Hello,
I came about About the Committers category which clarified regular members couldn’t participate to the discussions in Committers. The message mentions a Users category which I’m failing to locate.
Thus my question, is there a user-oriented community discussion place? I can appreciate some categories require a certain role to participate but that means there doesn’t seem to be a space for us lot, regular members. Maybe that would put too much pressure on moderation though?
Thanks all 
The Python Help category is for general python discussion (not just solving problems, but that’s a lot of it). There’s no “casual off-topic” forum and I don’t think the moderators want one–it’s a ton of work
@moderators Please could you update the about page to refer to the Help category instead of Users? Thank you!
I can totally understand this. I think I’m asking because I’ve now seen quite a few times that regular members discussions being dismissed because there were happening on reddit or elsewhere. But it feels there is no space for Python community oriented, yet not SC focused, discussions.
Related:
I’m mostly interested in a community oriented space rather than a casual topic.
I must admit that I do not understand what you are looking for… Maybe if you provide some example of discussion threads, that would help.
Anyway Python Help is the fall-back category. Any Python-related discussion is welcome there. It used to be called “Users” (or something like that, I do not remember the exact title), but was later renamed to “Python Help”. If it turns out that a thread started in this category could also fit in a more specialized category, then moderators (and users with a high enough “trust level”) can move the thread to that category.
This page lists more of the “official” community channels: https://www.python.org/community/. Maybe “PySlackers” or “Python Discord” are closer to what you are looking for.
I must admit that I do not understand what you are looking for… Maybe if you provide some example of discussion threads, that would help.
Sure. I have realised for the past few times there has been a call for a vote, I had no idea where I could actually sit, discuss and figure out how to decide who to vote for. Unless you have the chance to spend a lot of time close to specific core venues, I found it challenging to approach a decision point. I’ve been using Python and managed Python projects since the early 2000s but the barrier to become a core contributor is not something I’ve found a way to overcome. Thus, I remain a nobody on this forum
Still, I don’t know where the community gathers to discuss about the Python community itself. The recent events have made me realise this leads to quick snaping judgments because the only places where you can eventually discuss community stuff is either here (if you are a special member with enough powers) or elsewhere. Yet, I have noticed in the past that if a discussion happened on reddit or twitter, it was quickly dismissed as noise from core developers here (naming names is irrelevant to the discussion point).
It’s as if the two world don’t have a common space for the community to progress. I felt frustrated I couldn’t find a natural place to understand what was happening to my beloved ecosystem and I felt powerless because, obviously, I’m not a core dev so discussing anything around the community here doesn’t seem to be possible. There are therefore times where you feel the rules by which we are led are challenging to be discussed if not a core dev member.
In truth, maybe there might not be a single Python community anyway, but just an archipelago of communities that somewhat live together, bound by one language.
This page lists more of the “official” community channels:
Interestingly, this forum isn’t listed there.
Anyway, Pyslackers make sense in this case and I will try it. Thanks for the reminder.
I agree that is is not always clear what topic should be added to what category on this forum here (discuss.python.org), as can be seen from the few threads I linked earlier it is a question that comes up regularly.
For example the PSF category says:
This is a meta-category. It may be used by the Python Software Foundation staff to […]
So indeed, if as a “normal community member” (i.e. non-PSF staff member) you want to discuss the PSF with another “normal community member” I guess you should not use this category.
The Python Help category’s description says:
General help/discussion forum for the Python programming language. All welcome.
but well discussing the PSF is not the same as discussing the Python language. And still as things stands, based on my experience of how things usually go around here, I would guess Python Help is where one should start such a discussion thread.
My impression is that core developers make up a fairly small minority of the posters here, except for a couple categories where they are the only posters. You are free to post here if you like, there are no requirements.
To help elucidate what a “general” or “user” category would look like which is still Python focused and not a help section, I suggest people look at the “Python” subreddit. Categories for posts there which aren’t well covered here are: Showcase, News, Resource, and Tutorial.
Common examples are sharing tutorials, libraries, and apps that people have written, and providing news about the Python world such as new releases of libraries and applications.
Done! I also made the text link to the categories.