> Is tor-project list not for fairly advanced users, or bug filers, or > those giving more to the community than just asking questions (but never > contribute useful input)? Or is it only for devs or people providing > highly technical input (e.g., providing code suggestions or highly > technical bug work arounds, etc.)?
So, one thing, and the most important one, is that tor-project is for non-technical discussions "about the Tor Project". Which can be a lot of things, but it should not be technical discussions (tor-dev), relay operation discussions (tor-relays), onion service stuff (tor-onions), but also not anything else related to Tor the software, but Tor the project. Which basically means the website, organizational stuff, etc etc. The archive and subscription is public, so everyone can have a look at what has been discussed there so far. There is a lot of overlap with things that used to be covered on tor-talk and still are, and the distinction is not clear at all. But, on the other hand, going through the archives you can probably identify a lot of things that are "accepted" on tor-talk that don't fit the range of topics covered on tor-project (-- and not the other way round). > Is tor-talk now for the most basic beginner questions / answer / > discussion? If still for technical issues and fairly technical people > rarely visit it, there may be mostly questions & few answers. Is this > partly because on tor-talk, numerous times that unmoderated discussions > strayed from Tor issues? Not only partly, but mostly. :( A lot of people just didn't want to cope with the amount of off-topic threads, nonconstructive endless debates and other violations of netiquette that happened on tor-talk. tor-talk degenerated quite a bit over time, and due to the libertarian nature of a lot of people nobody stepped up and intervened until only a short while ago. Users of tor-talk cannot be fully blamed because for a long time there were no clear guidelines on what is acceptable behavior and topics on it (which there still aren't) and no moderation. Sane people just gave up and moved to a moderated list, which is tor-project. Everyone, especially the active Tor contributors, want tor-talk to become as useful again as it has been a long time ago, but only very few of them are remaining as subscribers, and less than a handful are reading or writing on it. If we manage somehow to get this back to a list with meaningful discussions and content, other Tor contributors will come back, but the ball is in our hands; we can't "demand" that they come back to a list full of crap, given the desire for effective and efficient collaboration. There is no clear policy for tor-project@, and everyone acknowledges that "actively contributing to Tor" can mean a lot of different things. Maybe a good approach is that if you feel like you have something constructive to add to a thread, and are capable of properly quoting relevant parts of an email and your mail client is able to keep threading intact, feel free to reply and the chances of the mail and eventually your address being accepted by one of the moderators is pretty high. It is not meant to exclude anyone, but sometimes it _is_ better to have a noise-free channel for only those that actively follow a certain topic or discussion, and not mixing active work with education. The educational side is important, and is in many respects covered by it having a public archive. If you feel you have a contribution to make, but don't feel "authorized" to directly post to tor-project, and you don't want to annoy all the "professionals", you can also always quote from tor-project and simply post your comment to tor-talk. Does this help? -- Moritz Bartl https://www.torservers.net/ -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk@lists.torproject.org To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
