Recently I was mentioned in a thread in that forum category and so I found it existed. I don’t understand why it is closed. The first thing that I thought was:
Discussions are public, registration is free and open, why should the section be closed? What is this hiding from public browsing actually protecting from?
The actual problem this creates:
I am using the forum by mail but not in “mailing list mode” because the latter floods me with all kinds of stuff which I don’t have the time to read. So instead, I am using the feature to receive only the first post of newly created threads in selected sections. - It is more efficient and easier to subscribe to a few things, rather than unsubscribe to many things all the time.
With that setup and when receiving the first message of a new thread, it is easy to simply visit the thread and see if there were any other interesting posts in it, then decide. However, when a section is closed that is not possible and requires a full featured browser, login, JS, SVG and all the rest of this inconvenient and anti-privacy gym. Also, it doesn’t quite fit the claim that it is “perfectly possible” to use the forum by mail only. Possible - yes, perfectly - far from it.
So, there is this certain irony that to visit discussions focused on privacy etc, one must sacrifice privacy. Quite a similar story to that with GitHub.
It is public, but only available to users who make a sufficient
contribution to the forum. You want it to be universally public, but
the decision was taken that this would result in too many wild,
off-qubes, posts and threads.
Having a barrier to entry protects other users, and the quality of
discussion.
I never presume to speak for the Qubes team.
When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.
It is public, but only available to users who make a sufficient
contribution to the forum.
And I am one of them? Unexpected
You want it to be universally public, but the decision was taken that this would result in too many wild, off-qubes, posts and threads.
I don’t know what you mean by universally. I just want it to be public for reading. The restriction for writing in it can remain to protect from unwanted noise.
You are not playing the gamification game. So not unexpected.
I suspect that the mods would be deluged with request for access or
explanation. Although any one who searched in the forum would have found
this explanation. (Ahem)
I never presume to speak for the Qubes team.
When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.
Mod’s perspective: we don’t want to incetivise these discussions because they are not about Qubes and are generally hard to moderate (too broad of a context). Opening it up to the public as read-write would make this forum not be about Qubes. Making it read-only for most would make this category more discoverable, and therefore, lead to a lot of confusion about how to reply to those comments. When the mailinglist (read-only) mirror was unmutted (and showed in the home page) we got quite a few annoyed users trying to reply and asking us how they can do it.
In conclusion, it’s a moderation nightmare that I would not like us to entertain. I understand it is not convenient, but it strikes the best balance.
Making it read-only for most would make this category more discoverable, and therefore, lead to a lot of confusion about how to reply to those comments.
That’s very easy to solve:
In web mode:
not logged in: read-only
logged in: hidden (so there is no option to reply)
those who have permission: read + write
In mailing-list mode:
group without permission: can receive, can’t reply (no-reply address)
I think the all around qubes forum is very useful because there are discussions that begin as “all around qubes” but can lead to great ideas for qubes. For example, mouse fingerprinting protection and a suggestion to add a little note inside the installer that suggests making the timezone UTC 0 for anonymity (vm fingerprinting protection).
