I've created this thread in response to a topic of discussion that has come up in some other threads, to give a place to discuss it, for anyone who is interested.

There have recently been some discussions of off-topic threads, and of which topics belong in which forum threads.

The new lernu! will also have a new set of rules and conditions for use, so this is actually your chance to give your opinion on the site's rules in general, potentially influencing the development of our new rules and conditions. I have a draft of the new rules, but I haven't looked at it in some months, and they are far from fixed.

As far as the forums go, my main concerns when formulating the rules were:
- to keep discussions on-topic and in the appropriate language for the thread
- to maintain a friendly and supportive atmosphere in these forums
- to discourage trolls without making things draconian for honest users
- to do all of this with a relatively concise set of rules, which would be flexible enough to handle a wide variety of situations, fully within the bounds of the rules (because there are always some users who slice and dice and parse the rules, and act within the letter of the rules, though not the spirit).

We have been pretty lucky lately as far as trolling goes; we have had a couple of periods marked by trolling and bitter personal disputes between the users, playing out in the forums. When I was writing the new proposed rules and conditions, trolling figured heavily in my considerations, because it was becoming an annoying problem in the forums at the time. I took a look at the rules for a lot of other forums online, and I was actually surprised to note that ours is a good deal less draconian than those.

Language of forum threads has been another recurring issue (writing in Esperanto in non-Esperanto forums, without including a translation).

In the current forums, it is not possible to move existing messages to a new thread, and it is not possible to rename a thread. These features will be available in the new forums, so many problems with off-topic messages will disappear, because an administrator will be able to move the messages to a new thread, or else re-name a thread to better reflect its contents. It may seem annoying and overbearing when I pop up in a thread early on and ask that a new thread be created, but it is my way of trying to avoid creating a thread with a long discussion that has a misleading title. We have more than a few 10-page threads on this site, whose main topic of discussion is totally different than the thread title. If it looks to me like people might want to have a big discussion on something that doesn't relate to the thread's title, yes, I would rather encourage them to start a new thread, early on, than have a big discussion in a thread with a misleading title (a misleading title, furthermore, that cannot be changed).

Another aspect of the issue is that people come to the non-Esperanto forums with various reform proposals, which can become quite annoying for the forum's regular readers (even if the regular readers are not generally annoyed by topics such as "who owns English" ). It starts getting silly and arbitrary if you tell someone that their reform proposal has to go into the Esperanto forums, but messages that have nothing to do with Esperanto whatsoever can be in the English forums. It is actually applying the site's rules more evenly if you ask that messages in a thread remain within that topic, and if you ask that the national language forums remain reserved for discussions about Esperanto (thus excluding reform proposals), and that all other topics (including reform proposals) be placed in the Esperanto language forums, where any topic can be discussed.

So there it is. You can agree or disagree with it but that's the philosophy behind the forum's rules. If someone has a really good idea for how to word the terms and conditions so that these aims are achieved better, I'd be open to hearing it. I'm sure some of you will be asking "So show us your new proposed rules and conditions", but first I'd like to hear some opinions on the topic, versus having half the forum scream bloody murder about details of a new list of rules that is nowhere near final, rather than giving concrete suggestions.

Would you guys really prefer to see threads on computer repair, motorcycle maintenance, and the best colors to use when matching your clothing, on the English forums of this website? And if we say that discussion about language is ok but non-language topics isn't ok, then do you want the English forum to be cluttered with threads about how to correctly conjugate French verbs? I respectfully submit that if you want to discuss a topic in English, a topic that doesn't involve Esperanto, another website might be a better place (for language-related topics, I often recommend the forums at unilang, which is more generically involved in languages)

I was actually hoping for that foolproof recipe for apple pie...

Only joking, the rules seem fair enough to me with regard to the site's aims. It's just easy to go off topic in general.

+1

Erinja, will there be something like the Facebook "Like" button available? Perhaps an "Agree" one?

Erin, why have you not asked for people's opinion on this in the Esperanto forum?!

erinja:Would you guys really prefer to see threads on computer repair, motorcycle maintenance, and the best colors to use when matching your clothing, on the English forums of this website? And if we say that discussion about language is ok but non-language topics isn't ok, then do you want the English forum to be cluttered with threads about how to correctly conjugate French verbs? I respectfully submit that if you want to discuss a topic in English, a topic that doesn't involve Esperanto, another website might be a better place (for language-related topics, I often recommend the forums at unilang, which is more generically involved in languages)

No, I agree with you that the English forum should just be for topics about Esperanto. Honestly, at one point I didn't understand why that was the rules, but after reading this, it really helps me understand. The goal is to encourage people who want to discuss such ne-prilingvaj topics to learn Esperanto and talk about it in Esperanto, right? If so, I like the idea.

Eh, I'd personally prefer an off-topic section but realize it'd be crazy to have two sections for each language. (Unless you make just one off-topic section for all languages but that might get messy) I just think it'd help the community a bit if we had a place to be off-topic before we became confident enough to type in Esperanto. More reason to keep visiting the site.

