | 10.0 | Miscellaneous | Total payment for reaching out to people with relevant questions, suggestions, and comments | |
| Timeline of economic statistics | Timelines wiki | 2017-11-10 | 145.0 | Economics | Timeline | Version as of pay at [108] (2017-11-11 00:46 UTC, 55767 bytes). About half the size as of this point was due to Issa, with the other half being from Vipul. Subsequent expansion was mostly by Vipul |
| AI Watch | AI Watch | 2017-11-07 | 150.0 | AI safety | Code and data | Phase 1 of work on AI Watch, a site to better track the people and organizations working on AI safety. As of the time of finalizing pay, 309 people were entered. In addition to data entry, Issa also designed the database schema and wrote code to render data from the database in tables |
| Timeline of AI safety | Timelines wiki | 2017-10-31 | 170.0 | AI safety | Timeline | Payment for page as of [109] (2017-10-31 16:46 UTC, 41090 byes, 83 rows) |
| Devec/Demography Data Portal | Devec/Demography data portal | 2017-10-30 | 700.0 | Global development | Code | Code written for data processing and cleaning related to five datasets: [110] (Maddison Project), [111] (Penn World Table), [112] (World Development Indicators), [113] (Total Economy Database), [114] (FRED) |
| change-theme.js | Personal website | 2017-10-18 | 0.0 | User experience | Code | Some of my friends (i.e. the only semi-regular readers of my website as far as I know) have picky aesthetic tastes when it comes to website design, and so do I. After some recent design changes to my site I received a complaint, so this script is a compromise to allow readers to change limited aspects of the design. The code as of this initial round of development is at [115] and some more information at [116] (though only about the text width part). |
| Timelines Wiki main page table automation | Timelines wiki | 2017-10-16 | 0.0 | Miscellaneous | Code | Previously the main page table had been filled in manually by (mostly) me. This task allows for significantly faster data updates and more complete data. |
| N/A | None | 2017-10-09 | 10.0 | Miscellaneous | Total payment for reaching out to people with relevant questions, suggestions, and comments | |
| Contract work for Vipul Naik | Contract work for Vipul Naik | 2017-10-07 | 135.0 | Graphical presentation | Code | Code written to generate graphs of incremental and cumulative payments by various drilldowns plotted at yearly and monthly granularity. See pull requests [117] [118] [119] or look at the commits made in [120] (a fork where the commits were made) |
| Devec subwiki | Devec subwiki | 2017-10-06 | 300.0 | Global development | Notes | This is a stipend supplement. Preliminary reading on development economics as well as databases of economic growth and metrics. This would eventually help with data porting exercises and expanding [121] (the Devec subwiki) |
| Donations list website | Donations list website | 2017-09-30 | 200.0 | Philanthropy/tabular presentation | Code | See commits from September 28 to September 30 by Issa Rice, specifically [122] for the full list. This included incorporating data from the Effective Altruism Survey (separate repository [123] with 12 commits) and Effective Altruism Grants (separate repository [124] with 6 commits) |
| Timeline of Cato Institute | Timelines wiki | 2017-08-31 | 135.0 | United States politics/libertarianism/think tanks | Timeline | Payment for page as of [125] (2017-09-01 05:36 UTC, 34856 bytes, 81 rows) |
| Representativeness of events in timelines | Timelines wiki | 2017-08-30 | 0.0 | Content creation | Prose | – |
| Open Philanthropy Predictions | PredictionBook | 2017-08-29 | 74.0 | Philanthropy | Predictions | Payment of $30 base and $44 for predictions, with $40 for two-way predictions and $4 for more complex predictions. See also the GitHub repository [126] for more background |
| Timeline of Ludwig von Mises Institute | Timelines wiki | 2017-08-25 | 75.0 | United States politics/libertarianism/think tanks | Timeline | Payment for page as of [127] (2017-08-25 23:44 UTC, 13976 bytes, 29 rows) |
| Domain names in timelines | Timelines wiki | 2017-08-25 | 0.0 | Content creation | Prose | – |
| Timeline of Niskanen Center | Timelines wiki | 2017-08-16 | 115.0 | United States politics/libertarianism/think tanks | Timeline | Payment for page as of [128] (2017-08-17 01:10 UTC) |
