Talk:Forum Policy

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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 wiki: 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 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.)
  • Technical (writable by participating contributors, readable by all)
    • GVCS Projects (50, top 20 for now)
    • Component Projects (5 or so now, much more later)
    • Community Projects (villages, communities, local OSE chapters, etc)
    • Agriculture Projects (farming, permaculture, etc.)
    • Other Projects
  • Organization (writable by participating contributors, readable by all)
    • Resource Development
    • Web Infrastructure
    • Project Management
    • Standards (Docs, CAD, CAM, etc.)
    • Fundraising
    • Project Proposals
  • Staff (private to OSE staff)
    • Grant Management
    • Press
    • Marketing
    • Personnel


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

(Other categories exist, but are omitted here for brevity)


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. This category accepts discussions. it doesn't exist only to group the other categories.
    • Introductions - Introduce yourself! Tell us about your background, your skills, and how you'd like to contribute to the project. I would really like to keep this category
    • Similar Projects, Partnerships and Open Culture - If you know a group with similar aims as OSE, post your ideas here I would reallyu like to keep this category
    • In the News - What others are saying about us. I'm not sure this is essential
    • 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. I think this one is important. It already contains some discussions
    • Food Not sure about this one
    • Energy Seems to have quite a few discussions
    • Health Not sure about this one. Let's delete it then?
    • Household (no discussions currently exist here)
    • Sustainable Architecture (no discussions currently exist here)
    • 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 Maybe we should delete this
    • 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. Not sure if this is really needed
    • Other Languages - These forums are dedicated to discussion in other languages.
      • Discussões em Português
      • Discussions en Français
      • Обсуждения в Россию
      • Discusiones en Español
  • (categories below are the same as current proposed structure on the main page)
  • Technical (writable by participating contributors, readable by all)
    • GVCS Projects (50, top 20 for now)
    • Component Projects (5 or so now, much more later)
    • Community Projects (villages, communities, local OSE chapters, etc)
    • Agriculture Projects (farming, permaculture, etc.)
    • Other Projects
  • Organization (writable by participating contributors, readable by all)
    • Resource Development
    • Web Infrastructure
    • Project Management
    • Standards (Docs, CAD, CAM, etc.)
    • Fundraising
    • Project Proposals
  • Staff (private to OSE staff)
    • Grant Management
    • Press
    • Marketing
    • Personnel

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.


General Category is Separate and Public
Notice that discussions posted (by anyone) to the categories General and its children 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.

Please provide your comments below

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

Mark Norton wrote:

I would vote for the following:

  • Introductions - keep
  • Similar Projects - keep
  • In the News - drop
  • Education - keep
  • Food - keep
  • Energy - keep
  • Health -keep
  • Household - drop
  • Sustainable Architecture - keep
  • New Communities - keep
  • Transportation - keep
  • Other Languages - keep


Chris Fornof

Basic idea is aiming to strip down to the bare essentials to focus discussion into manageable forms. Basically we start with discussions, and break into sub-forums based on volume.


  • Proposal
  • Public
    • Open Source Ecology
    • General
    • Ideas
    • Off-topic
    • Factor e Farm
  • Technical
    • GVCS(sub-forums as needed based on volume)
    • Research (techs, orgs, ideas, people)
    • Design (CAD, CAM, Mechanical, Architecture...)
    • Media (Documentation, Press, Video, Music)
  • Organization
    • Web / Project Management
    • Fundraising
    • Project Proposals
  • Staff
    • Private
    • Logistics
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