Re: Are "PM Discussions" only to be technical?

Of the nodes tye cites, I believe that two were ones originally posted in PMD that I considered for a move to Meditations. The criteria I use to distinguish posts that belong in PMD from posts that belong in Meditations is simple:

• Is the post substantially about either the mechanisms or the overt policies of Perlmonks?

If so, it belongs in PMD. Otherwise, it belongs in Meditations. At least that's my opinion; the Consideration mechanism invites other opinions to weigh in.

Discussion happens wherever the node happens to end up, so little is lost by enforcing the distinction.

[tye]

Thanks for the opposing opinion. I included the reasons behind my opinion in hopes of either hearing opposing reasons or pursuading those with opposing opinions.

I also noted that it appears that there are quite a few monks on both sides of this spectrum. So I don't think it makes much sense to leave the issue unresolved such that we have lots of monks posting nodes to the section they think makes sense, lots of other monks considering the nodes, then lots of monks voting both ways on consideration such that we spend lots of time "fighting" over the same issue over and over and the result is nodes somewhat randomly distributed between the two sections (and sometimes getting considered/moved more than once).

I was hoping that some level of consensus might come out of this and tons of future consideration noise could be avoided. I'm not so much concerned with what section nodes end up in. I'm concerned with there being a whole class of nodes that appear to get considered and moved often with lots of members on each side of the issue.

(this part is also in reply to mirod's reply) I support not sweating the section much when the choice is not obvious, giving more weight to where the original author chose. But I also see that people often don't deal well with not being able to do something. The sections have some value (or else we should just get rid of them) so people will notice when nodes seem, to them, to be in the wrong section and often the best outcome can be had by letting people do something about it (consider it, vote on the consideration). I'd encourage people to not sweat the tough cases. And if a consideration gets a fairly even vote, then I'll usually unconsider it without moving it.

And I encourage level 6-10 monks and editors to be somewhat reluctant to move nodes when the final destination isn't clear.

But I think this particular class of nodes (nodes primarilly about the PM site but not primarilly about technical or policy issues) deserves to be explicitly addressed if possible to just avoid the continued noise. I think that is possible and beneficial.

                - tye

[dws]

I included the reasons behind my opinion in hopes of either hearing opposing reasons or pursuading those with opposing opinions.

I would have thought my reasoning to be self-evident, but perhaps that's a blind spot on my part. When deciding how to categorize (or recategorize) a post, I find that it helps to have a simple rule.

Is the post substantially about either the mechanisms or the overt policies of Perlmonks?

is the simplest, least ambiguous rule I could come up with. Perhaps it's too simple. But the more complex the rule set, the greater the likelihood of meta-argument. We don't have a category for meta-argument. :)

[tye]

Ah, yes. I guess I don't see your rule as simpler. My rule is "Is the post substantially about PerlMonks?". (:

                - tye