IMPORTANT POLL: Should there be an off-topic section?

[joeqsmith]

It happened to me several times that I typed a post, and then deleted it, because it was off topic, or political, and I didn't want to leave it to chance whether I get banned. So I ended up deleting it. It would be good to talk to people here (like minded people) about those topics without the fear of the ban hammer.

You wouldn't get banned. That is a decision that is not made lightly. We are all human, and sometimes we say things without thinking... or even it's well thought-out but controversial. To get banned, you basically have to be a shit human (or spammer).

From what I have seen over the years, good people have been banned here too fast for small things.

I tend to agree.  When I've attempted to find out why someone was banned I can't.   I suspect they typically get into off-topic threads and talk politics, religion ... and their comments are scrubbed.   I don't follow these threads so what I see is their technical contributions.  Personally, I only see these bans further diluting the resource pool.  I suspect if you open the site up, these bans will become more common place.   

If current members are less interested in electronics and the goal is to expand or maintain, I see no other way around it than to make it more like other sites.  You may find this opens the doors for new sponsors as well.     

Maybe name the site that better describes the target audience you are trying to attract?  "GenBlog Generic Forum" 

[tggzzz]

It happened to me several times that I typed a post, and then deleted it, because it was off topic, or political, and I didn't want to leave it to chance whether I get banned. So I ended up deleting it. It would be good to talk to people here (like minded people) about those topics without the fear of the ban hammer.

IMHO what you describe is a good thing. EEVBlog is right on the good side of the edge between technical and not-so-technical topics. My fear is that allowing more non-technical threads is going to lead to people really taking it out on each other due to difference of opinion and being 'on the spectrum'.

That's always been my fear, but as the years have rolled on I've been seeing that happen more and more anyway, it doesn't seem to take much if any off-topic to trigger a fued.

IMNSHO, this forum strikes a good balance, thus does not need to change. I see no benefits to such a change, and potentially significant downsides. The recent " TEA contretemps" hasn't changed that.

When I want general stuff, there are plenty of other forums, all the way down to Farcebook.

When I'm not interested in a topic or some of the posts in it, I simply skip them. Not exactly rocket science!

Navigation is trivial due to the combination of "Show unread posts since last visit", "Show new replies to your posts" and "Mark posts read". Without those the forum would be unusable.

[HighVoltage]

Anything political or religious will always be the seed for problems.

Dave,
You have something very special here with a group people interested in electronics.
Why killing it with off-topic sections.
There are plenty of other places where people can discuss such topics.
I have been on many forums over the years and off-topic sections eventually killed the forum!

eevblog should stay clean and on focus with its center core, no need to change anything.

[pcprogrammer]

As with everything in life there are pro's and con's to this.

A separate section to allow the more involved members to do water cooler talk could ease the off topic drifts in other threads, but that does depend on the will of the members to move it to the new section as soon as a drift starts, and I fear such a discipline might be a to big a stretch.

Making it completely free of rules like no politics, religion and guns, and only leave don't offend others, feels like opening the door to huge cesspool. Even though I would not mind a good discussion on some of these topics, there will never be winners so to speak, because everybody has his deep set ideas about them, and not offending others will become almost impossible.

A better set of rules of conduct, like discussed in the new section opened for TEA might be of help to move off topic drifts into a new "EEVBlog cafe" section, but don't make it everything is allowed.

[PlainName]

However, if you do choose to venture into that area, users need to be prepared to be offended, insulted etc...

I'm not sure I follow why 'not electronics related' means 'free for all offensive' and/or complete non-moderation. Surely the participants should be as well behaved as they are in the electronics sections, it's just that whatever is discussed wouldn't have to included electronic stuff?

[tggzzz]

If this is in response to the recent "difficulties" then I don't think it's really relevant. 
...
NO amount of shuffling deck chairs is going to do anything that will avert such issues in the future.
...
If this is just to ask because it seemed like a reasonable time to ask, then I ask: "What do you intend to achieve with such a change?"

I agree with those points.

(Don't make inferences about the points I have omitted! )

[bdunham7]

b) potentially create greater animosity between users as a result of personal conflicts. Although the longer the forum has gone, the more I see this happens with on-topic posts anyway 
All comments appreciated. Thanks.

I think the potential to expose latent animosity that could be left undiscovered in a purely technical forum is a potential drawback.  It's already a bit of a hybrid as things veer off topic, but when moderation is required it is generally accepted as necessary because by the point mods step in the thread has usually gone so far off the rails that there is almost universal agreement that the thread should be locked. 

There have already been otherwise intelligent, interesting and helpful members that are not here because of this, such as blueskull.  I'm not advocating much stricter control or moderation, but making even a specific area 'wide open' is likely to significantly change the overall character of the forum. 

