I think bringing back worth mentioning for some categories could be beneficial in several cases:
Recommendations which satisfy certain threat models, use cases, or ideologies but aren’t recommended either because they don’t meet all of the criteria (but still meet most of the minimum requirements and are better than mainstream providers and apps) or they aren’t really accessible for most people (most CLI software and advanced Linux distros)
Requiring open source for all categories (except search engines, hardware, and anything else where doing so isn’t feasible) then demoting proprietary software already recommended to honorable mentions (1Password for password managers, Apple Mail for email clients since I don’t know of any open source mail clients for iOS)
Until recently I would have suggested a next best Android ROM and non-Pixel phone, but since CalyxOS is no longer available and will likely end development soon, there isn’t anything left but stock Android and iOS (I expect all custom ROMs to end development soon with the possible exception of GrapheneOS).
This could also mean more recommendations for categories which don’t have many recommendations already. PG could recommend a best tool for each use case then provide honorable mentions for those who aren’t satisfied. PG could promote software freedom while still focusing on security.
Privacy Guides recommends tools based on merit not weird ideological reasons. Recommending tools so that people feel validated completely undermines the point of making recommendations in the first place.
Point is honorable mentions would still meet most of the criteria if not all of it but would cater to FOSS advocates, software minimalists, and DeGoogle. Those would still be recommended based on merit, but it’d be the least bad option like what DivestOS and CalyxOS used to be, or Firefox vs Chromium.
In some categories, no new recommendations would have to be made. For example, password managers. PG could downgrade 1Password and Gopass to honorable mentions since the former is closed source (thus making open source a minimum requirement for password managers) and the latter is a CLI password manager thus not really accessible to most people but still an option for those who prefer to use CLI programs (there’s nothing wrong with CLI password managers by the way and they shouldn’t be excluded just because someone thought nobody would ever want to use it over Electron bloat).
What’s the point of having requirements if you don’t actually apply them though, honourable mentions just seems like a way to list things that don’t actually meet the rigorous standards to be listed.
It will also make it more confusing for people to understand as it will be harder to understand what is actually recommended. It makes more sense to just have high standards and to not list tools that don’t meet them imo.
If people aren’t able to use some of the recommendations, they can just ask the forum instead of having the website be more bloated
If Privacy Guides has an ideology, it would be one that emphasizes the value of information. Arbitrarily having honorable mentions that compromise the safety and confidentiality of this information, along with catering to ideologies that intentionally compromise this safety, would conflict with PG’s ideology
This is a criteria issue. If the community feels there are recommendations not listed because the criteria is to rigorous, then the criteria can be changed via the same way its always been changed. There doesn’t need to be a new lesser recommendation created.
I would also point out, PG should not be users one and only source. People need to make choices based on multiple sources and their own threat model. It is ok to use tools and apps PG does not recommend. PG does not need to bend over backwards so that everyone feels like a tool they like is included.
This is the real reason this poll was created @anon11657877 you understand even if there were honorable mentions there is no guarantee this would happen.
I disagree with this statement. I believe that most people will look through the recommendations and when they find that the recommended software in the category they’re researching will not work for them for whatever reason, they’ll likely just use either whatever their favorite search engine recommended, or maybe even what some guy on reddit told them to use.
I just think they’re more likely to do something like that rather than make a post on PG about it. I don’t think it would be confusing at all to list something like honorable mentions and maybe list the reason/reasons that it didn’t make the “recommended” list.
That makes sense! Maybe, to help people choose if they can’t select a recommended tool, PG can cite the Common Misconceptions page and showcase it as a guide to help people evaluate the privacy and security of other tools
Yeah I never really thought of PG as some exhaustive list of every piece of software you would ever even consider using, I’d like it to be more like info on how to form your own threat model and apply it when looking at software, with our own criteria applied and some tools we really like. It’s more useful I think to have a site that gives you the tools you need to make your own decisions about software than to just have people blindly follow whatever is listed on the site.
I was posting about this for as long as I’ve been here. The whole reason this started is because @jonah suggested recommending LibreWolf and Zen Browser with caveats.
One more thing I’d add to clarify, is that honorable mentions that don’t meet the minimum criteria would still have caveats, like LibreWolf’s inconsistent updates or 1Password being proprietary for example.
I think the problem frequently identified is that information about why a tool isn’t listed isn’t easily found.
I wonder if we could have a central wiki post here on the forum that’s just a list of notes/citations about other tools to serve as a reference point. It would be useful for quickly finding relevant points about other tools.
Any time I’ve looked in the past it was trivial to see just from their latest releases, but I haven’t looked again recently. Probably not a bad idea to track how they’re trending.
I’d want to make it first and see how useful it actually is, but we could probably give it some visibility on the main website. If each category had a wiki post detailing the unlisted competition we could link to those posts with a button at the bottom of each category page.
Having a central wiki post wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep up with tools that have since been removed or rejected, but wouldn’t it be redundant with the forums and Github?
If this were to happen, I’d suggest a “for advanced users” section for tools that weren’t user-friendly enough for PG to recommend but still meet the criteria.
True but privacy and security aren’t black-or-white. Not everything is either super secure or a security nightmare. There are varying degrees of goodness or badness.
What tools are you referring to? I did not realize there were categories that had some sort of user friendly criteria outside of the UX not being total doo doo
