Talk:Forum Policy

From Open Source Ecology
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Discussion Area

I’ve been meaning to argue against the public forums a little bit, but kept putting it off until reading this yesterday. I’m not sure who remembers, but I jumped in to help put out some raging flames on the blog almost 2 years ago. (These are very mild in comparison.) Unfortunately, volunteers can easily get bent out of shape, and some like to vent in public forums or blog comments. Fortunately though, we don’t have to enable such waste! Competent people can use the wiki/Talk pages to vent, and more competent people can refractor those discussions into something more concise and useful over time. That’s one of the famous lessons of WhyWikiWorks (where other mediums including email lists fail). To be clear, (and I’m quite sure not everyone will agree), I don’t see much value in the public forums, and think they just take significant time and effort away from the wiki where it belongs. If there was a way to put a time limit before deletion of forum threads (with an email warning that important info to keep should be moved to the wiki), I think that might work well, but I’ve never yet seen that feature in forum software. I do see the value of a private archived discussion areas for core team like Highrise (service level) -- also independent of our main server infrastructure for continuity. Not everything needs to be public IMHO, (and especially discussion about people can be inappropriate). --Jeb 10:10, 6 June 2011 (PDT)

Previous Scratchpad

Additional forum categories

Couldn't we have some additional forum categories for discussing topics not in the current scope, like:


Other possible categories:

  • General Discussion
    • Partnerships: If you know a group which could be interested in a partnership with OSE, post your ideas here
    • News: News and other interesting stuff
  • Announcements: Official OSE announcements
  • Discussões em Português: Discussions in Portuguese
  • (we could also have discussions in Spanish, French and Russian - we have many visitors from Russia, for instance)

Rasmus: I totally agree with the category suggestions of "health" and "household". We have a page on the household cyclopedia (1881) by the way: http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/Household_Cyclopedia


New "General" Category Structure

Currently proposed on the main article page:

  • General
    • A single, general category with no sub-categories; one forum each for English, Spanish, French, Russian, and Portuguese. (writable by all)
    • Announcements (read only, press releases, etc.)


Currently live on the forum (all categories and subcategories below accept posts form any registered user):

  • General
    • Introductions - Introduce yourself! Tell us about your background, your skills, and how you'd like to contribute to the project.
    • GVCS Development - Discuss the GVCS tools here.
    • GVCS Replication - This forum is dedicated to discussion of replicating GVCS technologies in independent locations by other groups and individuals.
    • Similar Projects, Partnerships and Open Culture - If you know a group with similar aims as OSE, post your ideas here
    • In the News - What others are saying about us.
    • Education - Topics related to OSE 2 Year Immersion Training, Whole Village education, Gaia University collaboration, and K-PhD Renaissance Education towards Freedom, as well as Augmented Reality training for fabricators.
    • Food
    • Energy
    • Health
    • Household
    • Sustainable Architecture
    • New Communities - This is a discussion of Social Contract and Land Stewardship for new communities that are built via access to GVCS technologies. In particular, how is property owned and maintained in a resilient community? How is productivity assured via division of labor towards prosperity and resilience? How is the environment regenerated at the same time, and how does the community contribute to the welfare of other communities?
    • Transportation
    • Linux Support - Support on OSE infrastructure in Linux - from installations, compatibility, software choices (such as what is the best Video editing software), Linux connection to iPhone, etc.
    • Other Languages - These forums are dedicated to discussion in other languages.
      • Discussões em Português
      • Discussions en Français
      • Обсуждения в Россию
      • Discusiones en Español

My proposal is below. First, the categories that I'd like to keep the most: 

(all categories and subcategories below accept posts form any registered user):
  • General - General discussions. Your discussion may be moved by a moderator to a more specific category of our forum.
    • Introductions - Introduce yourself! Tell us about your background, your skills, and how you'd like to contribute to the project.
    • Similar Projects, Partnerships and Open Culture - If you know a group with similar aims as OSE, post your ideas here
    • In the News - What others are saying about us.
    • Education - Topics related to OSE 2 Year Immersion Training, Whole Village education, Gaia University collaboration, and K-PhD Renaissance Education towards Freedom, as well as Augmented Reality training for fabricators.
    • Food
    • Energy
    • Health
    • Household
    • Sustainable Architecture
    • New Communities - This is a discussion of Social Contract and Land Stewardship for new communities that are built via access to GVCS technologies. In particular, how is property owned and maintained in a resilient community? How is productivity assured via division of labor towards prosperity and resilience? How is the environment regenerated at the same time, and how does the community contribute to the welfare of other communities?
    • Transportation
    • Linux Support - Support on OSE infrastructure in Linux - from installations, compatibility, software choices (such as what is the best Video editing software), Linux connection to iPhone, etc.
    • Other Languages - These forums are dedicated to discussion in other languages.
      • Discussões em Português
      • Discussions en Français
      • Обсуждения в Россию
      • Discusiones en Español

Now, some categories that might need to be removed:

    • GVCS Development - Discuss the GVCS tools here.
    • GVCS Replication - This forum is dedicated to discussion of replicating GVCS technologies in independent locations by other groups and individuals.

Notice that discussions posted (by anyone) to these categories won't disrupt any work being carried out on other categories. And we may select some outstanding discussions to more specific categories if needed. Authors with the most relevant and constructive discussions should be invited to join the team.

--Elifarley 20:43, 8 June 2011 (PDT)

Retrieved from "https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/index.php?title=Talk:Forum_Policy&oldid=30886"