Restricitive permission structure

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1

Hi guys,

it’s been a long time that I visited this board, although Manjaro is my daily driver. Well, somehow other things in life make it harder to spend much time here…

I’d really like to enter this community again, as much as time permits. But to be honest, there is one thing that leaves a bit of a stale aftertaste, whenever I visit this board. It’s the rather restrictive permission structure which makes it hard to participate, particularly for newbies or for people who haven’t been active for a while.

For example, today I wanted to report a security relevant issue and thus post into https://forum.manjaro.org/t/update-requests-for-packages-imported-from-arch-linux/ The issue in question is a backdoor in the xz package by the way: Backdoor found in xz 5.6.1 (#2) · Issues · Arch Linux / Packaging / Packages / xz · GitLab

It turned out that I am not allowed to post in the Manjaro Development category. I know, I’m not a Manjaro developer. But that’s a public board. If the dev team wants to discuss things in private, I’m sure there are plenty of possibilities. Why locking out the users from this category in a public board?

Also, some topics get automatically closed after some period of time. But not all of them. And the period of time isn’t the same for all topics as well. Looks like recent topics are closed 36 hours after the last reply while in the past this period has been two days. So this means: If I have some issue and open a topic, but then, due to whatever reason, am not able to reply within 36 hours, the topic will be closed and I will have to open a new one to get support with my issue. Of course, in a perfect world everyone can reply immediately. But in reality people can get busy with work, family or whatever else, or just plainly forget to answer in time. And then that’s it, the topic is closed. To be honest, I know no second board with such a restrictive regulation!

Sorry for venting my anger! Probably, for people who are in this community for a long time, these things seem natural, but now that I kind of have a view from outside, it really strikes me!

Most probably there are reasons for such a restrictive regulation, maybe frequent troll attacks or similar, but as I am only see the outcome it seems unnecessary and harmful for a community to me…

Greetings,
Photon

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I can imagine they restricted the dev/alpha/beta testing area, so that it is assured only relatively advanced users go there. Otherwise, it will just generate enormous amount of spam. People that cannot properly post logs or update the system, how can they contribute to debugging something complicated and not yet ready for primetime?
No system is perfect, there are always exceptions…but we need some sort of system anyways.

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Any of the moderators will be happy to reopen your previous thread for you. A short message is enough.

There is generally a very friendly tone here.

The system is just not as flexible as the people who run it.

If threads are not closed quickly enough, they tend to degenerate into general discussions, or are repeatedly brought up by people passing by and then repurposed. Then suddenly 2 or 3 problems are mixed together in one thread, making the thread unusable for other readers.

The main purpose of this forum is to provide support for Manjaro users. The settings are adapted to this.

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I appreciate your willingness to contribute. However, someone else beat you to it. They initially replied in the most recent Stable Updates topic, but I moved it to its own topic in Software & Applications :

Indeed. That would have been the wrong place to post the topic. However, anyone is allowed to reply to existing topics there.

Solved topics are automatically closed 36 hours after the last reply.

5

Oh well, I should have used the search, I guess… I was like “danger, danger, security issue, need to report asap!”. :smile:

I think, the thread that I wanted to post it into (Update requests for packages imported from Arch Linux) is actually exactly the right place for it. So maybe the Manjaro Development category isn’t the right place for this thread then?

I see, my bad. It’s not as bad as I assumed then!

Thanks for your patience, everybody!

1 Like
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Actually, no it’s not since the package was already updated.

EDIT: Yes, it is the right place.

It turns out the Packaging category was restricted to TL3 (Trust Level 3), but I just relaxed it to allow TL2 members to reply. I didn’t realize it was set that way. Now you can reply there since you’re TL2.

2 Likes
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Wait, I don’t quite get the logic behind this. Isn’t the idea of this thread to report packages which are already updated upstream (in Arch Linux) such that they can be pushed into Manjaro stable faster (fast tracked), if there is sufficient reason for it? In this case, the xz 5.6.1-2 revision is in Arch and needs to arrive in Manjaro stable asap, so this is exactly the thread to report it, isn’t it?

Great, thanks!

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Oh, so that’s what that thread is for! :laughing:

You’re right, thanks for reminding me.

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If a topic is closed, user can select option to Reply as a Linked topic
and a back-link is added to reply automatically

Continuing the discussion from Restricitive permission structure:

ReplyLinkedTopic
ReplyLinkedTopic1368×936 120 KB

1 Like
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Thanks for the hint! Didn’t know about this functionality!

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This topic was automatically closed 36 hours after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.