What should we do with off-topic threads?

[hotcrystal0]

Ignore the poll.

Edit: For clarification, I’m talking about serious off-topic discussion threads, like Minecraft discussion. Off-topic games gets problematic often and should be locked on sight.

I'm defining an off-topic thread as a thread whose topic is not CA or an adjacent topic. Adjacent topics include mathematics, computer science, and websites about CA, math, or computer science. (for example conwaylife.com, Catagolue, and OEIS). There's currently no direct policy on these, but I believe there should be a "one-strike" rule for off-topic threads, which basically means anyone can shut the discussion down if they want to by simply reporting the first or last post.

[confocaloid]

I'm defining an off-topic thread as a thread whose topic is not CA or an adjacent topic. Adjacent topics include mathematics, computer science, and websites about CA, math, or computer science. (for example conwaylife.com, Catagolue, and OEIS). There's currently no direct policy on these, but I believe there should be a "one-strike" rule for off-topic threads, which basically means anyone can shut the discussion down if they want to by simply reporting the first or last post.

I would be fine with mathematics and computer science specifically, if only there was evidence of people understanding the distinction between

• an interesting offtopic discussion that has a chance to lead to some ontopic ideas / evolving into brainstorming on some ontopic problem,
• vs. a low-effort offtopic chat that doesn't evolve into any interesting discussion.

I like math/CS in general. I like recreational mathematics. However, if the only practical way to avoid low-effort chatting appears to be prohibiting offtopic threads entirely, then maybe it's better to prohibit offtopic threads entirely.

EDIT: an obligatory famous quote (incomplete) about the issue of "polls" like this one frequently becoming an extra additional problem without resolving any existing problems, taken from an earlier related discussion:

With all due respect, I don't think it's really our place to be making polls like this... these options seem like they're just things you came up with and foisted on the community without discussing anything first, whereas ideally we would need a clear consensus among both moderators and a large subset of normal users on what the options for voting would be if we were to have any kind of vote on this, which again would need moderator consensus and support from a large subset of normal users as something that would even be a good idea in the first place.
[...]
[...] At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon at the ripe old age of twenty, it seems like users now seem to think they can ask people to do whatever they want to, direct people's attention to whatever they want to, and take authority over whatever they want to, without being questioned in it, especially when starting new threads, and it's diminishing the quality of the forums greatly... I hope it doesn't feel like I'm calling you out, I understand you want to help, but I don't think polls like this help anything — in fact, if it was up to me I would disallow user-created polls entirely, but again obviously that would be something requiring moderator and to a lesser extent community consensus to implement. I do think some of the proposals you give deserve consideration — I like that you identify people creating new threads as the problem, but I'm not sure it's a question of whether they're CA related or not, because a lot of the same problems have happened intermittently in the OCA forum and even Patterns to a lesser extent with the proliferation of minimally distinct conduit threads that seem to exist just because someone wanted an excuse to make a new thread. I definitely feel like somehow the standards for making threads need to change but I don't know if any of the rules changes you propose would do that, or if it's a rules change rather than simply community awareness of the problem that would be the best solution... Anyway, those are my thoughts, for what they're worth.

[KittyTac]

An idea I have is to axe the Sandbox as is and split it into 2 more strictly regulated subforums.
1. CA Sandbox. Basically the current unproblematic Sandbox threads. User pattern threads, newbies messing around, etc. Posts have to be related to cellular automata, and if they are a game they should have clearly defined rules.
2. Other Interests. An equivalent to the "non-CA topics" category on the Discord. Other math, programming, linguistics, etc. Things tenuously related related to cellular automata. Posts should have a quite high standard here.

I do not support a glut of forum games or the like.

[hotcrystal0]

Maybe linguistics should be an acceptable adjacent topic too, because even thought it’s not directly adjacent, it’s in the Discord’s non-CA topics section.

[hotdogPi]

Linguistics is not related to CA by any stretch of the imagination.

