Feedback on a "General" Detox and Making LQ A Friendlier Place.
 

Many people decide to ring in the new year with a bit of a detox and I'd like feedback on doing something similar here at LQ. I've noticed a worrying trend of LQ being a bit less friendly than it has been in the past and I think we need to work to correct that. Now, part of this can probably be chalked up to our shear size. It's difficult to get hundreds of thousands of strangers from many continents and many cultures to understand each other. This inevitably leads to some misunderstandings. Even given that constraint, I think we can improve.

One idea I had was to suspend posting in General for a finite amount of time starting in the New Year. While I personally like the water-cooler aspect of General, we are a technical fora and this would allow us to focus our efforts better. This would not be a permanent change, but I'd be interested in what timeline members think would be beneficial, or whether you think the idea has merit at all.

More broadly speaking, I'd like as much feedback as possible on how you think we can make LQ as friendly, inclusive and welcoming as we possibly can while still avoiding burnout for senior members. Thanks for the feedback.

--jeremy

Hi Jeremy,

I'm on the fence about the non-nix general forum. I agree with the water cooler comment and like that aspect. I also feel that some people then need "cooling" because they participate in that forum regularly. And that there are some who have agendas when they post.

I do not know a solution to engage with new members. We do wish their posts to be seen. Moderators do not have time necessarily to head off all new posts, and it was clearly rejected to hold back posts for initial moderation. Meanwhile this is an exact complaint I've received from members that the moderators should be doing more to head off inappropriate first posts.

How about all new threads of a certain category go to a single forum solely held for new threads?

The category being: New threads by LQ Newbies and members who have infractions of a certain level.

These threads can be replied to by anyone, and eventually be moved to particular forums by moderator action; any moderator could move the threads.

If a thread is bad, such as the OP hit and ran and never came back, or they are the type of OP who doesn't answer correctly, then the issue dies in that forum, and we the mods close those threads.

LQ members and above should be able to post with no restrictions to any forum.

Consider changing it so that you don't move from LQ Newbie to LQ Member until you've been approved by a mod? Notification of this needed evaluation for a status change can be sent to mods for action.

Likewise a control can be imposed for a member with some level of infractions so that any new post by that member will have to go through this forum, until that person's infractions expire.

As almost all of the contributions to General are currently from a group of American and British posters that seems to be largely homogenous in terms of age and politics, I'm not really seeing how these two points relate to each other.

It's the technical forums that are having cultural and language issues.

I don't use General, so I don't have an opinion on it, but then again - maybe I don't use General because the few times it's come up in LQ Spy, the topics discourage me from clicking. In general (so to speak), I think General is superfluous. LQ ought to be about Linux, POSIX, unix, computing. For General stuff, there's the rest of the WWW.

I think it's important to have friendly moderators to lead the way. Like, super-friendly, cheery, sickeningly optimistic moderators. I've seen moderators post messages to people that, while correct (to the letter), would frighten any sane person FAR away from LQ...and possibly even from Linux. I know that moderators have to play the bad-guy sometimes, but it IS possible to be the Bad Guy *nicely*. Telling someone to stop cross-posting? Tell the nicely; if they keep doing it, ban them....nicely. It's totally possible, I've seen it in action on other forums and IRC channels. "It's not personal; it's business."

That's all I've got.

Concur with this.
I've seen quite a few threads that go along the lines of:

I hate to go there, but off topic religious propaganda doesn't belong on the forums. I know that's the thing that irritates me most, when certain users post a "reply" that's nothing more than religious spam and propaganda. Too many different religions on the site, it's a technical site, and there's a thread dedicated to religion. Outside of that thread, religion shouldn't be a part of the forums IMO.

Anecdotally, I was a mod on a tiny forum that basically didn't have a 'General' forum and tried to pride itself on being very on-topic and at some point we, everyone involved, ended up taking over a sub-forum to finally talk to each other about things not so on topic. That was our failed experiment.

I haven't found General to be unfriendly. A lot of the topics tend towards politics and religion where feelings diverge quite a bit, but there's also things like the music thread and the food threads and others that are very harmonious.:twocents:

I moved my post to 1st Blog (&2nd blog SafeLQ added)
(to facilitate evolving it, & so Comments wouldn't clutter/OT this Thread)

Idea: senior+ members 'INSTANTLY only freeze_HIDE' 'bad' post; poster edit/retry;
-> minimize wasting Moderator resources. (adds 'Triager' 'gate' role)

&other thoughts like:
Re-do #faq_LQwelcome more gently:
0:'NO free fish here'->hostility; 1:'here's [how to] fish'->collaboration

General is cool; maybe make it members-only. ...Instead, *I* 'feel' the
problem is: 'bad'posts/junk_threads ->yield wasted_gurus&ugly_LQ
(There'd be a new RULE to just 1click'freeze' it [away-tmp], instead of replying)

IMHO gurus need NOT hunt ZRTs <1day old; leave them for mid-level triage;
instead, look for ExpertiseNeededThreads that need 'expert' help.

