Forum Structure - My thoughts

Let's Chat
1

The current forum category/sub-category structure is really defined by history. The forum has existed since 2002 and has used a variety of different software packages over the years. The category/sub-category structure used by these packages has lead to what we have today, i.e. a segmented view of the world where posts exist in just one category/sub-category combination. We had that because it’s the only thing the previous packages supported. To make the migration to Discourse easier I just followed what we have, which Discourse fully supports, and that’s where things stayed.

Unfortunately this structure isn’t necessarily logical. For example, a user might want to post about a problem with getting data from a Davis VP2 downloaded by WD and uploaded to a PWSD site. The poster doesn’t know where the problem lies, so takes a guess at which category/sub-category is best suited. I suspect many users visit sub-categories of interest, so if the post was put into Hardware (for the Davis VP2) then people reading the WD or PWSD sub-categories will probably never see it.

I’ve been looking at other Discourse based forums (fora?) and noticed that some which seem to work well have few, if any, sub-categories. Instead they use larger categories with tags. So why is this different? The main reason is that a post can only have one sub-category but it can have many tags. Looking at the example above, lets say there was a category “Support” that the question could be posted in, then the post could be given “Davis VP2”, “Weather Display” and “PWS Dashboard” tags. Anyone visiting “Support” would see the post, as would people looking at any of the tags. So the post would probably be seen by a larger number of people and maybe get an answer quicker than it would have done previously.

This doesn’t mean that you’ll just see huge categories with thousands of posts. You can watch tags just as you can watch sub-categories and ignore tags just like you can with sub-categories. So if you really only want to see support questions about Weather Display, then you can choose to do that.

There may be some downsides…

  • Whilst we’ve had tags for a couple of years in Discourse, they’re used kind of randomly by some and not at all by others. Also people who use other forums that don’t use tags wouldn’t be used to this way of operating. I think for this to work I’d need to do a few things, e.g. lock down tags so that they can only be created by admins/moderators, define which tags are appropriate for specific categories (where this is necessary) and also enforce the selection of one, or more, tags when posting in certain categories.
  • The current forum structure would need tipping on it’s head which may confuse people. For example, support questions for any producy would go into one category. This would almost certainly collapse the current category/sub-category structure massively. This may well confuse long-term users of the forum.
  • I’d have a fair amount of work to merge sub-categories and apply tags to existing messages.

The third point highlights that there would need to be a period of transition. My thoughts are that I could do it in a number of stages:

  1. Create some new categories and lock tag creation down to admins/mods.
  2. Migrate the “Archive” sub-categories into the new categories. This would give me an opportunity to see how well this works using posts that haven’t been touched in years!
  3. Open up the new categories for new posts and block new posts in the old categories. Replies would still be allowed in the old categories at this stage.
  4. Start adding tags to posts in the old categories.
  5. After a suitable delay to allow most replies to be made to posts in the old categories, start moving merging sub-categories into the new cateory structure.

This isn’t just “change for changes sake”. I’m trying to make best use of the forum features for myself and others. This way of working wasn’t possible in the past, which is why I’ve never done it. Some things are split up, e.g. the archive, because older software couldn’t handle large categories. Discourse doesn’t really care how big a category is so there can easily be 20 year old posts at the bottom of a category that’s getting new posts. I think this way of structuring might help to tidy up the forum and give people less places to look for information/ask questions.

I’d welcome your thoughts on this. It’s an evolution of what we’ve had over the years and I’m sure there will be people who like the idea and those who don’t. Whilst it appears that I’ve put a lot of thought into this so it’s definitely going to happen, that’s not true. I’ve been looking at other forums for a while and admiring some for their simplicity and good looks. I saw one this morning that made me think “Why couldn’t we do it that way?” and pretty much all my thoughts written above have been developed since that “revelation”.

Finally, it’s lunch time soon. I’ll mull things over whilst I eat and will consider whether I can do some limited and low-impact testing using the archive (see (1) and (2) above) that could help me to develop my thoughts further and also give you an example to look at.

