General > General Technical Chat
IMPORTANT POLL: Should there be an off-topic section?
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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:

--- Quote from: Kjelt on September 07, 2022, 05:20:22 pm ---...The result after five years was quite devastating....
--- End quote ---

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.
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