I noticed there are a decent amount of locking on the forum due to things being off-topic from qubes. I’m wondering if it might not be a good idea to leave people the option to talk about a variety of things and not keep it very strictly Qubes related. I think it both builds community and it gives us a general impression of what other qubes users are interested in.
I am assuming the reason the off topic stuff gets locked is to avoid spamming, but I don’t feel like the forum is getting bloated by off topic spam. Arguably a lot of the off topic things are more interesting than a lot of the very specific things that are Qubes related.
The “All around Qubes” forum category is exactly for such discussions. Only snag is that “This category is exclusively available to those who have participated significantly on the forum already.” (verbatim quote)
The trade off is that stopping random people from “bombing” the category makes the said people open off-topic threads on the non-restricted categories such as General Discussion or User Support.
Maybe the mods should have the option of moving a topic to “All around Qubes” if it’s deemed to be not spam and allowing the poster to contribute only to their topic.
Of course this option could already exist but I only recently gained access to that category so I don’t know much.
If generic discussion should be allowed (e.g. for attracting more traffic/interest), this should be properly isolated in a “Cacophony” section with proper rules. E.g. 2 warnings in a week for off-topic violations in main forum = 1 month in “Cacophony” only. Other repeated violations in “Cacophony” (e.g. abuse) = good bye.
The things around us color the specific thing that we have in common. It’s useful to get the vibe of the community in order to understand both what people care about and what they can contribute with.
Sure, I guess that’s a tradeoff. If you’re worried about that and you’re sitting on valuables then might be a good idea to not share too much personal information.
Personally I’m interested in seeing discussions that are a bit off QubesOS topic, especially when I know the people discussing and into QubesOS.
Another idea would be just to make a Discord server or something and invite people to it over time, not sure if this goes against Qubes OS forum rules though.
I think the current content rules for the Qubes forum make sense.
However, personally, I have been frustrated when, in a discussion within the public categories of the forum, an All around Qubes topic is linked as a resource, and I cannot access it to understand the context and relevance to the current discussion.
I do agree that some of these discussions get sensationalist, irrational, and reactionary, but the problem is that simply hiding the All around Qubes category from most users doesn’t stop these posters from doing so in the exact same manner in other categories.
All the while, it stifles some productive and useful discussion, and alienates some community members, especially those of a trust level less than two, whose topics have been moved to the category, rendering them unable to participate in, or even view their own discussion.
I think that the category should be made more public, either completely public, or a lower trust level, even just registered users.
I think there are better ways to manage unhealthy discussion than shoving genuinely helpful discussion into a corner with it. Hell, we already have a “Help, I think I’ve been hacked” category.
Introduction of ‘off-topic’ will lead to introduction of politics.
Introduction of politics will lead to division of community and potentially will scare away any investors or donors.
I can give few examples: CP, <ASCII people>, crypto, sand wars, leftists.
Any of the topics above and many more can be and will be exploited to destroy this project from within.
(note that I am not endorsing nor condemning any of these examples, just attempting to highlight the inevitable inclusion of matters of policy upon Qubes-related discussion)
Second, bad actors won’t (and don’t) respect the lack of an off-topic category, they’ll just spread FUD and create drama everywhere regardless.
Finally, the All around Qubes category is not ‘off-topic’, but rather an area for discussion of adjacent and relevant (but not Qubes-specific) topics.
Quite right. Politics and security are closely related, especially in current times.
The community guidelines, the CoC or the TOS don’t even contain the string “polit”, so it is not quite clear how politics is not allowed, or why “politics of … any kind” is explicitly not allowed in “All around Qubes” only.
The only reference I find is about “political attacks” which is mentioned alongside any other type of attack, i.e. the focus is attacks, not politics per se.
Another idea would be just to make a Discord server or something and
invite people to it over time, not sure if this goes against Qubes OS
forum rules though.
There’s an IRC channel for qubes os (has been there for a long time
now). As all IRC channels go, it is/was a ghost town when I was lurking
there (that’s the problem with IRC, everybody is “lurking” and any
message activity in the channel is generally scolded upon – “hush!
there are people working in this channel,” etc.etc.etc.) – I guess
that’s why discord won, huh.
