Nope. We try a different forum concept this time. Less chat, more Linux.
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I think what you will end up with will be more chat in support sections.
Off topic is important to keep experienced users, when there is no off topic why would they hang around? There may be a couple help desk freaks who like to help out just about everyone, other than those the forum will bore people to death.
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Big mistake IMO.
Edit: Feck it, I’m out.
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AKA echo chamber circle jerk.
You guys detonated your old community. But that old community also is the one that built Manjaro’s rep. The team made the distro, the volunteers made the support.
You start stomping on the volunteers because they don’t tow your corp BS and have to much fun on the forums. You know… in a community.
What you want isn’t a forum. It’s press releases with tutorials.
I’m sure you’ll rip off the hard work many of the purged from the old forums wrote. Giving their time and effort too fill in your “new concept”.
Off-topic, showcase, general discussion, etc…
It’s was fun… mostly.
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Interestingly it was the chatty trolls who ended up offering my best solutions…
Really there should be at least one Open Chat section where someone can start a few linux jokes, or share a few desktop ideas… or open up completely new and very interesting topics you’ve probably not even thought about that are productive and interesting.
NVM you keep the leadership strong and don’t put it to anything democratic like a poll or discussion 
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Off-topic usually ends up in endless, pointless arguing, flamebaits, flamewars and misunderstandings effectively breaking the sense and spirit of the community, leading to “proud” rage-quits and vengeful posts in other …“places”. I concur with the decision, as well with the removal of the unnecessary “Newbie” section. A fresh perspective was indeed needed, keep it going 
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I don’t understand the frustration. There’s reddit, discord, telegram, twitter and, I know this is crazy for the open source world but the choice to host your own forum for more social interactions. The idea that the support forum for a technical item should be technologically focused seems a no brainer for me. But then again I am one of those help desk freaks, haha.
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Other medium (twitter, reddit, etc) all good and proper, but that isn’t the underlying reason to have an Off-topic subforum - it’s so that people don’t leave your site - and so that conversation can phase in and out of the topic(s) as needed. Plus it gives off-topic conversations somewhere to go when a moderator splits a thread because it’s no longer relevant, rather than just deleting the irrelevant posts, since that’s the only option they have if they can’t move it somewhere else.
It’s a hard balancing act, and comes down to what is the purpose of the forum - is it to merely provide technical support for a product, or to foster a community. If it’s the former, it’s not needed, if it’s the latter, it is crucial.
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Well personally I think twitter sucks - just endless tweets about getting flatpak or snaps for your libreoffice… and Discord is completely foreign to me.
I see no connection between keeping a formal technical forum and including a Lounge for less support oriented conversations… of course, most of the folks that used them have already left so it’s a bit of a moot point really - with their stupid ‘share your desktop’ threads where people share endless pointless desktop pics and other people with no imagination of their own go to get new ideas - absolutely a waste of time.
I guess it’s less ‘community’ now, and more that there will be enough official Manjaro staff to manage everything for all the users.
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What a person doesn’t like, and what is stupid are not the same. Just because you don’t like twitter doesn’t make it stupid. As long as none forces you to use it, life is good. Just like how I don’t like (or dislike) football, doesn’t make it stupid. Nor would I want to stop people playing football if that is that they like. I simply don’t want them to force their views as to ‘football is great’ on me. So what if people want to share their desktops. They’ve spend hours customising them, they want to show them off. Isn’t hurting anyone, let them do it.
Then again, if ‘come for the OS, stay for the community’ is no longer the formally welcoming and inviting nature of the forum, it’s no surprise if people don’t come back.
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Read it again.
The ‘off topic’ threads - which are now deemed unsuitable for the forum - like ‘show your desktop’ and ‘latte is great’…
Threads which would have been pushed to ‘Rants and Raves’ or another ‘off topic’ area after being deemed worthy of discussion and not a simple flame war…
Are you suggesting that because you love Twitter that it should be split off to a Twitter thread? What, then, happens to the Discord fans?
Why not move the whole shebang to a Reddit thread instead?
I think such ‘non-essential’ and ‘off-topic’ conversation should be part of the forum - walled off in a non-support area. They bring out ideas and help people move forward in the way they interact with their installation.
It seems that Manjaro now feels this isn’t suitable for the forum - so this thread shouldn’t be allowed either.
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Gotta be with the yeas for OT here. I see forum as a place for community. Does OT lead to long-ass posts with flame wars? Almost certainly. But then the mods have to work that much harder to separate signal from noise, rather than stuffing noise in what is effectively a public /dev/null for posterity and later review.
If the point is to make it more difficult for people to have general / non-topical discussion and work their way up the trust system through casual conversation and observation of character, then not having an OT is a good way to do it.
Also, some of this should be in feedback / forum, I would otherwise report the thread to mods and suggest this move.
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And there you go, jumping to assumptions… you happy with the mud pie on your face now, since I don’t like Twitter? And I re-read it three times… maybe you should also? 
I think, as I said before …
that isn’t the underlying reason to have an Off-topic subforum - it’s so that people don’t leave your site
… but forgot to also mention “because the forum is their only/preferred method of interacting with the Manjaro community”.
It’s also why most decent sided communities have an off-topic sub-forum… they have enough people who only know each other through the forum, that it is their primary way to communicate with them. The crew running said forum can either promote that, or curtail it. I would like to think the right long-term choice was made.
But, as I think you also imply by that last statement, it would seem the Manjaro forum is becoming more about the product, and less about the community that support it.
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The other issue with saying there are other places for off-topic discussion, is the plural — Places. Nothing fractures a community harder than not having an agreed place for OT where OT isn’t necessarily permissible in the forum.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. People need their playground and goof-off spaces, even underneath a veneer of glass and metal.
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Yes, I’m playing devil’s advocate.
This isn’t up for discussion…
Off topic is not part of the new manjaro and I think that’s sad. As you said, the reason to have an ‘off topic’ is to have somewhere to move stuff that doesn’t fit the regular forum.
Many folks come for the joke thread, and read the notifications and help out a few folks with problems they feel they can help with. It’s pretty much a no-brainer to me too We aren’t arguing here… Trying to keep up on Choqok/reddit etc is simply a mess (though I do visit reddit sometimes).
Some people are rooted in code, and don’t think anything else matters maybe - like humour threads - inspirational ‘plasma is great’ threads, chit-chat threads. Maybe we should leave them to it.
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Well, I think it can be an interesting experience how this experiment may turn out.
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…off topic IS a great community builder too…
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Maybe, maybe not. I think you might find that people will have a harder time receiving support for issues. Why? There is not a reason to log into the forum unless one has a problem. There will be no real incentive to log in. Many times I would log into the old forum to see what was going on in the “off-topic” section, and then “since I was here” look at the support threads. Without something to draw individuals in, the “pool” of users that can and will give support will be drastically less.
But that is just my two baht.
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This is an empirical theory, let’s see if it gets proven by empirical data.
Thank you for your response. I was just voicing a concern. The last thing I want to see is this distro fade away. We shall see what the future holds.
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