| mediawiki.vim | GitHub | 2017-08-13 | 0.0 | Technology | Code | As I began writing a lot of Wikipedia pages, I started to want a good filetype plugin. Not being able to find one I liked, I wrote my own. Development began on 2016-08-17 and I slowly added features as needed. |
| Donations list website | Donations list website | 2017-08-12 | 325.0 | Philanthropy/tabular presentation | Code | See commits by riceissa from 2017-08-04 to 2017-08-12. Work was for 6.5 working days, spanning 8.5 calendar days |
| Donation amounts by disclosures and year | Donations list website | 2017-08-12 | 75.0 | Philanthropy/Open Philanthropy Project | Table | Schema design, data entry, and coding to render tables in the Donations list website for Open Philanthropy Project grant-related relationship disclosures data |
| Timeline of libertarianism in the United States | Timelines wiki | 2017-08-10 | 150.0 | United States politics/libertarianism | Timeline | Payment for page as of [129] (2017-08-10 22:50 UTC, 24732 bytes, 89 rows) |
| Sebastian Sanchez contract work details | None | 2017-08-05 | 75.0 | Global health | Communication with worker | Since no commission structure was used for Sebastian, but Issa did help with onboarding Sebastian and continues to provide technical assistance, a one-time payment of 15% on the first $500 was determined |
| Timeline of Bitcoin | Timelines wiki | 2017-08-03 | 180.0 | Cryptocurrency/Bitcoin | Timeline | Completed version at [130] (2017-08-03 19:07 UTC, 58300 bytes, 118 rows) |
| Linting | Vim Tips Wiki | 2017-08-02 | 0.0 | Technology | Prose | – |
| Timeline of Center for Applied Rationality | Timelines wiki | 2017-07-28 | 50.0 | Rationality improvement | Timeline | Payment for page as of [131] (2017-07-28 19:27 UTC). See the “What the timeline is still missing” section for further plans for the timeline |
| Donee deduplication, donor similarity, notes column expansion | Donations list website | 2017-07-22 | 300.0 | Graphs and data cleaning | Code | See the branches [132] [133] and [134] for the relevant commits. Some commits done directly in master. Worked for about 5.5 working days (starting July 15, 2017) |
| Timeline of Machine Intelligence Research Institute | Timelines wiki | 2017-07-15 | 250.0 | AI safety | Timeline | Payment for page as of [135] (2017-07-15 19:39 UTC), 74,234 bytes. See the External links section for shares of the page on Facebook and LessWrong. Subsequent expansion by Vipul not included in pay, except to the extent it involving consulting with Issa. Plans for future expansion of timeline that would complete TODOs; when this expansion occurs it will be entered as a Wiki page update in the pay |
| Michael Vassar | Wikiquote | 2017-07-14 | 0.0 | Rationality improvement | Prose | I kept hearing people talk about Michael Vassar, and was frustrated that there was no canonical place to look at quotes about him. |
| Graph legend | Wikipedia Views | 2017-07-07 | 40.0 | Graphs | Code | Update to graph.py utility at [136] to show legends optionally at the bottom of graphs. Also incorporated by Vipul Naik in the code in two other repositories: [137] and [138] – see also [139] for a bug fix to the push |
| Comma sorting | Donations list website | 2017-06-18 | 40.0 | Donations | Code | Fixed sorting tool we use in JavaScript so that it can sort tables while also using comma separation for greater ease of reading numbers. The commits were all made in [140] and [141] was the last commit |
| N/A | None | 2017-06-17 | 20.0 | Miscellaneous | Total payment for reaching out to people with relevant questions, suggestions, and comments | |
| Timeline of electricity adoption | Timelines wiki | 2017-06-08 | 125.0 | Infrastructure/electricity | Timeline | Payment for page as of [142] (2017-06-09 05:41 UTC, 20303 bytes). Pay does not cover all reading/research work that led up to the timeline; compensation for that is covered in the stipend and also in pay for future expansion of the article that incorporates all the extra knowledge acquired |
| Timeline of Carl Shulman publications | Timelines wiki | 2017-06-05 | 0.0 | Rationality improvement | Timeline | Vipul Naik gave me the idea and provided funding through a stipend but no specific task payment |
| Unused keys | Vim Tips Wiki | 2017-05-29 | 0.0 | Technology | Table | I got frustrated at being unable to quickly tell whether a key was safe to map in Vim. |
