New group created for news and discussion of COVID-19 coronavirus: ~health.coronavirus (everyone subscribed by default)
As suggested, I've created a new group now named ~health.coronavirus that we can use to try to keep the topics about the coronavirus somewhat more quarantined contained. I've subscribed everyone for now, but if you want to segregate the information more easily I'd suggest unsubscribing from it (which you can do from its sidebar or the groups list) and visiting it individually when you want to look at coronavirus news.
I know there are probably some quibbles about the name, but I decided to go with this one for a few reasons, including that it's by far the more commonly-known and used term overall, it's generally easier to type (especially on mobile), and some XKCD-style "the spider" logic.
One specific thing we need to discuss is how to decide when some topics should be in there vs. some of the other groups, especially since there are so many widespread effects. Like most moderation-ish subjects, we won't be able to draw a perfect line, but I think in general we should try to put more "general" updates/advice/discussion in the new group, while topics can go into other groups only when their impact is especially heavy on that group's subject.
For example, I think it makes sense for the announcement that NCAA games will be played without fans to stay in ~sports, because that's a very major announcement for a sports event. E3 being cancelled similarly makes sense to stay in ~games. Those are major, important announcements regardless of the cause being the coronavirus.
Deciding when something goes in ~news vs. ~health.coronavirus will be more difficult, but I'm sure we can probably do a reasonable job of it by trying to base it on only putting the very most significant events in ~news. It's not incredibly important to have everything categorized perfectly and most people probably subscribe/check both groups anyway, so we'll just do the best we can.
I'm going to start trying to move a lot of the existing topics into there, and I'm sure some others will too. This might be kinda chaotic for a bit.
I think it would also be great to start trying to put together some good resources on the ~health.coronavirus wiki. If some people are willing to start taking that on (and feel free to post a topic in there to ask for help/suggestions), it would be much appreciated. And if you don't have wiki permissions but would like to be a part of that, message me about it or leave a comment here asking, and I can give you the ability to create/edit pages.
Anything other feedback or discussion about it to start with? Should we set up any regularly scheduled posts in there or anything?
That assuages my only real concern with the new group. Thanks.
Yeah, it's very similar to the NCAA/E3 topics I used as examples of ones that should stay in their groups.
A way I've been thinking of it is something like: "when ~health.coronavirus is deleted, if it seems to make the most sense for a topic to get moved somewhere other than ~health, it probably should have been in that group in the first place."
This is good. I am pretty much subscribed to everything anyway, so no big change for me.
Is there a cross posting feature in the works? If so, it might be good to prioritize that. The NCAA example, I feel, deserves to be in both ~health.coronavirus and ~sports. I am not very interested in sports news, but that article is something I would like to see, even if I were not subscribed to ~sports.
Also, I would like to get wiki edit permissions if possible, thanks.
I wasn't particularly planning to work on anything crossposting-like soon, but I'll think about it a little and see if there might be some reasonable way that could be implemented fairly quickly. There are also so many events being cancelled or modified now that it might be better to do something like a wiki page that lists them.
I gave you wiki permissions. I also started a very basic Resources page as the first page on the group's wiki with some sources I've been using: https://tildes.net/~health.coronavirus/wiki/resources
Is it going to be 'crossposting' or is more changing the relationship from a submission having one group to allowing a submission to have multiple groups? To me, crossposting always seems like a weird way of duplicating the same 'content' over multiple places; but then again I guess disparate groups may want to have disparate discussions with each having their own focus.
I note that unsubscribing from a sub-group still doesn't remove that sub-group's topics from its parent group. In other words, if someone decides to unsubscribe from ~health.coronavirus because they're sick of seeing all these posts, and they're happy that you've finally quarantined them... they'll still see all those posts if they're subscribed to ~health.Filtering by tag is still the only way for someone to reliably block posts about COVID-19.EDIT: I was wrong. See below.
Somewhat true—they'd only still see them if they visit ~health directly. If they use their home page, they'd see topics from ~health but not ~health.coronavirus.
Oh. Oops. I tested in ~health, but didn't think to test the home page.
Good to know!
Ah, this is fantastic. I was about to ask if there was any way to "toggle" ~health.coronavirus because at the moment it's a bit overwhelming the frontpage but being able to unsub and visit ~health (which is still on my sidebar) for the corona stuff works.
Alternatively, you can also add
coronaviruses.covid19to your topic tag filters, and afterwards can just click "View unfiltered list" (which will then appear at the top of your home and group pages) to ignore your filters temporarily, and "Back to normal view" to go back to the filtered view.