2

I can see the point about support issues where it could be an issue with several components. Other Discourse forums I use have tags and in some cases you cannot post a new thread without adding at least one tag, and multiple tags do work well.

So yes I’d be in favour of your suggestion, as to the best way to implement I think that has to be how you feel it is best to achieve it as I am not involved in managing forums anywhere I am not qualified to suggest stuff. However the way you have currently suggested does seem sensible to me!

Stuart

1 Like
3

Good idea, go for it :grinning:

1 Like
4

Yes i agree with Stuart lots of tags to manage.
Perhaps a simpler format with less tags.

Weather Display
PWS Dashboard
Saratoga Template
Pws Dashboard Issue
Saratoga Template Issues
Ecowiit

Perhaps
Steve

1 Like
5

Thanks for the comments - more are very welcome.

I’ve been doing some more thinking/investigating so thought an update would be useful.

Tags I wouldn’t need to lock tags down as much as I thought. I already have tag groups (I’m not sure if you see these). With a bit of rearrangement I could create a tag group for each new category which lists the ‘mandatory’ tags for the category. By mandatory I mean that at least one tag from this group must be added to every post in the category. Multiple tags can be added to a post.

I would also probably add an “I don’t know” type tag into each group for those instances where there doesn’t seem to be a useful tag. This tag would allow me to monitor its usage and either add a more relevant tag to a post if there is one, or consider adding a new tag to the group if that makes sense (and then add that tag to the post). The “I don’t know” tag is therefore a kind of temporary position holder because it’s not really that useful in a general sense.

After the mandatory tags/groups are added it would still be possible for people to add their own tags.

So as an example, in the Support category the mandatory tags might include Davis VP2, Ecowitt, Weather Display, CumulusMX, PWS Dashboard and Satatoga, i.e. a mixture of hardware, software and templates. You would need to pick at least one, and you could select more than one if required. If the question was about, e.g. Reolink webcams and there was no mandatory/optional tag for Reolink then you could still add Reolink as an additional tag to your post.

Tag groups might be used across multiple categories, e.g. the group of hardware, software and template tags would probably be mandatory in both Support and Advice categories.

There would probably be some tags with restricted usage, e.g. my “Rabbit Hole” sub-category would probably collapse inside the General category, but I’d have a “Rabbit Hole” that only I could apply to a post.

Categories I’m thinking that a drastic pruning would work. I’m classing categories in three ways (with one slight exception):

Curated - Content created by admin/mods with read-only access for everyone else.
General Access - Open for posts and replies by all registered users.
Private - Limited access special access categories. These would have individual access groups and would only be visible to those with access. Some of these already exist, e.g. for admin/mod discussions and private projects with invited members.

My current suggested list of categories would be:

  • Announcements - Curated with low volumes of posts about the forum, e.g. there will be downtime at this time, etc.
  • Support - General Access. For all questions of the type “I’m trying to do this but it’s not working like I think it should”, e.g. “I can’t get WD to upload my files by FTP”. This category would have the ‘Solved’ option enabled.
  • Advice - General Access. For all questions seeking advice on a subject, e.g. “What’s the best place to mount a solar sensor”
  • Weather- General Access. Discussions about “the weather”, e.g. new records, weather photos, etc.
  • Development Projects - General Access-ish. This would be for discussions about weather related projects, e.g. software or hardware development. This would be a place for discussions about projects that are actively being developed. On release further discussions would go into the other categories. An access control group of active developers would be created. Only these people would be able to create new topics, with one topic per project (new versions of software would probably be new projects). Everyone else would only be able to reply to project topics. This is to try to keep discussions about active projects into a single thread for easier management.
  • Knowledge - Curated. This would hold the current Knowledge Base and FAQ categories.
  • General - General Access. This is “it doesn’t fit anywhere else” category, e.g. content that would currently go into the Chatter sub-category would be here.
  • Private - Private (obviously!) There are sometimes reasons for hidden categories with limited membership for projects, e.g. there was a category for testers of the new Discourse forum when I was setting it up. These categories will have specific member group and possible specific hidden tags. You’ll only see them if you’re part of the discussion so most people won’t see these.

