hotcool wrote
We should have a best use policy on naming forums. Examples might be:
- Be clear rather than clever: f/uplefting and f/freeAsInFreedom are perhaps clever but I find them confusing
- Avoid redundancy: /f/anticapitalism, /f/CapitalismInDecay and /f/LateStageCapitalism (I've made other suggestions as well)
- Be descriptive, not ambiguous: /f/Ability, /f/ACAB and /f/Whiteness are ambiguous / overly general... Whiteness is also derogatory and unhelpful in this racially-charged world
- When we use insider jargon and derogatory terms, we tend to exclude and alienate people
ziq OP wrote (edited )
Be clear rather than clever: f/uplefting and f/freeAsInFreedom are perhaps clever but I find them confusing
Would you extend that to f/lignux?
I'd rather not have a formal policy about how to name forums, it'll only make people avoid participating. It's best to avoid bureaucracy as much as possible.
f/anticapital I've gotten use out of, there are plenty of things that don't belong on f/capitalismindecay but fit perfectly in the former.
/f/ACAB and /f/Whiteness are ambiguous / overly general...
All cops are bastards is a pretty direct statement imo. Whiteness makes sense to me personally (the goal being to dismantle white domination of society and question what it means to be 'white'), but I often find myself putting things in there that I probably shouldn't because there's no f/whiteness equivalent of f/anticapital.
hotcool wrote
I'm not suggesting a formal policy, but recommendations for effectively named forums.
f/lignux is (I guess) clever but a clearer, more useful name might be GNUSoftware or OpenSourceSoftware
Again, clarity and inclusiveness is key to a successful forum IMO
jaidedctrl wrote (edited )
/f/lignux is about LiGNUx (Linux kernel, GNU, and articles related to LiGNUx in general), not OpenSourceSoftware nor GNUSoftware. If you want a general ”OpenSourceSoftware” forum, there's already /f/freeasinfreedom.
hotcool wrote (edited )
It didn't occur to me that /f/freeasinfreedom was about software. I thought it had to do with works in the public domain or permissive software licenses (I didn't check).
It's another example of how cleverness obscures clarity.
mofongo wrote
I don't think those names are useful, lignux is about the kernel, the different OSs and free software in general. If lignux is too confusing, the next logical choice is Linux or gnulinux.
yaaqov wrote
How is `whiteness' derogatory?
leftous wrote (edited )
A lot of people outside of academia (and even many inside of it) don't understand that "whiteness", like /f/blackness, is a social science term. It isn't a term to mock white people. That's what we have /f/whitefragility for.
ziq OP wrote (edited )
Woo! Just what I needed but forgot about.
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