| Timeline of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation | Timelines wiki | 2017-05-11 | 120.0 | Philanthropy/foundations/global health | Timeline | Payment for page as of [143] (2017-05-11 19:21 UTC). Includes 78 references, has data 2011 onward, and no big picture |
| Timeline of Against Malaria Foundation | Timelines wiki | 2017-04-27 | 155.0 | Global health/malaria/philanthropy/GiveWell top charities | Timeline | Payment for page as of [144] (2017-04-28 03:02 UTC). Includes timeline with 128 references, big picture, and evolution of cost-per-life-saved estimates (imported from Wikipedia, where Issa and Vipul worked on the table) |
| Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation | Donations list website | 2017-04-23 | 230.0 | Foundation grants | Code and data | Processed Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grants from IATI at [145] to generate data for insertion in donations database. Code available at [146] – run the commands there and then pass the generated SQL to the donations database |
| LessWrong analytics (February 2009 to January 2017) | LessWrong | 2017-04-16 | 80.0 | Web analytics | Prose | Full Gist available at [147] includes data, source code, and post markdown |
| N/A | None | 2017-04-12 | 10.0 | Miscellaneous | Total payment for reaching out to people with relevant questions, suggestions, and comments | |
| Open Philanthropy Project non-grant funding | Personal website | 2017-04-02 | 0.0 | Philanthropy/Open Philanthropy Project | Prose | Decided on a whim to collect data |
| Timeline of TempleOS | Timelines wiki | 2017-03-24 | 0.0 | Technology | Timeline | I have been fascinated by Terry A. Davis since discovering him on /g/. I wrote the timeline after getting frustrated at being unable to keep his life story straight in my head. |
| Laura and John Arnold Foundation | Donations list website | 2017-03-22 | 60.0 | Foundation grants | Code and data | Processed Arnold Foundation grants to generate data for insertion in donations database. Code available at [148] and insertion code can be pasted from [148] in MySQL |
| hits-based giving project | None | 2017-03-22 | 570.0 | Philanthropy/history of philanthropy | Notes | Initial work for a project announced by Peter Hurford at [149] after some modification and discussion with Peter. Due to data availability constraints,the project could not be completed,so the pay is for 38 hours of initial work at $15/hour |
| Timelines wiki | Timelines wiki | 2017-03-20 | 200.0 | Timeline content | Timeline | Migrated a bunch of timelines from Wikipedia to the new Timelines wiki |
| Understanding different editing patterns on Wikipedia | None | 2017-03-11 | 100.0 | Wikipedia | Private communication + code | Added functionality to wikidossier to compare multiple users and do multiple namespaces for a single user. The interface is not yet public. However, you can visit [150] for the underlying code. The last commit covered by this pay is [151] (2017-03-11) |
| Timeline of Reddit | Wikipedia | 2017-03-03 | 29.0 | Technology/company | Timeline | Significant updates to and revamp/cleanup of timeline. Diff URL: [152] taking page from 21,870 bytes to 36,244 bytes. Note that baseline 10 dollars was not included as expansion was not completed prior to shutdown of contract work |
| Understanding different editing patterns on Wikipedia | None | 2017-03-03 | 200.0 | Wikipedia | Code | Research produced profiles of different kinds of Wikipedia editors, and an interface to generate a report on the trajectory of Wikipedia editor. The interface is not yet public. However, you can visit [150] for the underlying code |
| Timeline of GitHub | Wikipedia | 2017-03-01 | 100.0 | Technology/company | Timeline | Significant updates to and revamp/cleanup of timeline. Diff URL: [153] taking page from 10,400 bytes to 58,682 bytes |
| Unlicense | Wikipedia | 2017-02-28 | 0.0 | Technology | Prose | I think I decided on a whim to create the page. Personally I prefer CC0 as a public domain license. |
| Open Philanthropy Project,Good Ventures [154], [155] | Wikipedia | 2017-02-26 | 50.0 | Philanthropy/Grants | Table | February end grants update: 13 grants to Open Phil, 9 grants to Good Ventures; 21 distinct grants, so pay = 50 |