There may be some other categories I’ve not thought of yet (and I’m open to suggestions) and the names may not be the best (I’m also open to suggestions of better names). I think seven visible categories is a good number and I think everything that’s currently on the forum fits into one or other of these. Seven categories means they can all be listed in the side bar and the current mind-bogglingly big list of categories and sub-categories would disappear.

Other thoughts are:

  • Topics not posted to within a period, e.g. 6 months, will be locked meaning that old discussions don’t suddenly reappear. New topics will be required, but these can still have a link to the old topic or quote from it.
  • The current read-only archive categories will be incorporated back into the categories listed above, but will be locked for new replies.
  • The category headers will be more descriptive and describe what should be posted in the category and what access is available.
  • You can search on words and tags, so you could see all topics with the WD tag wherever they were posted or if you wanted to be more specific you could search for the WD tag in the Support category where the post also contained “February”.

That’s all for now!

6

I’ve done a little testing with some old/obsolete posts and this can work. There’s some work for me to re-organise all existing topics into a smaller set of categories, but this doesn’t all have to be done in an hour. The vast majority of forum posts are more than a year old so as long as people can find them by searching (or tags) then it doesn’t really matter where they are.

I’ll do some more testing in the next day or two before deciding whether to go ‘big bang’ or stay as we are. I’ll probably populate a new Support category with some old posts and open it as read only so you can get an idea of how things might look with tags rather than sub-categories.

I’d welcome some comments on the suggested category list - Too many? Too few?? Better names?

7

I have to admit that I don’t get on with Discourse, which is the main reason why I don’t post or spend as much time on here as I used too.

I only ever read the “Latest Topics” and any messages which ping up on my profile button. I can’t even tell you what categories there are now.

I help out were I can but I won’t remember to put tags on posts or threads unless prompted.

I don’t mean to come across as negative but I guess I just prefer the old style forum layouts because that’s what I know.
I also think it’s about time I hung up my Admin/Mod privileges on here, Chris. If there were a spam attack or major issue, I wouldn’t know where to start.
I’m happy to stay on as a sounding board or for consultation, but I think I’ll remove myself from anything that could be destructive to the forum. :wink:

2 Likes
8

Thank you for your assistance. I’ll remove you as an admin after I’ve posted this. I hope you will stay around, your input is always valuable and helpful.

I understand that some people don’t like Discourse. I’m finding the more I use it, the more I like it so I’m glad we moved, but sad that it’s put some people off using the forum. Maybe the changes that I’m looking at doing will make it a nicer/easier place to visit?

1 Like
9

I’ve tagged a bunch of old (archived) posts and added them to a new Support category. The category is read-only whilst I test and whilst everyone else gets a chance to look at how things might work in future.

You’ll note that in the new category there’s no sub-category dropdown at the top of the page. There is a ‘tags’ dropdown which allows you to select an individual tag within the category.

image, 100%
image, 100%714×120 11.1 KB

By default the category displays all support questions whatever hardware, software or template they are for. If you just wanted to look at all Weather Display support topics in the category, first select the category and then click ‘tags’ and select ‘wd’.

If you want to match on numerous tags and search words, you can either use the advanced search option or, if you’re a geek like me, enter the search string directly, e.g. if you enter this…

#support tags:wd+weatherflow graph

…into the search string you will find all topics in the Support category which have both ‘wd’ AND ‘weatherflow’ tags and also contain the word ‘graph’. This searching functionality isn’t new, but it’s likely to be more useful as more tags are used. If you’ve not looked at Advanced Search before it’s worth exploring its options. Click Search as normal, then click the icon to the right of the ‘x’ (I’m not sure how to describe the icon otherwise!)

image
image529×171 8.91 KB

You’ll see an ‘Advanced Filters’ option on the page. Click it to see the different ways to filter the search.

