Are folks open to the idea of having an informal practice of closing some issues as duplicate (with permission of those involved), so as to help clarify spaces for ongoing discussion? In particular, I’d love to see more vibrant discussion around co-op licenses, but I worry we ever-so-slightly dilute the power of the discussion and outcomes when we can’t clearly consense on “here is where we’re talking about that”.
Possible suggestions:
A very loose process for a few privileged moderators who are highly available. I’d be happy to flesh out that process. Spelling it out in advance might be helpful. I’d be wary to give some “conversational shutdown” authority without consenting on what that would mean.
Give everyone ability to close/reopen threads. I feel like this could still work pretty well – it’d become more a social tool, not an authority one.
The semantic different between “closing” and “archiving” is discussed below, and I feel “closing” is best because it still allows many interactions.
@chris was kind enough to jump in and support by creating a subcategory in the originating issues. Truly appreciate the effort and attention!
Having said that, no harm done, but I’m generally a -0 on sub-categories for organizing like this, at least until such a time when there is too much volume to avoid doing so. I’m grateful, but it feels like it puts content unnecessarily down into holes, mainly for reasons of sortition. And doesn’t address core tension, which was in favour of concentrating human energy into clear conversations, not creating a sense of order for its own sake.
Either merging or marking as dups feels to me like the appropriate social technology
@jdaviescoates is merging something that any user could do? If not, know who can? Seems maybe a bit a heavy to share that ability widely, but whatever works!