| ICWATCH | Wikipedia | 2017-02-26 | 0.0 | Technology | Prose | I discovered ICWATCH while adding events to Timeline of LinkedIn [156] , specifically from a TechCrunch article [157] |
| fugitive.vim | Wikipedia | 2017-02-25 | 0.0 | Technology | Prose | – |
| Timeline of LinkedIn | Wikipedia | 2017-02-22 | 38.0 | Technology/company | Timeline | Periodic updates to timeline; added events since last updates to timeline and also filled and improved some old events. Diff URL: [158] taking page from 20,318 bytes to 34,900 bytes |
| Timeline of Instagram | Wikipedia | 2017-02-22 | 22.0 | Technology/company | Timeline | Periodic updates to timeline; added events since last updates to timeline and also filled and improved some old events. Diff URL: [159] taking page from 19,714 bytes to 25,821 bytes |
| Timeline of Airbnb | Wikipedia | 2017-02-21 | 23.0 | Technology/company | Timeline | Periodic updates to timeline; added events since last updates to timeline and also filled and improved some old events. Diff URL: [160] taking page from 36,871 bytes to 43,777 bytes |
| Timeline of Twitter | Wikipedia | 2017-02-21 | 28.0 | Technology/company | Timeline | Periodic updates to timeline; added events since last updates to timeline and also filled and improved some old events. Diff URL: [161] taking page from 52,761 bytes to 62,029 bytes |
| Timeline of Pinterest | Wikipedia | 2017-02-20 | 30.0 | Technology/company | Timeline | Periodic updates to timeline; added events since last updates to timeline and also filled and improved some old events. Diff URL: [162] taking page from 38,396 bytes to 48,468 bytes |
| Timeline of Facebook | Wikipedia | 2017-02-18 | 25.0 | Technology/company | Timeline | Periodic updates to timeline; added events since last updates to timeline and also filled and improved some old events. Diff URL: [163] taking page from 118,897 bytes to 126,146 bytes |
| Timeline of Snapchat | Wikipedia | 2017-02-17 | 28.0 | Technology/company | Timeline | Periodic updates to timeline; added events since last updates to timeline and also filled and improved some old events. Diff URL: [164] taking page from 48,021 bytes to 57,473 bytes |
| Laura and John Arnold Foundation | Wikipedia | 2017-02-11 | 220.0 | Philanthropy/Grants | Table | Based on GitHub repository [148] and originally attempted to save on the main page [165] but reverted by Jytdog, see [166] so saved a search engine-indexable version in userspace |
| Form 990 | Wikipedia | 2017-02-10 | 3.0 | United States taxation/Philanthropy/Nonprofit evaluation | Prose | Added launch of Form 990 Decoder by Charity Navigator |
| New article pool | Contract work for Vipul Naik | 2017-02-10 | 50.0 | Contract work/worker management | Prose | Added list of Open Phil grantees. The payment also takes into account past pull requests. See [167] for a list |
| Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security | Wikipedia | 2017-02-09 | 37.0 | Biosecurity | Prose | There was an existing page for “UPMC Center for Health Security” (the previous name for the org) but the page was entirely rewritten and significantly expanded, so is being treated as a new page creation |
| Global Burden of Disease Study | Wikipedia | 2017-02-07 | 75.0 | Global health | Prose | There was an existing confused page called “Global burden of disease” but this was essentially rewritten from scratch |
| Iodine Global Network | Wikipedia | 2017-02-07 | 14.0 | Global health/nutrition/iodine | Prose | Moved from old location (for old name, International Council for the Control of Iodine Deficiency Disorders) to new one, and added new GiveWell reviews and recommendations |
| N/A | None | 2017-02-04 | 20.0 | Miscellaneous | Total payment for reaching out to people with relevant questions, suggestions, and comments | |
| Open Philanthropy Project,Good Ventures [154], [155] | Wikipedia | 2017-01-29 | 50.0 | Philanthropy/Grants | Table | January end grants update: 6 grants to Open Phil, 13 grants to Good Ventures, so pay = 50 |
| Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation | Wikipedia | 2017-01-28 | 14.0 | Global health | Prose | Added reception section and some minor reference fixes |
| Timeline of global health | Wikipedia | 2017-01-26 | 20.0 | Global health | Timeline | Fixed 11 dead links and added three new events (first two cholera pandemics, typhus epidemic) |
| Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance | Wikipedia | 2017-01-25 | 7.0 | Global health | Prose | Page improvements including clarifying history of name changes and adding references |
| PHP/MySQL: Fixing utf8 text corrupted by implicit mysqli::set_charset(latin1) connection | Wikipedia Views | 2017-01-25 | 20.0 | Character encoding issues | Communication with Vipul | Investigated character encoding issue, discovered relevant Stack Overflow question |
| N/A | None | 2017-01-19 | 20.0 | Miscellaneous | Total payment for reaching out to people with relevant questions, suggestions, and comments | |
| Essay contest: general considerations for evaluating small-scale giving opportunities ($300 for winning submission) | Effective Altruism Forum | 2017-01-19 | 50.0 | Effective altruism/contest/small-scale giving | Prose | Announced contest organized by Peter Hurford, Vipul Naik, and Issa Rice. Remaining $50 pay to be given after first serious submission |
| Donations list website | Donations list website | 2017-01-08 | 155.0 | Effective altruism/donation history | Structured data | Designed SQL tables and provided initial set of rows to insert |
| Timeline of digital preservation | Wikipedia | 2017-01-04 | 90.0 | Digital preservation | Timeline | There is still more to port over from [168] and additional payment will be added when the porting is complete |
| Researcher profiles | None | 2016-12-31 | 70.0 | Research strategy | Prose | Officially stopped project 2017-01-01 but part paid by Vipul was finished by 2016-12-31 |
| Open Philanthropy Project,Good Ventures [154], [155] | Wikipedia | 2016-12-28 | 40.0 | Philanthropy/Grants | Table | December end grants update: 7 grants to Open Phil, 0 grants to Good Ventures, so pay = 5 * ( 1 + 7) = 40 |
| Wikipedia usage survey results | LessWrong | 2016-12-24 | 55.0 | Wikipedia | Prose with tables | Reviewed changes by Vipul, fixed a lot of rendering issues, and provided frank feedback on post |
| N/A | None | 2016-12-12 | 320.0 | Miscellaneous | Total payment for reaching out to people with relevant questions, suggestions, and comments | |
| Optimize Your Amazon S3 Costs | wikiHow | 2016-12-03 | 170.0 | Amazon Web Services | Graphs and code | Investigated comparison of different cost plans by Amazon and when each one is optimal |
| Open Philanthropy Project,Good Ventures [154], [155] | Wikipedia | 2016-11-30 | 50.0 | Philanthropy/Grants | Table | November end grants update: 4 grants to Open Phil (plus some manual work), 8 grants to Good Ventures, but 9 or more distinct grants, so pay ≥ 5 * 9 + 5, and also pay ≤ 50, so 50 |
| GiveWell,GiveWell top charities (various pages) | Wikipedia | 2016-11-30 | 100.0 | Philanthropy/GiveWell/top charities | Prose with tables | – |
| Timeline of Wikimedia analytics | Wikimedia meta | 2016-11-30 | 10.0 | Wikipedia | Timeline | Timeline events on starting dates for availability of search metrics |
| Citewebgen | GitHub | 2016-11-30 | 0.0 | Technology | Code | As I began writing a lot of Wikipedia pages, I wanted a quick way to cite web pages. Not being satisfied with existing scripts, I wrote my own. |
| Backups | None | 2016-11-28 | 100.0 | Wikipedia/Backup | Code and data | Setup for periodic backup of all important Wikipedia content for easy recoverability |
| Help pages | Wikipedia Views | 2016-11-21 | 25.0 | Wikipedia | Code and data | List of help pages in all language Wikipedias |
| Special pages | Wikipedia Views | 2016-11-20 | 40.0 | Wikipedia | Code and data | List of special pages in all language Wikipedias |
| distrib.py | Wikipedia Views | 2016-11-19 | 40.0 | Wikipedia | Code | Code to show bar or line plot for distribution of Wikipedia pageviews |
| N/A | None | 2016-11-15 | 80.0 | United States migration/Survey research | Code and data | Investigation into correlation between estimates of foreign-born and unauthorized population and state-level values of the population |
| Wikipedia Clickstream | Wikipedia Views | 2016-11-04 | 130.0 | Wikipedia | Code | Processing of Wikipedia clickstream data set for use in Wikipedia Views. Successfully integrated in Wikipedia Views 2016-11-25 |
| Working with long lines | Vim Tips Wiki | 2016-11-04 | 0.0 | Technology | Prose | – |
| Open Philanthropy Project,Good Ventures [154], [155] | Wikipedia | 2016-10-27 | 50.0 | Philanthropy/Grants | Table | October end grants update: max 50; 18 grants to Open Phil, 11 grants to Good Ventures |
