Bringing (a bit) more guidance for #offtopic?

[cgeoga]

I see that there is a new channels feature here (or at least, new to me). Maybe a compromise would be to have offtopic be pretty broad in scope, but have it be a channel instead of a category for indexed and searchable threads? That seems easier to effectively opt out of.

I guess another question that this raises to me is whether this forum serves a different purpose than the slack/zulip/etc. I think that posting neat links and chatting about them with whoever happens to be on the forum and interested to engage at that time is cool, but if the ambition for discourse posts is that they are (i) worth indexing for search in the future and (ii) potentially long-running and references for future users, then maybe most off-topic discussions belong on the platforms that are a bit more ephemeral by design.

To be clear though, I also say this meaning no disrespect at all to @PetrKryslUCSD.

[mbauman]

Here’s a wild thought: what if we rebrand the current Community to a name like “organizing” and then use language like “community discussions” for what’s currently Offtopic?

[Ahmed_Salih]

No, the names are fine.

Having some higher expectations of the content in off-topic makes sense, to avoid single link posts and some, even if minute, connection to Julia/programming as a whole is probably good to enforce. If a discussion turns “violent” or however to say it, perhaps quicker action taken to stop the thread, since it is “just” an offtopic post anyway.

Just my opinion.

Kind regards

[mbauman]

The name offtopic is definitely a problem for me, because we ask folks to stay on-topic and explicitly ask for assistance flagging off-topic posts. It’s the first flag ‘reason’:

Surely it should still be possible to do thread-splits and the like if warranted in that category.

[fgerick]

We could rename Offtopic to Miscellaneous?

[greatpet]

Or rename it to “Others”.

[rafael.guerra]

Computing-at-large

[Barget]

I’d like to bring my two cent in a (hopefully) positive way.

When a new thread is started with just a link, I (personal opinion) feel (subjective) as if someone is coming by with a magazine, without saying a word, putting it in front of me, still without a word, and leaving.

At the very least, that’s odd, and for sure won’t trigger in me the will to speak.

But something in the vein of “Hey, I came across this article, and I’ve been quite surprised, what are your thoughts on that?” has little to no context, but is much more likely to trigger a discussion, don’t you agree?

As a side note - please tell me if I’m reading too much into this - but you seems to act as with your students (if I remember correctly from another post), which people on this platform are not.
Don’t be afraid to share your opinions. I’m sure they are well thought-through. On the contrary, I’d say, we’re here for the very reason to share views and knowledge!

[kapple]

Ah yes, the most difficult problem in programming: naming things.

Semi-joke aside, rename to “Tangential”?

[Eben60]

Wouldn’t be nice to have a bit more of explicit guidance on political discussions: Which topics are OK, which are not OK? E.g.:

• Internal political affairs of
  – USA
  – Canada
  – EU countries
  – Turkey
  – Taiwan
  – China
• International affairs
  – Americas
  – East Europe and West Asia
  – Middle East

We are living in quite interesting times, things are happening every day which could provide a lot of food for lively discussions on the Discourse.

[foobar_lv2]

Yeah, a blanket ban on politics seems like a very bad idea.

We’re all humans (hopefully, and thanks to the tireless work of the mods in bringing down the banhammer on AI slop).
We all deserve to talk about topics that deeply move us with all our social circles, which includes coworkers and to some extent includes this crowd.

Unfortunately, as we are cursed to live in interesting times, this often does include “current affairs” / politics.

To give a hypothetical extreme, banning all discussions, in an explicitly “offtopic” catetgory, of the Nazis in 1938, US immigration and German emigration policies in 1938, or all discussion of the war in 1942, would not have been an act of “neutrality” – it would be simply boneheaded. Most of us are not at that point, with the notable exception of our Ukrainian, Israeli, and Palestinian users.

So, as long it doesn’t take overhand, lead to bad flame-wars, isn’t low-effort context-less links only, and spawns interesting discussion – I’d prefer a light hand.

---

On the other side, some topics affect a lot of out user-base, even though they are not directly julia related, simply through the fact that many julia users have similar backgrounds.

To give an example, process vagaries of various EU grants / funding sources, or various US science funding sources – many julia users are either current academics who rely on science funding for their livelihood and julia work, or are former academics who can at least relate.

Since we’re gathered here anyway, why not have a chat about such shared interests, under the offtopic label?

People who don’t care can easily tune out.

[barucden]

As a frequent reader of and occasional participant in the discussions here, I appreciate that the topics are always technical or—at the very least—related to Julia (e.g., Contingency plan for JuliaCon) or computation (e.g., news about LLMs).

I don’t consider it a ban that we try to have a technical discussion on the forum. I don’t feel like I’m banned from talking about politics here; nor do I feel like I’m banned from talking about sports or cooking. I don’t do it because this is a Julia forum and I don’t see how those topics are related to Julia.

@foobar_lv2

People who don’t care can easily tune out.

That can be said about pretty much anything, yet the moderators still hide a post from time to time. (Thank you, moderators!)

