because we can agree the category system of discourse is a mess,
which categories do people find most useful? which are pointless?
let us know!
some ideas: uncategorized and general are basically the same thing in theory.
delete uncategorized.
meta is ok but really we just use general for that so delete that one too.
learning essentials, howto and recommended are all very similar. can we delete
at least one of them? maybe how-to and put it in learning essentials.
chapters: global could be nice. currently i have no idea how to reach global members.
personally i think i almost always only look at general. i like having one place to look at and keep
track of rather than 50. never look at any of the organising categories… anyone else?
FWIW I think uncategorized is a Discourse thing meaning <no categories attached>, so it’s rather General which would need to go. I like having everything in a category and using uncategorized as <still to be categorized>.
eek. sounds like too many groups. maybe when we get more active members posting on those topics that the need for it becomes obvious but right now i wouldnt bother i think…
Well, you could still subscribe to Chapters/Berlin in that setup if you wanted to, but it’s easier for Berlin Python coaches to just sign up for Python only.
well thats also the thing. are people “signing up” to categories or can we just have access to the entire forum and use what we must? or is that already the way its set up? do you mean Sign up in the way of “receive notices about” ?
The way it’s currently (mostly) set up is everything is open and you can subscribe (meaning, receive notifications about) to individual categories.
TIL categories can only be nested two levels deep, so Chapters/Berlin/Python wouldn’t even work currently. There isdiscourse-tagging which could help here.
I have also gone forward and created a dedicated category for Community Calls.
@ben You’re the local Discourse expert: Is discourse-tagging worth the trouble? Are these ideas any good?
As far as I understand the current categories implementation in Discourse, it’s more like “access pools,” with all threads in a category sharing the same access restrictions. Since nesting is only two levels deep, having something like Foundation/Members/GA2015 is not possible.
That is correct. Categories have permissions, notifications and similar features. Discourse-Tagging is mostly to allow for cross-category taxonomy. At the moment, you can not filter on that taxonmy. Ergo, you would always have to subscribe to a higher-level category. However, there is – per default – a weekly digest of the things going on in the entire forum (minus categories, you muted). So I think it should be quite easy to stay up to date on things you care about.
In general I am (and DC is designed that way, too) in favor of less categories. Only create a category after there has been significant content for it. I’d vote against a GA2015-Category for the simple fact, that it only has three topics. As topics are good in encapsulating one conversation, what is the point of the category? Well, “finding it in the archive later”, you could say. In that case, that’d be taxonomy and if the search really isn’t enough, then we should install discourse-tagging, too.
So, I’d stick with one Category for Chapter for now (instead of “Berlin/python” & “Berlin/javascript”) also for the reason that the tech groups kinda overlap often. Considering that we will probably have one topic per event organised and maybe material created, that isn’t even in big chapters a lot of topics (nor content).
I am rambling and repeating myself. You get the gist .
Members/GA2015 is not possible.
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