I’d agree that I’d rather Offtopic be removed rather than overly-restricted. It seems to me that if the requirement is “be directly related to Julia” that it should go into General Usage or Specific Domains. I don’t consider a post like JIT Compiler for CPython to be inappropriate in the Offtopic category, even though it’s not directly related to Julia – it’s directly related to Python, indirectly related to Julia. But I do like seeing the Julia community’s thoughts and discourse on topics like that.
But I do agree that I’m not a fan of posts consisting only of a link – that’s not discourse. So for me, as long as what’s posted is:
- Legal / meets Code of Conduct requirements
- At least tangentially related to Julia (no posts about who we think the starting QB at My University State is going to be)
- Has a reasonable amount of effort exerted to try to start a discourse on the topic
Then don’t filter the post – the fact it’s in the Offtopic category in the first place is enough of a signal to my own internal filter for whether I want to spend time in it.