Streamline the 'Ask Fedora' category?

[litemotiv (Olivier)]

This is a small usability suggestion for the forum:

When opening the Ask Fedora category, there is currently some useful information that is pinned/linked on the start page. This includes:

• Links to 3 subcategories
• 4 pinned forum threads

These are all useful links to provide, but i noticed that on my 16" display they will together take up roughly 1 full screen of information. This means that any time i visit the category, i will scroll down a full screen to find the first new actual post.

Would it perhaps be an idea to make this information slightly more compact, so that new and recent posts will be visible more easily? Most of the pinned information will be read only once or twice by a (new) user, and after that it will be known information so it wouldn’t have to be permanently visible to them anymore.

Here are some suggestions that i will just throw out there, please fire at will with your insights and/or alternative ideas:

• The Start Here and Other Languages subcategories have such a low volume of posts (1-3 per month), that it might be an idea to remove them as separate categories. To still be able to indicate a starter post or a foreign language post, perhaps tags could be used instead. As an alternative, it could also be an option to not allow posts in other languages completely (this is common on most forums).

• Instead of the 4 pinned threads, there could perhaps be a single Start Here / FAQ post that contains important information and links to other relevant posts. This could be the sole pinned pinned thread on top of the category.

[ilikelinux (L.S.)]

I hope this helps:

Opening Ask category without the 3 sub-category blocks on the top?

As my focus was and still is on Ask, I would like to know if I can customize the view and how I do it. The entry point of Discussion is not bad. But I get overwhelmed when there are 150 new requests. I prefer to take smaller portions and focus just on some Categories. I saw https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/c/ask/6/l/new is not a bad entry point but the 3 sub-categorie Blocks are disturbing the flow of reading. The topics are appearing anyway in the list below.

[litemotiv (Olivier)]

I appreciate the discussion and suggestions in the linked thread about the use of browser plugins and alternative website themes to streamline the user experience. I have a feeling though that the solution could be more simple and broadly implemented with a few redactional changes – i.e. removing sections that are rarely used by users, and compacting the other information into a single pinned ‘Welcome’ thread that can stay sticky for all users.

[py0xc3 (Chris)]

I have moved this to the site feedback category. It definitely belongs here, and maybe also gets more attention that way

[boredsquirrel]

I agree!

• languages should just be a tag
• what the heck is “start here”? This should be a pinned post
• pinned posts could be summarized as links to them, in a single pinned post

[ilikelinux (L.S.)]

@boredsquirrel

what the heck is “start here”? This should be a pinned post

Start Here is a category where you should find start information from various activities. It would blow up a topic if you put everything in to just one.

[mattdm (Matthew Miller)]

@boredsquirrel

• languages should just be a tag

There are already language tags. If I remember right, one of the primary reasons we did this was to signal clearly to people that their questions are welcome in any language.

Oh, also: a separate category allows us to make posts require a language tag.

[mattdm (Matthew Miller)]

We can, by the way, remove those big blocks at the top. Check out the News & Announcements category, which has subcategories but… more subtly.