It's just as of right now, it's hard to feel like I'm participating in an Esperanto community without having the language confidence or the money to go to conventions. I've been visiting less lately also as it does get boring when all the forum topics are the predictable "English Spelling Reform." "Help translate this!" "-N sucks! Esperanto Reform!" Plus it tends to be slow.
With myself becoming tired of these threads, I have no reason to expect others will help with my questions either.

Otherwise everything looks fine.

Almost every forum I've ever belonged to has at least one place where completely off-topic posts are OK. I think it makes sense to have such a place, because discussions do (often) move off-topic, and there should be a place to continue them rather than put up a hard stop of "that's off topic, therefore please take it to email.". If it's a personal issue, then yes, work it out in private. But if it's just a branch off a topic that originally did fall within the rules, then a location within the forum for that branch is preferable to email. It might be a really interesting discussion that people would like to participate it. It just doesn't happen to be primarily about Esperanto anymore.

I see nothing wrong with that. This is a language community, sure, but it's also a community of friends and acquaintances.

Should such a forum location by default be in English? I actually think so. The Esperanto forums are already "open topic" locations, so they aren't part of this discussion. The English forum currently is the real focus here, so I think the answer is pretty obvious. The "off-topic" forum language should logically continue being English, since that's the language it already is in.

Does that mean a brand new section for English-language off-topic threads? I don't know. Personally, I haven't been overly bothered by the topical meanderings of the threads as they've been. That's what forum threads look like. I've belonged to a whole bunch of forums over the years. They ALL follow that form. I don't consider it a big deal, or even anything unexpected. While we might like to attempt to blaze a new trail of internet communication formats, we might just want to accept that this is what internet forums look like, and, with adequate moderation, they work fine this way.

I'm more in favor of producing a list of discouraged topics, and letting a lot of off-topic stuff continue as it has been. Good, solid FAQs can go a long way in letting people know that reform proposals will be treated like trollery right from the get-go, for example.

Anyhow, my two cents.

It’s normal that conversations change their topic during their course. That happens in virtually every forum. It is great that the new forum software will allow splitting threads so that the thread title can still be meaningful when this happens.

IMO, there is no point in insisting too much to keep things Esperanto-related in the national language forums. After all, interesting discussions about things can come up during the course of another thread. I propose some kind of off-topic board for every national language board of a certain size (maybe to be created upon request by users of that board) to separate Esperanto-related threads from non-Esperanto-related ones. Such a separation would obviously not make any sense for smaller national language boards.

Or the software could allow some kind of marking of a national language thread as "off-topic" (settable by the user but can be overridden by a forum administrator), then allowing users on the thread index to select "show off-topic threads" or similar.

Currently, the national language forums are not infrequently used by people who learn those national languages in order to ask about grammar of that language. This is really not something that is disturbing in any way, and definitely should not be banned.

Maybe the rule concerning appropriate content for national language forums should be worded as follows:
"When starting a new thread on a national language board, it should be related to either Esperanto (to be marked as on-topic) or general linguistics including national languages (to be marked as off-topic). Threads unrelated to language may result from splitting of another thread by a forum administrator."

This would keep out people who really want to discuss about completely off-topic things (have we had a lot of such users? not really), but allow "natural" emergence of off-topic discussions; banning this is probably not good for the atmosphere of a forum.

BTW, for an example for an older thread gone off-topic is Artifikisto in English. I’m posting this without any further comments now, but notice that at that time it seems not to have caused any bigger problems.

As for reforming trolls - ignoring really is a better way to handle this than banning it. Will the new forum software allow closing of threads as well? If yes, then maybe these threads could be closed if it gets evident that ignoring does not work (~ start of 4th page). Anyway I think there would be a lot of gain if the community here just ignored those trolls after the first few messages. Note that in my marking system, these would IMO be "on-topic" threads as they are indeed related to Esperanto.

In the future, users like lgg should IMO be banned more quickly as he was obviously here only to cause disruption.

Sorry if my grammar (or even the content) is miserable in this post, it’s 4:20 in the morning here and I haven’t slept yet. Good night!

I think the English Forum works pretty well as it is. Even trolling can lead on to interesting discussions.

The only thing that gets up my nose is over-insistence on the banning of posts in Esperanto, or the mechanical repetition of 'This is the English Forum'.

There are people out there who may have something interesting to say who can read English but are not confident about there ability to write in English. And isn't Esperanto precisely for such people? Isn't Esperanto precisely a lingua franca?

The idea that beginners are unable to, or are unwilling to make the effort to, read the occasional comment in Esperanto interspersed in a national language Forum thread seems ridiculous. Equally so, the idea that they are being deprived by not understanding some contribution in the thread.

Chainy:Erin, why have you not asked for people's opinion on this in the Esperanto forum?!

The topic of forum conduct came up in at least two if not three threads here, so I thought it was a topic worth addressing.

Whenever I get back to actively working on the rules, I will likely bring up the topic in the Esperanto forums. I have other things to do that are more pressing at the moment.