| Hiroshi Nakajima | Wikipedia | 2016-10-20 | 35.0 | Global health/influential people | Prose | The project was motivated by a Facebook post by Howie Lempel |
| Scientific Charity Movement | Wikipedia | 2016-10-14 | 20.0 | Philanthropy/philosophy | Prose | Cleaned up and improved the page |
| graph.py [169], [136] | Wikipedia Views | 2016-10-13 | 80.0 | Graphing | Code | Add graphing capabilities to Wikipedia Views |
| Initiative on Global Markets | Wikipedia | 2016-10-05 | 30.0 | Economics | Prose | – |
| Tag entries in different languages | Wikipedia Views | 2016-10-04 | 150.0 | Wikipedia Views | Code and data | Wrote code to translate tags en masse to new languages. Code still exists, plan is now to incorporate into Wikipedia Views itself to avoid need to run separate code |
| Revisiting the great decline in Wikipedia pageviews | LessWrong | 2016-10-03 | 925.0 | Wikipedia | Prose with tables and charts and code | Started on it at ~$100/day pay, slowed down, then we realized a lot more toolkit improvements are needed before we can push out the post |
| GiveWell staff growth | Personal website | 2016-10-01 | 10.0 | Philanthropy/GiveWell/evaluation | Prose with tables | Updated page to reflect separation of GiveWell and Open Phil staff listings |
| Google Surveys | Wikipedia | 2016-09-30 | 32.0 | Survey tools | Prose with diagram | Expanded page, added references, explained and clarified model with diagram |
| Wikipedia tag page list translation | None | 2016-09-30 | 150.0 | Wikipedia | Code and data | Code to translate pages in bulk from one language to another, executed for various language pairs and lists. The completion date is approximate. The payment was finalized on November 8 2017, and will be included with the 2017 tax year |
| Open Philanthropy Project,Good Ventures [154], [155] | Wikipedia | 2016-09-29 | 50.0 | Philanthropy/Grants | Table | September end grants update: max 50; 8 grants to Open Phil, 12 grants to Good Ventures |
| Form 1040 | Wikipedia | 2016-09-17 | 20.0 | United States taxation | Prose | Payment for part of a planned series of edits that was not fully completed (total promised pay was $40; the partial edits are at [170] and [171] (latter finishes on September 17, 2016) |
| GAVI Alliance | Wikipedia | 2016-09-06 | 15.0 | Philanthropy/Grants/IATI | Table | – |
| French Development Agency | Wikipedia | 2016-09-05 | 10.0 | Philanthropy/Grants/IATI | Table | We decided not to publish as there was too little meaningful data |
| World Bank | Wikipedia | 2016-09-04 | 30.0 | Philanthropy/Grants/IATI | Table | – |
| United Nations Development Programme | Wikipedia | 2016-09-04 | 30.0 | Philanthropy/Grants/IATI | Table | – |
| Department for International Development | Wikipedia | 2016-09-03 | 30.0 | Philanthropy/Grants/IATI | Table | – |
| Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation | Wikipedia | 2016-09-02 | 5.0 | Philanthropy/Grants/IATI | Table | IATI Gates Round 3: Clarifications |
| Hewlett Foundation | Wikipedia | 2016-09-02 | 40.0 | Philanthropy/Grants/IATI | Table | – |
| Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation | Wikipedia | 2016-09-01 | 40.0 | Philanthropy/Grants/IATI | Table | IATI Gates Round 2 |
| Open Philanthropy Project,Good Ventures [154], [155] | Wikipedia | 2016-08-31 | 55.0 | Philanthropy/Grants | Table | August end grants update: 45 for 8 new grants and 10 for one-time extra work to deal with format changes |
| Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation | Wikipedia | 2016-08-29 | 50.0 | Philanthropy/Grants/IATI | Table | IATI Gates Round 1 |
| Model for estimating the value of a Wikipedia page | None | 2016-08-29 | 40.0 | Wikipedia/Contract work | Code | Initial work piloted on a small subset of timelines, gives an estimate of the total money due based on attributes of the timeline |
| Giving Games analysis | None | 2016-08-24 | 200.0 | Giving Games | Prose | After some initial work ending August 24, 2016, the project was put on indefinite pause. Payment has been finalized on December 2, 2017 because the project has languished for long enough. This payment will be included with the 2017 tax filing |
| June 2016 GiveWell board meeting | Effective Altruism Forum | 2016-08-17 | 100.0 | Philanthropy/GiveWell/evaluation | Prose/transcript | – |
