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What this post is for

Some issues we face as a community are more urgent than others. We can ask meta-questions about them, upvote those meta questions and the mods can feature some of those meta-questions. But upvoted meta-questions and urgent matters are not synonymous. And there is only a limited amount of space in the featured-on-meta sidebar. Additionally, Some issues, though urgent, don't get resolved due to either inability to do so by the mods or a lack of a consensus.

This post shall aim to draw additional attention (more votes => better chance of a consensus) to these urgent matters, while simultaneously providing an overview of what serious issues we still need to resolve.

How to use this post

If there is an issue that you deem critical and urgent, you can link a meta-post about it in a separate answer to this post. If no meta-post about it exists yet, one should be made for. This is important since answers here should be actionable. You can, additionally to linking a current post about it, briefly explain what the issue is about and outline what has happened so far. You can also link other relevant discussions, be it in chat or on meta. Do not in any case argue for any side of the debate going on about the issue, keep posts here factual.

For voters: do not vote based on whether you like the post the answer links to or not, but rather on whether you think the issue it addresses is important for our community. These are two different things!

Suggested template

[Issue](link to current meta question)

Additional explanation.

What to do with resolved issues

When an issue mentioned in this answer gets resolved it will get edited down to:

[Issue [resolved]](link to answer, comment or question declaring it resolved)

So as to not take up too much space. If this starts to take up too much space anyway, this policy might be changed to deleting the answers instead (perhaps We could keep the newest 3 or so).

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Can we change “open source software” to “open source” in the placeholder text?

A discussion if we can remove "software" from the placeholder text. Needs SE staff, and possibly further discussion.

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    Yep, this is high on the list - but we need to get the site name changed first so that we can structure everything based on that. - Anything that is related to site name is going to be status-deferred
    – Zizouz212
    Aug 21, 2015 at 13:54
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    Note my comment there: just dropping software from the placeholder text for now would already be a great improvement, while we figure out a final version. Perfect is the enemy of good.
    – Martijn
    Aug 21, 2015 at 13:57
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    Just so that there is some context there: Those placeholders, as well as a gazillion other things are decided by variables. So it's not actually that feasible.
    – Zizouz212
    Aug 21, 2015 at 14:06
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    @Zizouz212 could you cross post that to the discussion there as well, so we know what variable holds what, and what cross-effects may occur when we change one thing but not the other? If changing that text independently from something else is impossible, the entire question might be moot
    – Martijn
    Aug 21, 2015 at 14:08
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    Which discussion? It's a dev thing to do, and I have no idea how any of really works...
    – Zizouz212
    Aug 21, 2015 at 14:09
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    Cross post it to the original meta question, sorry for my vaguities
    – Martijn
    Aug 21, 2015 at 14:18
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What should our name be?

This has been one of the major issues of our site and has spawned two threads before this one:

And is incredibly complex (as evidenced by the 3 threads with a combined total of over 50 answers) and should be solved quickly, since changing the site name late in the beta would surely impact us negatively.

What we need are more votes and good suggestions on the current thread So that a consensus can finally emerge.

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    I would recommend that everyone goes to that post and checks every answer and votes up or down where they feel strongly for or against. We really need to get this done and we need everyone's opinion.
    – overactor
    Aug 21, 2015 at 13:12
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What should our goals be

2015-08-28

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What should our site-description be?

2015-08-28

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To stop [licensing]... What?

It would be nice if we could get closure on what to do with the licensing tag; right now it dwarfs all other tags with 130 uses vs the next most popular, GPL, which has 53 uses.

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    I'll take another look at this post in the next couple days, and probably get some feedback in chat.
    – ArtOfCode
    Oct 17, 2015 at 20:04
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What are the criteria for which a name will be considered acceptable?

I think it is premature to be discussing other names until we know what criteria the SE staff will use to judge our name suggestions. I'd really hard for us to present "Free/Libre/Open" to them just for them to say that it too is too ambiguous.

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    I see your frustration, but I don't see how this is an issue in need of resolution. It's more like asking for a statement from SE, which is not a matter or an issue.
    – Zizouz212
    Aug 22, 2015 at 1:19
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    @Zizouz212 It's a precursor to choosing a name! We need to know what criteria they will use to judge our choices. And you should be using your mod influence to convince them to return and explain themselves.
    – curiousdannii
    Aug 22, 2015 at 1:28
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    Whether this is urgent or not aside, you'll need to ask a meta question about this first so you can link it here.
    – overactor
    Aug 22, 2015 at 5:47
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    This matter has been resolved: meta.opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/300/… you replied to Tim's comment so obviously you've seen it, but perhaps you didn't realise that Tim is a director at Stack Exchange? His answer perhaps isn't as clear as it could be (you could ask him for more details in that comment thread...) but as far as I can tell he felt like "free & open" would significantly change the definition of the scope of this site - making it cover topics that it doesn't currently (and perhaps never should) cover.
    – Abhi Beckert
    Aug 22, 2015 at 15:55
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    Since other sites in the future could be created that would also fit under the "free & open" name, we can't use that name. Only names that clearly fit with our stated goals will be accepted by stack exchange.
    – Abhi Beckert
    Aug 22, 2015 at 15:58
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    @AbhiBeckert That comment doesn't explain anything, and I can't see how it widens the scope at all. The name does not define the scope.
    – curiousdannii
    Aug 22, 2015 at 23:23
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    @curiousdannii the name does define the scope because most users don't ever click on the "Help" navigation link. A few hours ago we had somebody post a question that was closed as off topic, where they complained "but we are about to change the site from "open source" to "free/libre/open" so my question will be on topic soon!"
    – Abhi Beckert
    Aug 22, 2015 at 23:26
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    @AbhiBeckert The only context where the name will be seen without either the site description or a sample question is the footer, where our site isn't!
    – curiousdannii
    Aug 22, 2015 at 23:27

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