Sure. But how do we know that it will take a lot of time and attract a lot of people? This is why I am suggesting a test month. Have a look at non-popular subreddits. They are not full of spam and holywars, simply because there are few people. Why do you expect that everyone immediately comes to Qubes OS forums? I am ready to help moderating it, too. In case I don’t have enough trust yet, even without being a moderator I can explain to users what is (not) off-topic and suggest to change the direction of the discussion. By the way I am already helping Deeplow by answering questions of new users.
Another argument is that yes, probably some people will come for tangential discussions. If there are not too many of them, then such category would simply serve as advertisement of Qubes OS. Indeed, this operating system is practically unknown. It’s used by 35k people in the whole world, nobody around me heard about it, even technical people. There is some balance between “close every topic” and “open everything for everyone” and I don’t believe that forcing people to have level 2 is the golden middle.
Because the new category is not for every topic, it’s for tangential topics to Qubes, All around Qubes as I call it. It is being created to help Qubes users, even if it is not directly about Qubes OS.
That said, I am not the one to decide and I am open to the decision of @deeplow about the new category. I am just suggesting to lower the barrier at least to level 1.
No, you haven’t. It’s still under discussion exactly how this will happen. But once the category is up, you should see their discussions land in your inbox, just like other categories. I’ll also add instructions to send topics there via email.
Once the new category exists, you will see the respective posts
automatically (given you are using the mailing list mode – which I know
you are).
So if you are not interested in seeing this category you would have to
go the forum, select the category and click the little bell icon on the
top right so that it appears with a line crossing it out. Then this
category would be muted for you.
This ability is what made me propose such a category in the first place
as it would allow users who do not want to participate to not be
bothered by it.
However, I admit that I had you among others in mind when I wrote “I am
very interested in what some people here have to say about OpSec, IDS,
privacy or just plain old Linux config, scripting whatever”.
What are the actual reasons to create all those restrictions and
complications in the first place? Could we, for the sake of test,
open such category for everyone for a month?
I get where you are coming from and if it’s successful we might open it
up more later. For now it’s an experiment and its up to the community to
make it work.
Many discussions will start out in other categories and branch over into
the “relevant/not specific” category. In that case we might promote
people who are level 1 and already involved in that conversation to
level 2 so they can continue it.
The whole idea is to have a place where people in the community can
continue to talk about something that would otherwise be “off-topic”. We
don’t want to attract people outside the community to this category,
only people already involved with the Qubes community: this will keep it
relevant and hopefully high quality.
It’s an experiment. Let’s start and learn and improve.
Thanks everyone for your feedback on the wiki post. I think pretty much everyone who is interested in this thread has already left their options.
But in any case, I’ll leave open a bit more (until 2021-02-03T20:00:00Z).
Afterwards, we move forwards with choosing for each section.
I’d suggest open vote on the following options: (do you agree?)
choice of name
category color & icon
(By open vote, I mean where one can see who voted where)
For the category short description: I think @Ludovic’s proposal is the front runner (without the “domains” part) so I think we should go with that.
For the criteria for inclusion of topics: The only option given is “relevant but not specific to Qubes OS” so we’ll go with that.
For the criteria for exclusion of topics: we have four option, which may need some curation. I think @Sven (the future category moderator) should do this.
For the “inclusion/exclusion examples”, it’s probably a one-person job, so I’d suggest again @Sven to do it and choose.
If there isn’t any overriding concern over my choices, we move forward with this model. Then I’d ask @Sven, to please add his choices as a new post after we close the call for feedback (2021-02-03T20:00:00Z). Then I’ll also post the polls.
Voting by email: just reply @deeplow to this thread with your preferences (or email me deeplow [at] protonmail.com) and I’ll add them for you. ( The votes are public either way).
The vote is restricted to trust-level 2 users (the people who’ll have access to the category).
Category Name
I’ve copied bellow the name proposal table so you can have a look over the feedback.
Proposal
Advantages
Disadvantages
The Qubes life
Catchy
may be ambiguous (lead to creation of posts that belong in other categories)
General admin, security & privacy
concise
Too restrictive (e.g. what about hardware?) @Sven: “general support / hardware”
General setup, security & privacy
concise
Too narrow. Can we discuss free software?