| Privacy Impact Assessment | Wikipedia | 2016-08-07 | 5.0 | Government bureaucracy jargon | Prose | – |
| Open Philanthropy Project,Good Ventures [154], [155] | Wikipedia | 2016-07-29 | 45.0 | Philanthropy/Grants | Table | July end grants update: 6 new grants + 2 delayed grants |
| Priority-setting in global health | Wikipedia | 2016-07-27 | 155.0 | Health systems/Global health | Prose | – |
| Against Malaria Foundation | Wikipedia | 2016-07-16 | 10.0 | Philanthropy/GiveWell top charities | Prose | Some tweaks/updates to AMF page based on corrections noted in email from Rob Mather. Not completed fully, so payment is based on work done. See [172] for diff |
| Wikipedia usage survey results | LessWrong | 2016-07-14 | 110.0 | Wikipedia | Prose with tables | Finished writing up findings from survey conducted in late May |
| Professional consensus of economics | Wikipedia | 2016-07-10 | 67.0 | Economics | Prose | – |
| GiveWell mid-year review | None | 2016-07-09 | 100.0 | Philanthropy/nonprofit evaluation | Prose | Although the last revision was on July 9, 2016, the payment finalization was done December 8, 2017, so for tax purposes this payment will be included with the 2017 tax filing. Severance fee of $100 determined as a compromise; original intended task payment was $300 |
| Open Philanthropy Project,Good Ventures [154], [155] | Wikipedia | 2016-07-01 | 27.0 | Philanthropy/Grants | Table | June end grants update |
| Resolving issues with the IRS | Personal website | 2016-07-01 | 100.0 | United States taxation/personal experience | Prose/Autobiography | – |
| Disease Control Priorities Project | Wikipedia | 2016-06-25 | 20.0 | Global health | Prose | Significant page restructuring, more info on specific reports |
| GiveWell finances and other stuff review [173], [174] | Personal website | 2016-06-25 | 100.0 | Philanthropy/GiveWell/evaluation | Prose, tables, and charts | – |
| Against Malaria Foundation, GiveDirectly, and other GiveWell top charities [175], [176], others | Wikipedia | 2016-06-24 | 55.0 | Philanthropy/GiveWell/top charities | Prose | 25 each for AMF and GiveDirectly, 5 for others |
| Health systems strengthening | Wikipedia | 2016-06-17 | 43.0 | Health systems/Global health | Prose | – |
| Amanda Glassman | Wikipedia | 2016-06-08 | 32.0 | Global health/influential people | Prose | – |
| International Decision Support Initiative | Wikipedia | 2016-06-07 | 39.0 | Global health/organizations | Prose | – |
| Triplebyte | Wikipedia | 2016-06-04 | 31.0 | Technology/company | Prose | 25 for initial work in January. 6 for later work in June and publication. Later deleted through AfD, userspace version survives |
| Open Philanthropy Project,Good Ventures [154], [155] | Wikipedia | 2016-06-04 | 50.0 | Philanthropy/Grants | Table | May end grants update |
| Wikipedia usage survey | LessWrong | 2016-05-31 | 70.0 | Wikipedia | Survey | Design of survey, buying responses, and preliminary analysis |
| Voices of the Poor | Wikipedia | 2016-05-18 | 39.0 | Poverty studies | Prose | – |
| Participatory poverty assessment | Wikipedia | 2016-05-17 | 63.0 | Poverty studies | Prose | – |
| Child survival revolution | Wikipedia | 2016-05-11 | 101.0 | Global health/trends | Prose | – |
| Innovative Vector Control Consortium | Wikipedia | 2016-05-04 | 35.0 | Global health/organizations | Prose | – |
| The State of the World's Children | Wikipedia | 2016-05-04 | 30.0 | Global health/events | Prose | – |
| 3 by 5 Initiative | Wikipedia | 2016-05-02 | 30.0 | Global health/organizations | Prose | – |
| Timeline of nonprofit evaluation | Wikipedia | 2016-04-30 | 105.0 | Philanthropy/Nonprofit evaluation | Timeline | – |
| Open Philanthropy Project,Good Ventures [154], [155] | Wikipedia | 2016-04-30 | 50.0 | Philanthropy/Grants | Table | April end grants update |
| Timeline of mental health | Wikipedia | 2016-04-26 | 10.0 | Global health/diseases/mental health | Timeline | Initial research into timeline of mental health; scrapped on seeing an existing timeline of psychiatry |
| Timeline of deworming | Wikipedia | 2016-04-24 | 115.0 | Global health/diseases | Timeline | – |
| N/A | None | 2016-04-16 | 25.0 | N/A | N/A | – |
| Timeline of global health | Wikipedia | 2016-04-14 | 190.0 | Global health | Timeline | 170 for work + 20 completion bonus |
| Disease Control Priorities Project | Wikipedia | 2016-04-13 | 6.0 | Global health | Prose | Add years |