[AndyC_772]

I definitely would be in favour of some 'off topic' space. Personally I'm bored of the endless threads that boil down to "please tell me what cheap TE to buy even though I've no idea I want it for", or "please do my homework, I'm desperate". It's become dull and repetitive.

Right now, I see the EEVblog community as being like a sports bar. We all have a thing in common, and really do want to talk about that thing - at least some of the time.

Imagine, though, the bar staff coming along and saying to a group "Oi! This is a sports bar, you can't talk about cars / beer / DIY / whatever in here! If you want to talk about something other than sports, I'm going to have to ask you to leave".

It would be ridiculous. Absurd. People who get together over a shared love of one topic can, and do, want to talk to each other about something else occasionally. It's normal, healthy, and good for a community.

[RoGeorge]

We do talk cars and DIY already in our "sports bar" right now.  Pretty much everything techie is allowed.

But if you suddenly introduce politics in a sports bar you'll get bar fights and stabbings every night.

People will stop visiting and make the habit of going to a sports bar instead of a fight bar.  Others will go and make their own bar.  It's trivial to setup a forum hosting these days.  Building and maintaining a happy and alive community is the harder part.  We have that here.  Why splitting it?

Why burning our free time in sterile debates, and make each other's blood boil?

[Ian.M]

How about making "Cooking" a sub-section of a new forum: "Other Hobbies" and the moderators treading lightly in "Other Hobbies", but still enforcing the EEVblog forum rules with a modified rule 5, that still bans the most controversial or legally troublesome topics, but says something like:
 "5) This is a hobby forum, so try to stay on-topic. We understand that threads drift off-topic, but try not to start deliberately and grossly off-topic stuff.
...
Those who come to the EEVblog forums to mostly only contribute non-electronics related material are not welcome. There are other forum sites for that stuff, this is not one of them, so please try to maintain a balance between your contributions about other hobbies here and your electronics related contributions in other EEVblog forums."?

[Bud]

Once flood gates are open, there will be people coming to use the space for pushing their agendas. Not casual discussions but  deliberate abuse of the platform. Because, you know, why not, if the opportunity is screaming. The nutters that truly believe this helps their party, their community, their country, you name it. I can't help but think  some are here already.

[PlainName]

But if you suddenly introduce politics in a sports bar you'll get bar fights and stabbings every night.

Once again I am asking how come 'off topic' means 'political fighting'. There are other topics besides electronics and politics. You can certainly have an off-topic section and still mandate no politics (or the other stuff that quickly degenerates into a bunfight). You can even allow all those and still step in when it gets nasty.

I haven't marked the poll because I don't understand what's being asked. I thought it meant 'we can talk about random stuff, like painting walls and how to stop slugs eating the rhubard', but the way everyone is going on it means 'completely hands-off, moderators will be missing in action and you WILL be insulted enough to want to leave'.

So maybe someone can be clear about what this OT thing will actually be, and then we can vote from the position of knowledge.

[Black Phoenix]

There have already been otherwise intelligent, interesting and helpful members that are not here because of this, such as blueskull.  I'm not advocating much stricter control or moderation, but making even a specific area 'wide open' is likely to significantly change the overall character of the forum.

OFFTOPIC
The case of him is different. We are talking about threats to people in the forum and Dave itself, as his brand and sponsors.

Plus he was tons of times warned regarding his stance when someone would talk about his home country. He could simply keep it quiet and silent, don't feed the noise but he always responded.

That's keyboard wars, you let them go if you want:


/OFFTOPIC

Regarding the issue in hand, from what I see in terms of offtopic (and I'm also one that sometimes fall in such) normally it tends to go to 3 or 4 posts and then tones down

Example - https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/orcad-for-msdos/msg4403527/

End of Page 3 to forward.

Am I OK with it? Yes because is not offensive, divisive or hostile. Mostly is fun "Watercooler talk" related with the subject in some way.

Now if it goes into political/religious/personal beliefs where people fell that it may affect them that's the problem, and then we go again to the top of this post.

That's keyboard wars, you let them go if you want.

If someone wants to stop the offtopic just do what I see being done in some posts, just finish it by going again on topic.

Now an IDEA: Dave and the SMF administration, is there any way of creating a function like the quote?

Like a quote one that is always hidden until someone clicks over it to show the contents. That way people could offtopic inside a topic and the thread would be minimised by default until you clicked on it, kinda like how Reddit does with the negative karma posts.

It minimize them with an indication of how negative they are and you click to read on them by your own choice. That way the thread would be on topic and further offtopic derived from the thread subject itself contained hidden until clicked.

[Zoli]

The risk of the water-cooler talk to leak back in the normal forum is too big; unfortunately, I saw it too often. I suspect that what's happened with TEA(discord talk leaked back; I didn't participated in discord, I've read only references 'bout).
And it's easier to keep away water-cooler talk from the forum, then to prune it.
Just my 0.02$.

