As the site grows, the number of top-level categories will grow. Maybe it’s time to start putting them into sub-categories? With the existing categories I’m thinking a hierarchy like this:
Desktop
Silverblue
Apps & Games
Servers and Containers
Fedora CoreOS
Fedora Server
Containers
Internet of Things
Programming
Go
Community (except, I don’t like this since the rest is community too. other name?)
Fedora Friends
CommOps
Site Feedback
I think this will be less overwhelming, yet also allow us to keep conversations organized. What do you think?
I’m +1 for the structure except for the containers part. It implies that containers are for servers only so let’s just leave it a top category as it’s mostly used for the SIG. Alternatively, we could put all the SIG pages (Go SIG asked for their own category but aren’t using it yet, CommOps asked for a category, Containers SIG has theirs…), Fedora Friends, CommOps, Site Feedback under its top category called “Social” or “People”. So it’d be:
I am not fond of the term “social” here. That implies more like a contributor coffee meeting than a SIG to me. What if we moved Fedora Friends out and made it something like “Project”
Not opposed to that, either - we should probably just leave things as they are for now and then if 3-5 more categories come along, have a quick look at how to structure it according to what kind of categories were added.
… but that kind of scopes Containers and Go both to talking about group activities around those things rather than inviting discussion on those things in Fedora in general
Fair. I don’t know how much general technical conversation we are going to get versus other general technical forums, such as stackoverflow. That said, perhaps we could do something like:
Desktop - A discussion of desktop oriented Fedora Builds [spins, etc could get added here if desired over time]
Silverblue
Apps & Games
Server and Cloud - A discussion of server and cloud oriented Fedora Builds
Fedora CoreOS
Fedora Server
Technology - How do you use, deploy and organize various tech stacks in and for Fedora
Internet of Things
Containers
Go
Project Conversations - Conversations about the Fedora Project and how it works
CommOps
Fedora Friends - We’re serious about the Friends Foundation
Site Feedback - Help us make these categories better
I’ve added rough descriptions of the levels that make the ideas clearer, I hope. Some definitely need some work.
Assuming discourse allows moving threads between (sub)categories, how about a “General” or “Miscellaneous” category to invite any discussion that a user doesn’t feel fits in an existing (sub)category? For example, let’s say a user starts a thread in “General” about Go libraries in Fedora. Another user could reply that it would be great to discuss that with the Go SIG and change the category appropriately.
That may not be as appealing if changing categories is an admin-only thing.
Since this site is somewhat inspired by Stack Exchange, it puts a lot of power in the hands of high-rep users. Specifically, users with “trust level 3” can recategorize posts.
Sooooooo… I added Rust and RPM Packaging and we have a request to add Magazine. So I think we should do this sooner rather than later.
Since it’s going to be an Edition, I’d like to get IoT next to Server rather than in Technology. Can you (@bex, or anyone) think of something better than just calling that top level “Server, Cloud, and IoT”? I mean, we can go “desktop” and “not-desktop”.
What are the Editions now? Workstation, Server and Cloud? I’d say each edition gets its own category, then a category for Spins with a subcategory for each spin.
Current editions are: Workstation, Server, and Atomic Host. In F30, they will be Workstation, Cloud/Server, CoreOS, and IoT. I expect in F31 or F32, they will be Silverblue, CoreOS, and IoT (and Server may stop being an edition but still be made).
Okay, @sanja and I implemented this. It apparently broke links because now there’s an extra layer in URLs. Well, oops. But as we start getting more categories, we kind of need it, so better now than later.
Categories could be good, as long as you can have an overview of all recent posts. Since the number of active users is small, I can still read everything new as I have my morning tee.
I would also look at separate languages. Some people expecting a specific language could check the forum, and get discouraged seeing posts in other languages. I think this could improve user experience.
+1. I think the best strategy is to be flexible and adapt as the active community on Discourse grows.
I used to spend more time moderating forums years ago. My observation was it is better to start a new community with broad categories before a community has built up. People have different motivations for using the site, and broad categories gave more flexibility for a wide range in topics (without something getting buried in a sub-category not everyone read or checked often).
Once there were better patterns of popular topics in a category, we broke them off into a smaller sub-categories. We also moved old posts into the new sub-categories to make a dedicated space around a popular topic within our community.
