We don’t really have much general guidance around what makes for a good topic around here, but many categories have fairly robust “about” sections that describe what makes for a good post.
Neither its name nor description really say what should go there — other than “everything else”. I think it’d be beneficial to make that a bit more concrete to match how many already are using it or expecting it to be used.
Maybe “Other technical topics” for posts that don’t clearly fit in a particular domain or usage area? We have had some very interesting discussions there in the past — things like cool features from other languages and experience reports and general open source guidance and more.
I’d be interested to hear thoughts from others: how should we define what’s a good topic there, ideally in a way that’s worded positively?
Here is first iteration of my thoughts on this
While the rest of the Julia forum is, well, for Julia-specific topics, I think the Offtopic category could be for much broader things, that however somehow relate to Julia or can be related to Julia. The poster should then make some effort to relate it to Julia if only loosely. I would want to be quite generous with this rule.
Let’s take some recent posts as examples (I don’t intent this to be namecalling in any sense). Starting with positive examples:
For some this might be a DSL; for us it would likely be just Julia I think is a fine post. It posts something programming related and the title makes some connection to Julia. Perhaps the post could’ve contained some more specific post but I want to be generous here.
Stack Overflow Survey 2024 Results Again directly related to Julia by the poster. Was closed/ignored rather quickly due to repetitive nature, but imo fitting in spirit of Offtopic
A bit different example Motivation from legendary Julia people which I feel a bit mixed about because, even though it mentions Julia, it ultimately is not really about Julia in a technical sense. I think it is fine because its about the experience of someone with Julia and its community. This might not spark huge discussions but still I think it can have a place here under a community aspect.
The difference of these examples to the thread sparking this discussion (Is the GenAI Bubble Finally Popping?) is that this does not relate to Julia in some obvious way and the poster did not make that connection. I think this is why many folks felt it is a bit out of place in a Julia forum.
In a similar vein also this thread “Explainability is Not a Game”. This also got very little interaction, which can be taken as a sign that it did not resonate with the community here.
Just scrolled through the Offtopic. Actually most of the threads has sufficiently clear relation to Julia, though there are a few notorious topic starters.
I’d suggest:
The first post in the Offtopic should explain relation to Julia, except it is obvious.
Questions about general programming-related topics can be tolerated.
Political and religious topics are not welcome.
Activism (e.g. raising money for non-julian purposes) is political.
Climate science considered political, except it is about Julia (e.g. hypothetical post about use of a Julia package to generate data for an UNO report would be great, but plotting CO2 is not, even if using Julia).
Posting links without explanation is generally a sin, but such topics in the Offtopic category considered inappropriate and will be closed.
I don’t really have much preference for what goes in offtopic, but the initial post should at least have some discussion or thought in it. I don’t really see Discourse as the appropriate medium for simply dropping a link and leaving it at that. That’s fine for places like Reddit or Twitter for example but I don’t see the point in doing it here.
Sure! Any statement about what counts as political, and what doesn’t, is a political statement.
However I think it is indisputable climate science topics are way more politicized as compared to, say, solid state physics. Furthermore, topics on climate issues in the Offtopic category tended to be about, well, global issues, and not really on the scientific aspects, which most of us are not competent in anyway, - and global issues is politics.
I don’t think there is any guidance needed and perhaps there should not be any, just to avoid people being afraid to post something they find remotely relevant. After all it is off-topic and can be used for any “Topics that are not about Julia or do not fit in any other category”. If there is problematic content it will anyways be moderated away. That is my personal opinion.
In a vacuum I’d agree, but this discourse community is commited to being moderated in accordance with the community code of conduct, and this discourse community also has a bit of a history of certain topics drawing people into heated flamewars/dogpiling.
That means that there’s a rather large burden placed on the moderators to make sure this place stays civil, so I think there’s a strong argument to be made for placing guidance on Offtopic if the purpose is to avoid low-value, high-contention topics.
The moderators job is to make sure this place is a useful venue for discussing julia. If they end up having to spend all their time policing Offtopic, that would point to a misallocation of resources.
I agree that it would be nice to keep moderator burden to a minimum, I cannot judge how much work that is. Perhaps a moderator could hint if most of the burden comes from the offtopic section. But I’m also not sure if some given subject guidelines will reduce flamewars.
Yeah, that’s my primary motivation. It’s actually not as much about reducing/preventing flamewars, but rather about making it clearer how moderators can and should help steer such discussions — clearer to both participants and moderators alike.
A number of posts in Offtopic have pondered the existential crisis of how to be on-topic in an off-topic topic. And I’ve gotten messages objecting to moderating activities because they happened in Offtopic, even if the moderating activity had nothing to do with the actual subject matter but rather was about our other shared standards.
I do think we have a somewhat shared and very rough consensus on how we’ve seen that category used productively, but it’s not written down anywhere. I think giving just a bit more guidance would actually help foster more discussions there!
I think with respect to the particular string of posts that inspired this discussion on Offtopic guidance, my issue was not with the offtopic-ness but with the repetitiveness and lack of effort. The first such post or two on that topic in my opinion were fine, and of vague interest to the Julia community.
I should note that this is something I’ve been mulling over for a while now, and isn’t targeted at the precipitating post but is rather a long-standing general tension.
In addition to the proposed guidance, have we considered excluding posts in the Offtopic category from showing up on the home page as Latest posts by default? This would prevent competition for attention between posts in Offtopic and the other categories, which are more relevant to most users. It would still allow users to “opt in” to viewing Offtopic posts by clicking on that category.
The question is, whether a forum specifically dedicated to a programming language is the proper venue for that kind of discussions. IMO, it is not, - at least if there is no obvious link between that specific programming language and some specific societal impact.
I like the idea of “soft” requirement to relate off-topic posts to Julia, like post anything you want, follow common etiquette (no insults, no politics/religion, no stray links etc) and finish your post with something like “this is related to Julia because…” or relate your post to julia in some other creative way. I know another specialized forum where they do similar thing, and off topic section there use to be informative and fun, although not directly related to the main subject of the forum.
