Cutting down on categories

Level1Techs
1

So… since the Forum Meta Discussion has become the lounge, I thought I put this somewhere else.
This took a while and again, I’m just making shit up here. But after doing this I can see how difficult it is.
I think this is what I would do to the categories:

CHANGELOG

Level1Techs stays the same.

Wikis & How-to Guides go into community.
Wiki Meta is gone.

Community is re-organised.
Tech Policy & News merge with Events.
DIY Corner gets a slight name change.
Creator Corner - Arts & Media is added.
Education & Jobs merge with Finance & Business.

Blog becomes a sub cat in Community.

Hardware becomes PC Hardware.
Build Logs merges with Build a PC.
Motherboards merges with CPU and becomes Platform - Mobo / CPU / RAM.
HDDs & SSDs becomes The Drive Bay and includes now all kinds of storage.
GPUs … needs a better name. :stuck_out_tongue:
Cases, PSUs and Cooling are merged into one.
Overclocking gets merged with Benchmarking
Enterprise Gear moves to the Networking category.
Other Hardware gains Peripherals in name.

Networking gets bigger and re-organised.
Routing & Switching is added for general network layout stuff.
Networking hardware is split up into Networking Devices and Home Servers / NAS.
Self-Hosting is added.

Legacy & Vintage becomes a sub cat of World Tech.

Software & Operating Systems becomes PC OS, Software & Services.
Open Source becomes a tag.
Programs & Software Suites is added.
Web-Based becomes Web-Apps & Services.

Development gets re-organised.
Game, Mobile App and Software Dev gets merged.
DevOps topics are sorted away into Development and Community > Education, Jobs & Business.

Mobile Tech goes away.
Phones & Tablets becomes a sub cat of World Tech.
Laptops becomes a sub cat of PC Hardware.

Audio Hardware & Software goes away.
Headphones, Speakers, DACs and AMPs are now discussed in World Tech > High Fidelity Audio.
Soundcards and onboard sound topics go into PC Hardware.

Gaming gets merged into …

Arts & Media, which gets renamed into Culture.
The category gets re-organised with the mindset of “what do you do” instead of “what is it”.
It’s also more consumption focused. Selfmade stuff goes into the Community sub cats.

L1Servers moves into Community.
Official ones get pinned to the top.

Vehicles & Mobility gets merged into one sub cat under World Tech.

Science, Engineering & Tech goes away.
All three sub cats are now part of World Tech.

And this is what the result would look like:

Leve1Techs

  • Rules, Guidelines, FAQ
  • INBOX.deb
  • The Bug Report
  • Meta

Community

  • Level1Servers
  • Wikis & How-to Guides
  • DIY / Maker Space
  • Creator Corner - Arts & Media
  • Tech News & Events
  • Education, Jobs & Business
  • Buy/Sell/Trade
  • Off Topic
  • Blog

PC Hardware

  • Build a PC
  • Platform - Mobo / CPU / RAM
  • The Drive Bay
  • Very Graphic Cards
  • Cases, PSUs & Cooling
  • Peripherals & Other Hardware
  • Laptops
  • OC & Benchmarking

PC OS, Software & Services

  • Windows
  • MacOS
  • Linux
  • BSD
  • VFIO
  • Programs & Software Suites
  • Web-Apps & Services

Networking

  • Routing & Switching
  • Networking Software
  • Network Devices
  • Home Servers / NAS
  • Enterprise Gear
  • Self-Hosting

Development

  • Web Development
  • Software Development
  • Code

World Tech

  • Security
  • Phones & Tablets
  • High Fidelity Audio
  • Cars, Bikes & other Vehicles
  • Robotics
  • Cryptocurrencies & Mining
  • Legacy & Vintage Tech

Culture

  • Watch
  • Listen
  • Read
  • Play
  • Eat & Drink
6 Likes
2

So questions about enterprise servers, Proliant, PowerEdge, etc, should get posted in a networking forum, or under the PC hardware?

3

Under Network > Enterprise Gear. Reasoning for that is that none of those machines have people sitting in front of them, they are not PCs. Whenever someone is around a server, it is just a job to make the thing go again or something like that. But as long as they work, they are serving someone sitting somewhere else on the network.

4

I’ll bring it to the table.

4 Likes
5

I appreciate this… still feels a bit busy to me. Not sure what I would change about it just yet. I know I am in favor of less though.

6

Won’t it be easier to bring the table to it? It’s already layed out…
I don’t really care to be honest. I don’t use the categories divide in any shape or form other than when I am posting a new thread and they are in the same 2-3 categories, so I am “whatever” about the change…

7

Way too many categories for my taste. Should be:

  • Hardware
  • Software
  • Linux
  • Politics (opt-in)
  • Other

No subcategories. Then you enforce 1 tag minimum everywhere, and encourge people to use 2 or more.

8

Unfortunately I am just a peon and the naysayers with more power than me have already started. If it were up to me I would implement something resembling this and simply beg forgiveness. I think reduction is doable but not to that extent.

9

Of course, the admins will do whatever they think best. This is just us talking about it!

My view is any topic that gets under 10 posts per week should not have its own category, that’s just clutter.

2 Likes
10

Well you certainly dont have to convince me

11

I like the thought put into this. And some of the ideas. Since I know there are categories that I’ve not been 100% happy with anyway I might take some inspiration from your suggestion when I have a look at it (hopefully tonight) as there’s some obvious easy stuff that could change anyway without any major movements.

12

No, please.

Thanks.

13

i disagree i hate seeing some parts of the forum and with a very minimal category system there would be less of a way to prevent seeing bullshit.

having less yes but not minimal

14

You can mute tags in Discourse. So if you don’t want to read about Windows in the Software category you can just mute the Windows tag and you won’t see those posts any more.

15

useing correct tags is now on the thread maker which is not 100% would rather miss that then have to mute threads people tag improperly

cats seem harder to mess up then tags

1 Like
16

Tags would be mandatory under the new regime. So you would still be faced with someone choosing to tag their windows question with I dunno, Active_Directory rather than Windows, but then you could just ignore that tag too and never see it again.

1 Like
17

That is what I thought as well. However looking into it, we can restrict certain tags to category areas. So users can just pick the appropriate tag.

18

thats right gamers, windows threads belong in other

1 Like
19

theres enough situations where people are taking about running windoze in a vm and talking about video pass through theres enough of a issue where all those tags would stop me from seeing things i want to see.

i just see cat as a good thing but not as the main thing using a tag system can quickly get messed up with jsut a few miss taging things

1 Like
20

If you browse by Latest (as God intended) the 1000 categories are fine, you never notice except when you want to post a new thread and have to think about which one to post in. If you browse by categories it’s a very poor UX.