10

The more I test this, the more convinced I am it’s the right way to go. There were about a dozen categories and 100 subcategories in total. The new way should be less than 10 categories and hardly any sub-categories. There were so many sub-categories that it was making things difficult for me. For example, I’d parked a couple of thousand topics related to Weather Display Live (Flash version) in a sub-category that I’d forgotten about. I meant to delete them a couple of years ago but didn’t do. They’re gone now!

I’ve also reminded myself that you can track tags just as easily as categories, so that’s not a show stopper.

I’ve created a Knowledge category, comprising FAQs and other URLs, in the new style so that’s another example you can test out. That category is curated by me and it works old or new way so I thought it was worth making the change. It needs some tidying up because with two multiple categories previously containing the information there was some duplication. I was aware of that, but the new tag methods remove that as an issue.

11

As I continue re-building the structure I’m having some tricky thoughts on how minimalist to go.

A couple of examples will highlight my deliberations…

  1. Is there a difference between “Support” and “Advice”? Both are asking questions. My initial thoguhts were that Support would probably be about specific issues and advice might be more general/conceptual, but they’re both about people looking for answers to a question. So would a single “Ask a Question” category actually be better? It avoids the confusion of whether to ask in Support or Advice, especially when a topic might be a bit borderline for either/both categories.
  2. Is there a difference between “Weather General” and “General”? My initial thoughts were that Weather General would be for posts about the weather and General for things that you might find in the existing Chatter category. Then I thought, the whole purpose of the forum is weather related so Chatter isn’t really an “anything goes” category. We still expect there to be a reasonable element of weather relatedness to posts there. So perhaps a single “Lets Chat” category would work well?

Lumping lots of small categories together might sound counter-intuitive to those who have used the forum for years. Categories were useful when there were performance issues with large groups of messages and when the search/filtering facilities were pretty poor. Neither of those are problems these days, at least with Discourse. The days of trying to read to the bottom of a category are long gone. Anything below a hundred or so topics from the top of a category is unlikely to be seen by someone scrolling down, so search or using tag filters is how you’d find information of interest.

I also suspect that most users have multiple interests, e.g. one or more type of weather station in use, with one or more piece of software grabbing data from the station and one or more web templates displaying the data on their web site. So having to go to multiple places to see the topics you’re interested in doesn’t make sense. Why not have everything presented in a ‘stream’ that you can filter if you like. It’s not as is there are thousands of new topics every day, so even combining lots of small categories into one bigger one is unlikely to lead to sensory overload!

So maybe this just boils down to:

  • Announcements
  • Knowledge
  • Ask a Question
  • Lets Chat
  • Projects

Part of me worries that’s going too minimalist and it will confuse people who have been used to the regimented world of lots of categories/sub-categories. Another part of me thinks that it’s just a nice simple way to view the world where it’s far more obvious where things go and might get more people to comment on topics that are seen more widely?

12

Having mulled this over during yet another meal and yet another WxSim database fix I’ve convinced myself that the radical route is correct.

It’s much simpler than what we have now so hopefully it won’t confuse as many people with where to post. Being honest, it’s also simpler for me to administer and manage which is a nice benefit.
Sure, we’ve got to get used to tagging but we’ve learned new stuff before. I’ll create a post or two explaining how to create posts and search using tags. I will also enforce the use of at least one tag in “Ask a Question” - multiple tags will be optional but helpful if people want to do it.

I’m starting to move older topics into the new categories and I’m adding extra tags to them to help them fit in better.

13

After slowly moving topics around I wondered if there was a quicker way to do it. There is! A low level system command will move topics in bulk and very quickly. I feel this reorganisation is going to go a lot quicker now.

14

I’ve moved all the topics around. I’m sure things look odd now, but have a look around and see how things work. One thing to bear in mind, many people only looked in Latest or New so this won’t really change anything for them.

Feel free to ask questions (in this thread).

I’ll be looking at making more tags soon to give more options for filtering topics.