[nctnico]

From what I have seen over the years, good people have been banned here too fast for small things.

It's always based on a consistent pattern of behaviour, and usually multiple user reports over a long period of time, and no willingness to stop.

Then again there are also those that like to bait people into such behaviour. It takes two to tango.

[mushroom]

Definitely not interested in a off topic forum.

Instead, there could be an international forum, with different langages. Many technical forums have this feature. Could make life easier for some that are not always comfortable with english.

People who want to fight against each others or showing off already have social networks.

[pcprogrammer]

Oh, please lets not go down the road of different languages. I think the forum is best of with just English. Google translate is your friend here, and on the technical subjects you will have far better yield in getting answers when it is in English.

Edit: Come to think about it, allowing multiple languages makes moderation a nightmare.

My stand in the off_topic bits would be to always maintain the main rules of no politics, religion and weapons. Having a shielded section (lets say a minimum of 100 or even 200 posts before entry is allowed) can be nice to prolong some of the off topic that is interesting. This way it is out of sight on the main part of the forum, and less annoying to the many.

And no politics, religion or weapons, is not that easy by the way and definitely not moderated on, as long as it is not reported. Just take a look at the thread about the gas and energy prices. It drifted into conspiracy about who put who in control.

In a way the forum is a very nice and good place as it it, but in the light of the recent events, having a private playground might help, or not. Only time can tell.

[CatalinaWOW]

An off topic forum where people of somewhat interesting mindset can talk about whatever has some appeal.  And limiting it to people who have made enough posts to matter solves some problems, though 40 may not be a big enough number.  The problem is that I believe this area would need more moderation, and finding appropriate moderators could be a challenge.  I don't think I am qualified and am certainly not going to volunteer.

[Kjelt]

I have witnessed another forum related to hometheater and audio open up an afterhours (non ht relared) topic.
The result after five years was quite devastating. Afterhours posts were 90+% of the posts, ht and audio related only 10%. Most new members joined for the afterhours topic.

Then there are 25 members that just want to agonize other users posting just within the ban parameters so the admins could not take action. Admins spent 100% of their time on afterhours topics.
Mind you there are even rules like no local politics and no religious posts and still it is terrible.

So yes I understand long time members like to talk about different things but there are sooo many other social media to do this, why on the eevblog forum?

[mushroom]

...The result after five years was quite devastating....

I left half a dozen forums in the last 25 years because the crappy "lounge" or "bar" or "off topic" subforums created conflicts between members that had no problems before ; just an example : motorbikes vs cars ! These subforums litterally killed these great forums because they revealed all sorts of nazis and keyboard warriors. All people that were just fine and interesting before, just talking about tech.
What members are thinking IRL is just uninteresting. They could meet in a real bar.
Off topic can only divide people.

[Dundarave]

I side with “keeping things as is”.

I think that one of the key success factors for EEVblog is very likely a result of the focus and discipline around its having one single main theme: “engineering”, which, by definition is structured, methodical and to some degree “impersonal” and therefore somewhat uncontroversial at a personal level.

Allowing a drift away from that central focus & theme, I fear, will eliminate what sets the blog apart from the rest of the internet, and its infinity of other forums.

I also think that it’s a mistake to try to be “all things to all people”, which seems to be the impetus for making the proposed changes.  The reality is that one will never be able “to please all the people all the time”, as one old visionary pointed out.  It is simply impossible to satisfy everyone, and demonstrated folly to attempt to do so.

[Siwastaja]

I totally enjoy discussing off-topic, even politics. In that sense, I would like to have an off-topic section.

HOWEVER.

I would also like to eat all the ice cream we have in one go. It's a dopamine thing. Even if it feels good, it is not good for me. It's OK in tight moderation. One serving of ice cream per day. One off-topic post every now and then.

So I voted for NO WAY. Current way is excellent; short off-topic excursions are OK, and when things get a bit heated or off-topic for longer than a few pages, moderators chime in and lock the threads. It always sucks, like taking the ice cream away, but it's still the right thing to do, and as a result, I'm still here on this forum after so many years, almost a decade, able to discuss technical things (and 1-2% off-topic!)

More off-topic would very likely have negative consequences.

[magic]

Don't care strongly but sure as hell invisible to outsiders.

It's bad enough already that merely mentioning va*ing brings spammers posting ads for websites selling that shit.

[rstofer]

Yes, I think the bigger the forum gets, the more time people will tend to spend on here, and the more they will feel it kinda like an online "home" rather then just some place they talk electronics. Like the water cooler at work.

There are topics that are ill advised even around a water cooler.  In my view it is best to leave those discussions to Twitter or one of the other platforms.

[Zeyneb]

What I was missing in EEVBlog initial post is which houserules he would propose to apply for this new off-topic section. This way members can better judge if they can see this work out based on their experiences on the forum as well as the moderations in their job.