| Open Philanthropy Project | Wikipedia | 2016-03-22 | 100.0 | Philanthropy/Foundations | Prose | – |
| Animal Charity Evaluators | Wikipedia | 2016-03-18 | 20.0 | Animal welfare/nonprofit evaluation/Animal Charity Evaluators | Communication with Vipul | Retrieved deleted page from admin and userfied it |
| Form I-140 | Wikipedia | 2016-03-04 | 168.0 | United States migration | Prose | 150 for original, 18 for miscellaneous improvements |
| Form 990 | Wikipedia | 2016-02-03 | 100.0 | United States taxation/Philanthropy/Nonprofit evaluation | Prose | – |
| pageviewQueries.inc | Wikipedia Views | 2016-01-31 | 80.0 | API integration | Code | Add ability to query Wikimedia API for pageviews |
| Form W-2 | Wikipedia | 2016-01-28 | 100.0 | United States taxation | Prose | – |
| Form 1096 | Wikipedia | 2016-01-25 | 25.0 | United States taxation | Prose | – |
| Form W-9 | Wikipedia | 2016-01-23 | 50.0 | United States taxation | Prose | – |
| Form 1099-MISC | Wikipedia | 2016-01-21 | 100.0 | United States taxation | Prose | – |
| N/A | None | 2016-01-18 | 150.0 | United States taxation | Communication with Vipul | Investigated Form 1099 filing requirements. It later turned out that Form 1099 is not required since Vipul is not operating as an organization. |
| Form 1099 | Wikipedia | 2016-01-11 | 50.0 | United States taxation | Prose | – |
| Green Card Test | Wikipedia | 2016-01-05 | 25.0 | United States taxation/United States migration | Prose | – |
| Form 1040 | Wikipedia | 2015-12-31 | 400.0 | United States taxation | Prose | Although mostly completed by 2015-12-31, the article was published to main space on 2016-01-01. Payment, however, is considered to be for the 2015 tax year. |
| Nonidentity problem | Wikipedia | 2015-12-18 | 0.0 | Population ethics | Prose | – |
| Quantcast data tabulation | None | 2015-11-22 | 50.0 | Web analytics/Quantcast | Spreadsheet | Tabulated a bunch of data related to website Quantcast data. Some of this was later used in wikiHow articles by Vipul such as [177] |
| Criticism of effective altruism | Effective Altruism Wiki | 2015-11-20 | 0.0 | Philanthropy | Prose | I did not create the page but began adding criticisms I encountered. Unfortunately the wiki seems to be gone. |
| An overview of Y Combinator's non-profit program | Effective Altruism Forum | 2015-11-07 | 250.0 | Philanthropy/nonprofit evaluation/effective altruism | Prose | – |
| Person-affecting view | Wikipedia | 2015-10-24 | 0.0 | Population ethics | Prose | – |
| Timeline of online dating services | Wikipedia | 2015-10-20 | 0.0 | Technology | Prose | Originally created on the Cause Prioritization Wiki as Timeline of technology-assisted dating services [178] but later moved to Wikipedia |
| Archive Websites on Unix Like Systems | wikiHow | 2015-09-22 | 300.0 | Digital preservation | Prose/How-to | – |
| Deleted pages of gwern.net | Personal website | 2015-09-17 | 0.0 | Digital preservation | Prose | I wanted to conveniently see gwern’s deleted pages in compiled form. |
| N/A | None | 2015-08-08 | 37.0 | No record | Communication with Vipul | – |
| N/A | None | 2015-08-08 | 20.0 | Spam filtering | Communication with Vipul | Helped Vipul set up spam filters for Google Analytics accounts |
| N/A | None | 2015-08-05 | 42.0 | No record | Communication with Vipul | – |
| Using Reddit | Cognito Mentoring Information Wiki | 2015-07-30 | 0.0 | Technology | Prose | Vipul Naik provided me with an account on the wiki. I don’t remember the details of how the idea for creating the page came about. I don’t believe I was paid. |
| N/A | None | 2015-04-19 | 98.0 | No record | No record | – |
| A Plus (aplus.com) | Wikipedia | 2015-04-05 | 20.0 | Media company | Prose | First Wikipedia article experience. Originally intended to create article, but it got created while this was in draft, so merged work in. |
| N/A | None | 2015-03-30 | 100.0 | Schooling/education | Communication with Vipul | Consulting on student notes websites |
| Cause Prioritization Wiki | Cause Prioritization Wiki | 2014-11-28 | 0.0 | Philanthropy | Prose | Vipul Naik convinced me to create the website. The Git repository [179] has its initial commit on this day, and the domain was registered on this day [180] |
| 効果的利他主義 | Wikipedia | 2014-10-13 | 0.0 | Philanthropy | Prose | A partial translation of the English effective altruism page [181] |