Beyond Qubes
concise
1) doesn’t hint at the boundaries
Not Qubes Related
well auto descriptive
1) doesn’t hint at the boundaries @Sven: related but not specific! 2) Contains a negative, which is not a good style
All around Qubes
descriptive, hints at the boundaries
?
Tangents
descriptive, hints at the boundaries (if you know the context)
Ambiguous if you don’t know the context
Choose all that you you feel would be appropriate:
What name shall we give this category?
The Qubes life
General admin, security & privacy
General setup, security & privacy
Beyond Qubes
Not Qubes Related
All around Qubes
Tangents
0voters
Icon proposals
Update I’ve re-uploaded the vote due to some late contenders.
Apologies for making you recast your vote!!
Choose all that you are comfortable with:
Category icon vote
dashed/crossed-out Qubes logo
lightbulb
door-open
paper-plane
mug-hot
code-branch
comments-slash
comment-dots
user-shield
lock
0voters
Old poll
[poll type=multiple results=on_vote min=1 max=8 chartType=bar groups=trust_level_2,trust_level_3,trust_level_4]
Sorry for a late proposal, but what about a simple lock: Lock Icon | Font Awesome ? (in fact, I suggested from the beginning to consider the style of Purism forums, and this is what they are using).
I don’t like any of the icon choices. How come my proposal user-shield (Font Awesome) is not part of the poll? …if for some reason it doesn’t work, I’d go with a lock as @fsflover proposed.
First, you should have corrected the following instead:
All discussions not directly related to Qubes OS but tangential to it (privacy, freedom, system administration, security, research, …).
Concerning your suggestions:
I feel that this is too restrictive. Would you call a discussion of freedom associated with Qubes OS? I wouldn’t. I like the description I quoted more. The negative sounds fine to me, because this category is for “everything except”. Your list of examples is reasonable indeed.
I feel that this is too restrictive. Would you call a discussion of
freedom associated with Qubes OS? I wouldn’t
@fsflover going by your handle I am assuming by “freedom” you mean Free
Software in Free Software Foundation etc.
Since Qubes OS is free software and there is a clear and strong
correlation between security/privacy and free software I see those
associated strongly … very strongly indeed.*
If by “freedom” you mean the larger concept of freedom as in freedom
of/from religion, freedom of speech/movement etc. … then those might
be associated with Qubes OS users but really too much of a hot potato
and I would mod it away without a second thought. There are better
places to have those discussions than this forum. We want to strengthen
and maximize the community not split it into fractions.
not directly related to Qubes OS
I feel that security, privacy, software freedom, system administration,
etc ARE directly related to Qubes OS, hence my proposal to slightly
edit. It is not my intention to split hairs, instead I am trying to
predict how the category description will be used in disagreements about
what should and should not be discussed.
*I am glad to discuss this point in the new category in case this
triggers anyone. I am not saying that free software guarantees security
and privacy – that would be ludicrous. What I am saying is that you
have a much harder time verifying and continuously ensuring those with
non-free software even if it’s “open-source”.
This was due to the late contenders, my non-providing a decent explanation as to why the user-shied didn’t get included (it’s the staff category one but we can change that one, I guess). Apologies for the inconvenience.
I guess I should have left it open for feedback for a few more days…
You correctly understood that I meant free software, sorry for not being more clear. I agree that this forum is not a place for discussions on freedom of speech etc.
However, I disagree that free software is associated with Qubes. Qubes is associated with free software, but not vice versa. If you are thinking about Qubes, you may think about free software, but unlikely (despite possible) the other way. I agree with @ludovic that this category’s name/description should highlight that it’s for topics distinct from Qubes OS itself and not (directly) associated with it, even though related.
I agree with @ludovic that this category’s name/description should highlight that it’s for topics distinct from Qubes OS itself and not (directly) associated with it, even though related.
I am not a native speaker so at this point I should probably leave this
particular point to people who are.
lightbulb
door-open
paper-plane
mug-hot
code-branch
comments-slash
comment-dots
user-shield
lock