Forum Categories

Categories are still under consideration and reasonably open to change. This is a trial while learning how to use Discourse.

One thing I’m considering is allowed politics or anything else in Unbounded – but if you post it there you can expect meta criticism about why you’re prioritizing it. Similarly I could allow talking about cooking in Unbounded if ur open to meta criticism about your goals, priorities, etc. But i don’t want to clutter up Unbounded with bad, unpleasant or non-philosophical topics. But people probably wouldn’t post it there anyway if and because they don’t want that criticism. idk.

BTW, I would have put the Elliot Temple category within Unbounded but I think Zapier can’t auto-post to sub-categories.

You can suggest categories and changes, but FYI I’m pretty confident I want to keep the number of categories small. We can have lots of tags though.

I added this to the About Friendly post:

When sharing a link, also share your opinion or goal. Do you think it’s good or bad (those are example opinions)? Do you have a question (that’s a type of goal)? Just stating what the link says wouldn’t say your opinion or goal. If you want to share a link without sharing your thoughts, that is allowed but discouraged in Other.

Not sure about allowing bare links in Other but will try it for now.

You can post bare links in Unbounded if you want to get criticized for doing it. Doesn’t really need to be a rule there.

BTW I think it’s OK if I post bare links, but other people shouldn’t. That’s because one of the reasons people come here is they are interested in whatever I think is worth sharing. And sometimes I want to share something and let people form their own opinions without being biased by trying to copy my opinion.

Draft new paragraph for Friendly rules. Thoughts?

Project planning discussion is allowed even if it could be taken as implied criticism of poor or missing project planning. You can ask about someone’s goals, plans, backup plans, resource budgeting, prerequisites, project prioritization and ordering, what they want from others, what they are offering to others, how and why they chose this project over alternatives, etc. Keep the focus more on questions that could be helpful guidance, or providing information, rather than criticism. If someone doesn’t reply to these topics, don’t pressure them to reply. People can also opt out by saying they don’t want to discuss project planning. If in doubt, you can ask if project planning discussion would be welcome, and treat no response as a “no”.

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BTW, people could have a project planning thread in either Unbounded or Friendly, and then individual topic/project threads in Friendly, so the topical threads stay on topic and don’t get cluttered. The first post in the individual topics should link to the planning thread.

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I added a mini projects sub-category with a lower barrier to entry than the projects category. Please don’t abuse it. The long project template for Projects is intentional and has helped with bad behaviors (specifically asking for significant help/attention while not putting much effort in nor sharing much information).

About the Mini Projects category

I updated the project template and category description. I wanted to make it easier.

Now instead of one answer per prompt, you can write one answer per section, for a total of 5 different things. And you can skip some questions. Try to cover most of the issues.

I also put a limit of one project at a time. Write your Project Conclusion before starting another. You can also have up to 3 active Mini Projects.

With this simplification, I don’t know if the Mini Projects category is necessary. I’ll leave it for now and see how/if it’s used. If I remove it, I’d merge its topics into the Project category and raise the simultaneous projects limit to 2 or 3.