New "general admin, security & privacy" category?

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”.

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Hi @Sven,
I think that the choice of the category name will give a direction to the description sentence of the category.

I want to better dissociate the category from all the others.

But I agree my first proposal need to be improved!

@fsflover @ludovic @fiftyfourthparallel @Sven I’ve redone the icon poll. Can you cast your vote again?

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…

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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.

Fully agree here.

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.

which is also not me :wink:

Bumping this to see if anyone still wants to vote on the icon and name of the future category. Please do it in my above reply.

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I’ve now closed the polls. Thanks everybody for your participation. I hope people are satisfied. Even if these where not your preferred ones.

Here’s what we’ll go with:

  • Category Name - All around Qubes
    (I’ll just leave here the notice that if many people are misunderstanding the title as in here we’ll have to go to the second option)

  • Category Icon - fa-mug-hot mug-hot (I guess as in “cafe”)

  • Category Color - yellow as no strong opposition arrived

  • Category Short Description - there seems to be some disagreement on the exact wording of this. My proposal (trying to harmonize and reduce the size) would be:

    Relevant but not specific to Qubes (security, privacy, software freedom, system administration, …). ← This is literally the already-decided criteria for inclusion.

    What do you think about this? I mean, we can tweak it later, but I’d say this should not delay the category launch further.

  • Inclusion criteria - relevant but not specific to Qubes OS

  • Inclusion examples - @Sven, do you think the following examples are fine / representative?

    • OpSec / Threat Modeling (security)
    • Is your browser fingerprint unique? (privacy)
    • Good books / presentations / tutorials about security / privacy / linux administration / …
    • How do I … on Debian/Fedora/Windows/…? (related to Qubes)
  • Exclusion criteria - relevant but not specific to Qubes OS

    • about Qubes (belong to other categories)
    • not relevant at all to Qubes OS use
    • harmful to community / violates CoC
    • politics / activism of any kind

    @Sven, I’ve tried to consolidate the proposed ones. See if you agree.

  • Exclusion examples - @sven do you think these are fine?

  • Category Moderator: @Sven

  • Joining criteria: forum members (trust level 2)

We’re pretty close to finally having this open! :slight_smile:

Tagging: @fsflover @ludovic @rooftop @427F11FD0FAA4B080123 @oijawyuh @Sven @fiftyfourthparallel (those who voted)

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How about:
Relevant but not specific to Qubes; tangentially related to Qubes (security, privacy, software freedom, system administration, …).

I feel like both are similar ways of saying the same thing.

Yes, they are the same, but sometimes different people better understand one or the other thing. Just a suggestion.

OK for me.

Thank you @deeplow for all of this. I am OK with it the way you
summarized it.

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I feel like both are similar ways of saying the same thing.

me2

Thanks for the suggestion @fsflover. However less sometimes is more ;). Let’s keep it short and pay attention to eventual feedback from users about confusion with the description.

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@Sven, what do you think about the other points? Namely:

  • inclusion examples
  • exclusion criteria
  • exclusion examples

@Sven, what do you think about the other points? Namely:

  • inclusion examples
  • exclusion criteria
  • exclusion examples

I’m OK with the ones you listed. Let’s do this! :wink:

… also please point me to what I need to learn to mod. Will I get
notifications by email if I have to review something… etc?

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:partying_face:

Great news! The new forum category “All around Qubes” is finally open. See it here. As discussed before it is only available to trust level 2 users to make sure participants are already interested Qubes community members.

Thanks to everyone who contributed in this thread with ideas and @sven for originally bringing up the issue and taking the role as moderator of this category.

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Thank @deeplow and @Sven for all the coordination and the works which made this new category a reality. :clap:

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