Bringing (a bit) more guidance for #offtopic?

[abraemer]

@mbauman

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.
• Collaborative editing: Zed editor and conflict-free replicated data type (CRDT) abstract data type while somewhat about this specific editor, the poster made a connection to Julia, so it is for me totally justified to post
• 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.