I try to pay attention to what gets posted here, and so I greatly appreciate that the vast majority of what I see is relevant to programming, mathematics, and other technical areas. That is why I come here. While I am not trying to diminish the importance of politics, if my attention was wasted on skimming through a bunch of personal opinions on political affairs, I would definitely feel less enthusiastic about coming here.

[Benny]

I would go farther and say that there should be nearly a ban so that a Julia forum stays focused on Julia and its users. Even most of the “Off-topic” discussions are particular to Julia in some way, e.g. politics affecting researchers who use Julia and travel to JuliaCon, developments in Julia-coveted hardware, seasonal gags that happen to involve Julia code. Such a soft ban would not silence many controversial political topics because those are indeed explicitly relevant to Julia users in a way that isn’t true for other people.

The issue with a truly light hand allowing discussions that are at best tangential to Julia usage (“I baked banana bread while I ran a simulation”) isn’t spam, it’s distraction. We as readers may be able to tune things out personally, but those posts are still diverting attention away from the posts we write. Imagine how it would feel for a new user to post a researched and carefully written request for help, only to find that half the present users are talking about baking? Or for people asking about a niche issue that the 3 other unknown members with the necessary backgrounds don’t see on the feed among the patisserie recommendations anymore? Even big social media platforms will divide into interest groups, and this forum just isn’t suited or staffed to moderate them all. There are other forums for topics that don’t concern Julia usage at all, and anybody here is free to privately invite other people to discuss things there. I don’t think our opinions veer far from this; we certainly don’t care to see a banana bread recipe here.

[goerz]

We should limit discussions on politics, but not on policy. In particular discussions about how changes in policy affect community events, the funding of Julia projects, or the overall ability of people to work with Julia. I have high confidence in the moderators on this site to make that distinction, and to keep discussions from going off the rails

[foobar_lv2]

edit: We don’t have “downvote” buttons to register disagreement, as opposed to the “like” button. This is generally good, but this specific post of mine is controversial enough that it absolutely needs a downvote button. So I edited that in, in form of a (private/anonymous) poll. This is not intended as a poll on desired mod policy, it is an artificial downvote button to express that this specific post is full of shit.

@barucden

I don’t consider it a ban that we try to have a technical discussion on the forum. I don’t feel like I’m banned from talking about politics here; nor do I feel like I’m banned from talking about sports or cooking. I don’t do it because this is a Julia forum and I don’t see how those topics are related to Julia.

I guess we’re mostly in agreement there.

And I have absolutely no complaints about the mod behavior – to give my answer to @mbauman 's initial question about mod policy, I’d say “go with your gut feelings; you have proven through past actions that your gut is worthy of making a call, even in absence or direct contradiction of any written policy. Be courageous to allow unprincipled exceptions to all the rules that otherwise guide you.”.

• Yay mod gut feelings
• Yay mod policy
• meh

---

Yet, there are tech-adjacent politics-adjacent somewhat-julia-distant discussions that I am missing here. I’m not starting them because I fail to articulate my thoughts well enough, not because I’m not interested or don’t believe they belong here. To give examples:

1. The war in Ukraine. What are our obligations, as humans of our somewhat shared background? As Europeans, nerds/techies, as milquetoast anti-fascists? (edited some points due to inappropriateness)
2. The war in Ukraine. The technical expertise gathered here could make some difference when applied to CV / drone development. So I’m a lazy bum. But where are the hype threads? The calls for help on some cool collaboration with the likes of wild hornets ? I may lack the initiative to unpromptedly change career to arms manufacturing, but I’m not above getting nerd-sniped / recruited to help with things.
3. We’re all science-adjacent techies / nerds. It was naive and historically illiterate, but I actually used to feel like that was enough to assume some shared values. And yet, in the US, we see a significant part of the tech industry / community sliding to fascism. A lot of guilty navel-gazing is in order! What went wrong? How can we be a community that is resilient to that sort of moral catastrophe? This kind of soul-searching must be had in all nerd-adjacent circles, including this one.
4. Especially US people should talk with all their social circles about how to navigate the current times. And “all their social circles” does to some extent include this one. I probably wouldn’t have anything to contribute there, but I absolutely would not begrudge them the space on Offtopic to hash that out. Same applies doubly to US LGBTQ people, and triply to US trans people.
5. Climate science people. I know there are a lot of climate modelers using julia, and I know that working in this subfield of scientific computing has a tendency to politically radicalize people. Share your perspective, I’m waiting to be radicalized and nerd-sniped by you! Not by talking points tailored to the general public, but rather by talking to this community. Go on, rant and nerd out about how xy model is shit and only breeds policy complacency because it has yz instability, and nobody has a good effective theory.
6. The Israel-Palestine situation. OK, I’m not missing that – I am actually kinda relieved that nobody is trying to talk about that here. But I would emphatically not begrudge people the space to talk about that, especially affected people / groups. My potential mild discomfort / distraction is a negligible price to pay for your space.

