Also wanted to make a comment about the spam post. The post is selling stolen gmail and youtube accounts. Are you saying that QubesOS and their directors, programmers and donators are advocating this kind of behavior. I don’t think our sponsors and donators are willing to continue with that kind of endorsement.
I would like to know who is ulitmately the decision maker about the forum. Do rules exist and are they being followed? Are moderators making their own rules? Do they really follow the rules set out by QubesOS directors.
The post is not, the linked website might. Since it got flagged repeatedly it’s now hidden. In general I assume people are trying to be helpful until they prove not to be.
Try to understand that not everyone on the internet will agree with you about everything all the time.
For someone who just created an account and has zero reputation here you go at it pretty rough. Maybe ask yourself what you are trying to achieve
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I’m all for annoymity and people could really use a service that doesn’t require your personal information however I believe QubesOS should stick with providing support for the OS. There’s lots of sites out there but we are only responsible for supporting the OS.
I’m just a regular user and noticing the forum posts and QubesOS losing sight for the future of this project. The forum speaks for the project therefore the posts show the reputation of the project. I’m sure others agree that discussions should be based on supporting the OS. I don’t think supporting other “subjects” is helping Qubes and its reputation. You do know QubesOS project could be undermined by determined countries or individuals through posts.
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Please point to a few examples so we can either moderate them or explain why they are welcome. Basically what you are asking is already the case: this forum is for Qubes OS only and if there are off-topic posts/threads that fell through the cracks please flag them.
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I see your point. I should make a contribution to the project and point out the examples. But there’s just too many posts not related to the core support of the OS. The core OS being the technical aspect of it and thats my point. Is QubesOS catering to every subject? or just the OS? I’m just a concerned citizen and user. I want to point out my experience in the forum about what I see in posts. I would say I’m a lurker than a poster as this is a new account but I’m seeing more steady junk posts in the “General Discussion” and seeing users answering them. They sink into that rabbit hole and their time is wasted. The community should know there’s something wrong with the “General Discussions” and the site should have stricter controls on what gets posted or completely remove the group and create subgroups so topics not related get tossed.
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Thanks for flagging some. I’ll review and give you feedback on why we do or do not take action. If nothing else it’ll give you a better idea.
Also we are a volunteer group and rely on users flagging posts. Thank you!
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On further review the other post really had nothing to do with the original thread. Spammer blocked and account suspended.
Sorry took me a while to see it.
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Is Qubes OS a professional organization willing to work with the public on supporting the OS or supporting the cause of conspiracy theories, hacked computers, psychological paranoia and etc. Take a hard look at other OS sites such as BSD, Linux, Microsoft windows, MacOS, iphone, android…etc. Look at how they manage it or do those topics even exist? If you provide free food without any protection against flies and vermin then all you will have is flies and vermin. Users will not trust the forum to provide OS support and leave. Good luck!
I moved the above post here because it was posted in a totally unrelated discussion. But I think it’s just the same as other posts by the same user
I consider Qubes OS to be some kind of meta-OS that allows you to run multiple OS, but it’s focusing on the workstation use case. This seems to be on-topic to have meta-discussions about using such unusual operating system for daily tasks, not focusing only on the internals.
The moderation team already close topics that aren’t related to Qubes OS at all, I think it’s fine as it is currently.
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While I sincerely respect the OP and I absolutely agree with the content of its OP, I’d flag this topic itself.
The forum is flooded with topics about trolling and flooding. Not to say when the OP visits the site “2 or 3 times in 2 or 3 months”, yet he spends that small amount of time on this…
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I have seen the other sites. Nothing about hacked computers “blaming the creators”, conspiracies and open ended questions. We are going above and beyond topics for this OS. Maybe discussions involving privacy, conspiracies, hacked…etc that waste time and resources have its own subgroup. Users serious about the OS won’t get absorbed into that rabbit hole, either don’t see the subgroup and therefore avoiding the “clickbait”. Eventually after segregating those discussions created by “trolls…etc” they will give up because no one is seeing their posts or responding to it, giving them less “gas to the fire” so to speak. Lets divide and conquer. Maybe getting the chance to remove “general discussions” which belong to other sites like reddit, whonix, tor, or privacy guide…etc.
As a “meta-os” discussions on windows, linux, bsd…etc should have their own subgroup. Discussions on unrelated topics that are not techincal but are “discussions…”, “thinking out loud”, “what about this idea?” or “what setup do you have?” …etc do not belong anywhere. Bury it deep within subgroups. Eventually we will save people alot of time and energy.
this is one point of view indeed
In this field which Qubes OS is in, allowing the “public” to be moderators or just quickly jumping unto AI would cause problems to the core values imo. Heavens forbid they try to do things like reddit, etc… the project would most surely be committing suicide.
I think the moderators are doing a great job! I am sure there are challenges but sticking to core principles and not taking the easy route does pay off in the long run, especially when done the right way.
Well, let’s not get carried away. The project did just fine for a decade without having an official forum at all (just mailing lists). Worst case, we close down the forum, and the project continues to chug along like it did in the olden days.
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Do you know when the forum was implemented, and somewhere I read that prior to the forum there was a google 
group?
Wikipedia says initial release of Qubes OS was in September 2012.
I have only recently discovered Qubes OS, I tried looking on the main website for a write up by the Qubes OS team on the history of the project.
In 2020. 
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All the mailing lists are implemented as Google Groups. They still very much exist.
It’s explained here: https://www.qubes-os.org/support/#google-groups
That was the first stable release. There were alpha and beta releases before that. Of course, the project had to exist and run for a while before it could publish its first stable release. Here’s the first announcement:
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