Please do check your community first. There are lots of posts in other languages. So why do you have allergy only with Hindi? Can I please get a reply?
@Diego can you explain more of the reasoning behind removing the #off-topic category other than “we have decided that we restrict topics not related to Kodular from the Community”?
Such comment is the reason why we have came into that decision. Indian users think we are against them because of closing a topic in Hindi, without considering the real rules violation. And lots of users were complaining about been displaced, so we just ended up with all kind of national-specific topics, independently of the country. If I were to open a topic about Spain, for example, I would get banned.
Another example. Imagine I open a topic about Spain, in Spanish. And then I get it unlisted and closed because of using Spanish and excluding users. Then I start accusing Kodular of violating my rights, and been against all Spanish people. I get my account suspended for harashing staff people, and I become a martyr, making more Spanish people complain about my suspension and accusing Kodular of being against Spain.
Does it make sense?
I don’t know the topic you are talking about, but I admit it was a mistake not banning such kind of topics time ago. We should have forbid topics since time ago that only involve some users in the community and excludes others, polarizing the community.
We have long allowed birthday wishes, festivals, national holidays, and other off-topic discussions to feature in our forums, with the hope that these shared identities will bring Koders closer as one Community. While they did not directly add to the knowledge-base of the Community, they indirectly helped members talk about their interests and passions, which in turn encouraged a greater contribution to discussions. Unfortunately, at some point in the past few months, our leniency was falsely conflated to a disrespect for the rules and etiquette expectations in the Community. From immature ad-hominem attacks on users to inappropriate content being posted, we have seen a rise in the deviation from the core principles our Community believes in. These incidents not only lower the bar for discussion in our forums, but also encourage others to break these rules themselves with no fear of consequences.
Note that we used to encourage off-topic discussion in the past when it encouraged community involvement. For instance, I had posted a topic on behalf of the staff for India’s Independence Day 2017/18 (I can’t recollect now which it was)
Unfortunately, the purpose of off-topic discussions changed somewhere the past few months, where they stopped contributing to the spirit of the Community. This is why we felt the need to disable the category entirely