“Community” is already a sort of “general questions” category, and I don’t think it adds value to have both of these. I’d recommend deleting “General” in favor of “Community”. It is already mostly empty as people seem to be gravitating to other categories anyway.
Alternative proposal: rename it to offtopic.
That would let people talk about non KDE specific stuff like distros, hardware or maybe even non computer stuff.
PRO: Maybe would grow the discuss community
Contra: Could possibly clutter the forum
5 Likes
Love that idea - maybe scope it a little bit to the things that would be adjacent to KDE, like “Non-KDE Tech”…just thinking that while it would fit as “off-topic”, it probably wouldn’t be the right place for a pro-wrestling or knitting discussion thread =)
2 Likes
+1 for offtopic. Off topic helps for people to find other common grounds for them to come together and bond. This helps in making community come closer.
But a caution based on my experience as mod on krita-artists, even if it is off-topic it should be regulated to some extent. For example off topic can include anything and if people keep on posting memes etc it would be troublesome as the forum front page will be filled with it. So even if it is off-topic there should be a limit set. For example it can be topics related to software, or only opensource software etc.
2 Likes
One of the great things about Discourse is you can hide categories from your main feed.
1 Like
I wouldn’t be against renaming to Offtopic. My big concern is the overlap in scope between “Community” and “General” which makes it unclear where you should post broad or general topics.
Agree that could be a significant overlap. But I am unsure about the scope of Community. The description just says: A place for community topics.
Does that mean it is like offtopic? Or is it more about KDE specific community stuff?
Before deleting or renaming General it would probably be a good idea to set the scope for Community.
Good to know!
Any opinion on the General category?
Or maybe we should rename them so that we end up with “General” and “Off-topic”. That’s a pair that makes sense to me.
Disagree.
I think you original Idea of removing the General topic makes sense. What do you post in to General → stuff that fits no other category. Might as well put it in offtopic then.
So far the responses suggests a offtopic category is wanted. The question is how to do it. Expand Community to allow offtopic posts? Rename General to offtopic? Delete General and rename Community to offtopic or offtopic & community?
I think the community can be a place for
- news
- Any community activity like akademy sprints, call for volunteers etc.
- blogs of developers working on KDE software
General can be off topic with the scope limited to Free software