Do we still need a quarantine zone?

[Saffer]

Covid is not really a hot topic anymore. How does SDMB decide it no longer needs this section?

[Joey_P]

Poll: Should we retire the Quarantine Zone?

We launched the Quarantine Zone at the start of the pandemic, when the coronavirus was the chief topic of discussion. Now that the crisis has ebbed, QZ gets minimal traffic and the staff is debating what to do with it. We have no plans to delete QZ threads, but we might want to move them to one or more other forums - we’re investigating how much trouble this would be. Alternatively, we could just close QZ to new posts. (Covid questions could still be posted to other forums.) We’ll figure out the…

[What_Exit]

Thank you @Joey_P, I saw the title and was going to link to that thread.

[Stranger_On_A_Train]

Also, SARS-CoV-2 is still circulating (and is regularly mutating, as viruses do, with the potential for immune escape and/or greater virulence), and COVID-19 is neither the first nor last pandemic humanity will face. For instance:

As bird flu spreads in cows, fractured U.S. response has echoes of early covid

And we’re still unprepared for a new global pandemic:

The pandemic cost 7 million lives, but talks to prevent a repeat stall

Stranger

[veryfrank]

I’ve contributed to that forum a fair bit, and I kinda like having it all in one place. As mentioned above, COVID is still around, and mutating, and we still get occasional spikes, and vaccinations are still a thing. Discussions about Long COVID will be here for a while. And I wouldn’t be surprised if another big 'un comes along within the next couple of years. That’s just my two cents, won’t lose any sleep over it.

[velomont]

And is there some cost to keeping the QZ, even if it’s not used that often?

[What_Exit]

There really isn’t any major cost to keeping. If we moved the threads and removed the forum (category) completely, it would clean up the categories drop down by a little, but that seems pretty minor.

However, if and when we do close QZ, I’ve already tagged all the threads and wrote up directions to do mass moves to other forums if that is how we go.

Most of this is covered in the linked to thread.

Poll: Should we retire the Quarantine Zone?

Every thread in The Quarantine Zone should now also be tagged covid-quarantine. This would be step one in whatever we do next. Renaming the tag is fairly easy if covid-quarantine is not desired. But I believe 25 characters including the spaces (dashes) is max. Only lowercase letters allowed. @Ed_Zotti @engineer_comp_geek @Chronos @puzzlegal @Aspenglow @Miller @Loach @raventhief @RickJay

[Roderick_Femm]

@What_Exit

If we moved the threads and removed the forum (category) completely, it would clean up the categories drop down by a little, but that seems pretty minor.

Plus, for anyone who doesn’t want to see it, they can mute the whole category. That’s what I do, along with a few others.

[Saffer]

For me it is a matter of removing clutter. Could you elaborate on how to mute it? What exactly does it achieve? Does it work on the mobile app?

[Roderick_Femm]

I don’t know about the mobile app, I only do the Dope on a PC. The control for muting Categories is under your Profile, Preferences, Tracking. There is a list near the bottom of that page where you can add Categories that you want to mute.

What it does is this: “You will not be notified of anything about new topics in these categories, and they will not appear on the categories or latest pages.” All of the muted Categories are grouped at the bottom of the main page where Categories are listed – there is a box labeled Muted Categories, with a plus sign that lets you look at them if you ever want to, and of course you can unmute any Category whenever you want to. Don’t forget to click on Save Changes at the bottom of the Tracking page.

[Saffer]

Thanks! I can confirm it works exactly the same way on iOS.