These are offtopic to julia, and for all of them, there are different and more focused forums to discuss them.

But there are no other forums to talk with the specific crowd of people congregating here. Hence, an Offtopic category. Or maybe an additional #veryOfftopic category

• Yay, good point on allowing some politicized far-offtopics such as some of these examples (if appropriately siloed to meta/offtopic/veryofftopic, and if either tangentially relevant to julia or if the point is to talk with this crowd of somewhat like-minded people)
• Nay, disagree with that. Also keep Offtopic technical and don’t make room for distracting far-offtopic discussions.
• meh

[GHTaarn]

I’m personally very happy with what has appeared in Offtopic so far, so to me, the main advantage of changing the guide would be to ease the work of the moderators, especially:

@mbauman

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 have two concrete suggestions for a new description of Offtopic: “Topics related to Julia but do not fit in any other category” or “Topics relevant to Julia users but do not fit in any other category”.

[goerz]

I would actually not consider discussions about policies that directly affect the Julia community to be Offtopic at all, but to firmly belong in the Community category (or potentially JuliaCon). That includes calls for signing an open letter in support of public science. Maybe the thought was that the “science” community is only “adjacent” to the “Julia” community… but either way, there’s nothing inappropriate about it.

[mihalybaci]

@foobar_lv2

But there are no other forums to talk with the specific crowd of people congregating here.

In this case, I think the answer is to start a Julia-users group on one of the other social media sites, not to use the official forum for technical issues. Just post here that you’re starting a group on Discord, Mastodon, Bluesky, etc. for folks interested in Julia but want to expand discussions beyond the scope of Discourse.

Thinking more practically, let’s say someone starts an Offtopic post on a political or world event, and that post ends up at the top of a Google search. Then it’s almost like an invitation for non-Julia users to come to the Julia forum to have political discussions. Not what we want, I think. And also not a hypothetical, we all know internet trolls exist everywhere.

The current US situation regarding scientists being detained at the United States border is a perfect example of an Offtopic or Commuinty post (as @goerz pointed out) because of the potential real effects on people thinking of travelling for JuliaCan. If the post were simply, “boy this is terrible” without the JuliaCon context, then it does not being here, IMO.

[Benny]

@foobar_lv2

I would emphatically not begrudge people the space to talk about that, especially affected people / groups. My potential mild discomfort / distraction is a negligible price to pay for your space.

@mihalybaci

let’s say someone starts an Offtopic post on a political or world event, and that post ends up at the top of a Google search. Then it’s almost like an invitation for non-Julia users to come to the Julia forum to have political discussions

I would emphasize that the cost of free-range political discussion without larger infrastructure for separately moderated spaces (facebook groups, subreddits, etc) is not negligible discomfort, it’s major derailment and discord. As neutral as I’ve been trying to sound here, I’m biased like most other people and would feel uncomfortable if other active users frequently voiced different, even repulsive, opinions on important issues out of nowhere and would preemptively decline to participate in their discussions. That’s true for many people, which is why I encourage them to find the right times and places for voicing their opinions. It’s not controversial for a Christian to worship the Lord in a church instead of a mosque, nor is it controversial to expel one from a mosque for repeatedly derailing prayers with debates. I don’t think it should be controversial for a Julia forum to invariably talk about learning, developing, and applying Julia, either.

A discussion about Julia can involve other contentious topics, sure, but there should be limits and our debates should primarily concern the Julia part. This doesn’t just apply to politics; if a post nominally about optimizing a program for proving a theorem derails into a heated discussion about the theorem itself, it should be stopped and asked to move elsewhere; ideally the MWE wouldn’t even mention the theorem, just reproduce the performance issue.

It’s worth pointing out that our community standards are not actually apolitical despite its neutrality, in fact neutrality is only effective if it dictates acceptable behavior among people who would typically disagree on what that is. Even those few sentences exclude many commonplace behaviors and political expressions. Call it censorship if you’d like, but putting differences aside and putting up with etiquette in niche groups are very typical social norms and don’t have the harmful consequences of censorship in other contexts.

[foobar_lv2]

@Benny

This doesn’t just apply to politics; if a post nominally about optimizing a program for proving a theorem derails into a heated discussion about the theorem itself, it should be stopped and asked to move elsewhere

This is a very nice example, since it is so refreshingly apolitical and concrete.

And hell no, I disagree with that, emphatically! Somebody posts about a question about performance when simulating some randomized thing, and somebody else answers “you can compute the probabilities explicitly using dynamic programming”, this is the best kind of answer!

“You’re asking the wrong question” is the most valuable input one can get.

This is the coolest thing about the forum here – that people come in with a breadth of experience and expertise, and try to help people solve problems, thinking outside the narrow box of the explicitly asked question. And “heated” is not a bad thing to say about a discussion.

This forum is not just about julia. Take all the discussions that are, ultimately, about selecting the right algorithm / lapack procedure in numerical linear algebra, where the same considerations would apply in e.g. matlab. This is absolutely not off-topic, even if it’s not exactly julia specific either.