First of all, I don’t know how or why I get email notifications for new posts with the introductions tag, maybe that is (or used to be) just the default? Found no way to disable/unsubscribe there either, the link on each email just allows me to unsubscribe from this specific topic or from discourse emails entirely. Both are not helping here.
About the tag
I think it was meant for new users to introduce themselves to the community, as such subscribing other users to that tag would be understandable.
Since the beginning of this year I got notified more often about content that I don’t want to see: Advertising of some vibecoded app or theme.
I have a lot of issues with genAI and I’m unhappy with Fedora’s current policy, so at least allow me to not get that stuff in my emails and notifications.
Further risks
Additionally I fear that sooner or later one of those posts will be (or already is) by a malicious actor. (On multiple occasions the accounts are just a few hours old without any other content. It is probably quite easy to automate this fully by an LLM, then just wait until someone falls for the trap.)
From the legal point of view that probably is the victim’s own fault but from Fedora’s core values, aiming to be “friends” here, I feel like we don’t do enough in looking out for each other when we allow such advertising posts in our community forums.
I wonder if it is worth to open a ticket at the site administration and discuss if we remove that for new users as default, I could imagine that is annoying some times to new users, and not sure if that tag has such a big return on (time) investment to have it by default?
Problem for me is solved, I’m unsubscribed now. Like I wrote in the top post, I still see issues and risks for other users.
Whether it should remain as a default depends on how we are going to use and moderate this tag: If it is used for personal introductions only and we aim and succeed in moderating anything suspicious or overly advertising then it might as well stay this way and I might even “track” it again.
This is what it is supposed to be used for (personal introductions only). I just checked the tag and yes, I see some active topics use it without being actually about introductions.
I removed it from the two cases that seem currently quite active. A problem remains that we cannot avoid that once added, people get an email about it, unless the whole tag is moderated, which I think makes no sense and is worse than removing it as default (just an opinion of course).
@theprogram please be careful with using this tag, it’s a default for every user, and not sure if many consider it spam-like if they get mails about self-made KDE themes and such. We should be focused when using this tag.
Yes, I’ve tried that but it only “allows me to unsubscribe from this specific topic or from discourse emails entirely. Both are not helping here.” (Quote of my top post.)
Unsubscribing from the “new topic” notification seems to be possible only through the “Tracking” settings. (Thanks again to @py0xc3 and @grumpey)
Screenshot in case other users are looking for this setting:
I agree. This is ironically the first useful post I can remember.
I am no active part of this community. I did not (consciously) subscribe to these emails, but my thought has been «Maybe I’ll passively acquire some useful newbie content/mentoring». This hasn’t really happened.
We discussed that in a ticket and found out that the default has been already changed, maybe during an earlier discussion about this issue: introductions is no longer a default for new accounts. But it seems that old accounts still have it: it might be not a good idea to play with the settings of people with existing accounts, as that might be even more confusing for them in the end