Problem: [thinking about] 'bad'ness. Solution: think something ELSE, like olderZRT/ENT!
== Problem: gawking at accident. Solution: don't look there! Attn to the road forward.

Eliminate signatures. (Now GONE in Intro! Yea! "Made LQI Beautiful Again!")

I'll have to think about this a bit, but I have some initial thoughts regarding the General forum.

To some extent, it reflects the toxic politics currently in the UK and the US (in particular). As I am a political blogger, I try to stay out of the overtly political threads in General. At the same time, I most observe that the level of discourse in General tends to be rather civil, especially compared to the level of discourse in other locations (to pick one, news story comments. which are a cesspool of vile). That, I think, reflects positively on the the LQ community, regardless of individual members' political opinions. I'm inclined not to favor a ban or a timeout or an interregnum or whatever you want to call it in General.

What I've found most troubling is a manifestation of impatience directed at persons who are new to LQ, likely new to forums, and perhaps not particularly adept. One of the aspects of LQ that I have always valued, both when I was a newbie looking for answers and now that I'm an intermediate user capable of giving some answers, is LQ's members' willingness to cut new users a break. In several recent threads here, that seems to be less in manifestation than, IMO, it should be.

To some extent, I think, this is a manifestation of age. I'm old; I came up through BBS's and Usenet. By heavens, if you did not present a question properly (that is, pretty much in accordance with the LQ Guidelines on "How to ask a question") on Usenet or on a BBS, you were quickly and often brutally schooled.

My late night off to bed thought is that some of our members need to remember that they, too, were once newbies.

Hi...

Although it may not be directly related to what you're referring to, I consider atheism to be false but have you seen me ask or try to remove references to that on LQ? ;)

Regards...

I must say I like the General forum. Most Forums have something like that. Indeed Ubuntu Forum had two last time I looked: a coffee lounge where people are expected to be civil, and a back yard where more contentious subjects can be discussed. New users are made aware that if they go out in the back yard, they may find material that offends them. We could have something like that.

I try to be helpful to newbies but I must admit that my patience is a lot shorter these days than it used to be. Put it down to old age. What particularly gets my goat is people who want us to do their homework for them. Yes, I did flame someone like that recently. There's a simple cure for ignorance (it's called information), but stupidity is mortal.

I suppose I've been around here for a bit now, & I do notice more less friendly answers being posted, instead of the poster just ignoring the question & moving on.
Why do they do that? They don't have to read & answer every post. :confused:

Regarding 'General', if it works OK, let it be, unless you need the space it's taking up.

Lately, I've noticed a lot of hostility to 'homework' questions from some people. Could a separate forum be set up to help keep these together, & away from those 'hostile' people. :)
With a 'sticky' at the top to remind posters of how to ask, & show what they have done so far.

Regarding LQ Groups. I've never paid attention to the fact that the site has social groups.

Many of the groups in the two non-technical categories have had no activity for years. I do not believe it is in the site's best interest to have non-technical or open categories for groups. There are very few technical groups which have activity also.

These thoughts also bring my attention to the concept of friends on LQ. My personal opinion is that LQ is not Facebook, Twitter, or other. While it is a form of social networking, there's little alterations or impact due to the fact that someone does or doesn't have a list of friends on LQ. A long while ago during a heated thread discussion, one user commented that another user "has no friends", which is as childish as it sounds, but there you have it. Just my humble opinion there.

Hi,

As a "General" regular poster, I love the "water cooler" environment of this subforum. I find it entertaining and interesting to go there every now and then to read other people's opinions about the world (be it politics, a new technology or anything else), even if I don't necessarily agree with them all the time. And even if I don't post as often as I used to in the support forums, I think the General forum plays a role in keeping a sense of community within this forum. And even if there are occasional arguments in General, people generally keep it civil.

I hope this helps.

BTW, I'd love to be able to help more often in the support forums but I haven't been using Linux lately as much as I used to, since I must use Windows for work 99% of the time.

I'm Christian and have always felt welcome and respected here. I enjoy scrolling through the "water cooler" type conversations, though I seldom post in them, I am glad they exist. We are obviously all very smart people here and have valuable insight/opinions on a variety of topics, not just Linux.

Jeremy brings up a good point to tone down the "what steps did you try already?" and "did you read the manual?" type replies. This is something I have certainly been guilty of and I will make it one of my goals for 2017. :)