[confocaloid]

Apparently the "poll" was edited after several people already voted, leading to loss of all those votes.
Luckily, an archived copy happened to be preserved: https://web.archive.org/web/20250117080 ... f=3&t=6828

(However, see the quote in my reply above for why the "poll" probably fails to be a good idea in the first place.)

[KittyTac]

Linguistics is not related to CA by any stretch of the imagination.

Yes but the community has a big overlap with the conlang community. That is what I meant by tenuously related.

As for polls... yeah I think polls don't make much sense in administrative decisions like this. You want consensus. There's a reason Wikipedia, despite being one of the most inclusive and user-participatory projects on the web, doesn't really do polls.

[Anivec]

Linguistics is not related to CA by any stretch of the imagination.

Yes but the community has a big overlap with the conlang community. That is what I meant by tenuously related.

As for polls... yeah I think polls don't make much sense in administrative decisions like this. You want consensus. There's a reason Wikipedia, despite being one of the most inclusive and user-participatory projects on the web, doesn't really do polls.

And that’s what the Discord is for, not the forums, as implied by rules two and four respectively. I agree with hotdogPi, if it is not strongly to mostly related to this forum or cellular automata, it should not be here, and is subsequently struck down just like all the other locked threads in the sandbox. And while I do think talking about computer science and mathematics should be allowed I think it is safe to say that linguistics is not permitted.

[hotcrystal0]

I’m sure that off-topic threads used to have less restrictions, but they died down and now moderators impose rules preventing them, but it’s not really an outright ban on them.

[confocaloid]

I just checked the size of several multistate patterns posted in a recently-active "roleplay" thread.
Each multistate pattern is between 6000 and 7000 bytes. The patterns appear to be minor modifications of previously-posted patterns of roughly the same size each. There are few or no human-readable descriptions or explanations of what is going on. The activity looks like "dumping lots of data, without providing explanations of what it is, or why it deserves to be posted on these forums at all".

For comparison, "between 6000 and 7000 bytes" is over three times longer than longest currently-allowed rulestrings in Golly.
For another comparison, my recent post is only about 4500 bytes, despite containing substantially more of human-readable text.

[b-engine]

I’m sure that off-topic threads used to have less restrictions, but they died down and now moderators impose rules preventing them, but it’s not really an outright ban on them.

Now roleplays had died down, without moderators enforcing anything on them. Perhaps we have to set up more rules to preventing such stuffs popping up again.

[dvgrn]

Now roleplays had died down, without moderators enforcing anything on them. Perhaps we have to set up more rules to preventing such stuffs popping up again.

Perhaps. But also perhaps everyone can just get back to setting good examples for each other, by posting new CA-related messages whenever something new comes up, and not worrying so much about making up new rules.

The old tradition of politely ignoring threads that don't seem interesting ... still looks like a good idea to me. Meta-discussions about the merits of other people's messages tend to get very noisy and distracting. One person stating that kind of opinion tends to make other people want to state their own opinions. Then pretty soon everyone is spending way too much time trying to enforce just the right rules of behavior for everyone else -- instead of simply talking about cellular automata and keeping the number of required rules to an absolute minimum.

The standard practice from the previous decade was more along the lines of "If you can't say something good, just don't say anything"... and for many years that seemed to work fairly well.

Now, this post of mine is even worse than meta-discussion, of course -- it's meta-meta-discussion, and I'll try not to do any more of it this year.

[otismo]

Limit them to a percentage.

People will then restrict their own behavior to what really matters the most (to them).

Cheers !

[b-engine]

Limit them to a percentage.

People will then restrict their own behavior to what really matters the most (to them).

Cheers !

Maybe not.
Roleplays are basically off-topic lore making activities with "cellular automata" bolted to them so they're not banned. The "CA" is indeed a limit, but the poisonous activities doesn't seems to stop until I intervene.

…
Then pretty soon everyone is spending way too much time trying to enforce just the right rules of behavior for everyone else -- instead of simply talking about cellular automata and keeping the number of required rules to an absolute minimum.
…

There are people that doesn't like to be serious and decide to play, eventually others joining them and the problems will arise. To suppress pointless activities from popping, we need some rules.