i think this is a valid point. As long as users would choose the correct subcategory it might work, but the real world shows that the subcategories are often not used at all.
What about a something like this:
News
FAQ (IMHO should be one of the upper categories)
Server
Desktop-Client
IOS-Client
Android-Client
Development (could include GSoC as well)
Marketplace / Apps
Events (could include GSoC as well)
Meta (could include ownCloud.org category as well)
Not sure about the âOtherâ category, there are often questions like Larger virtual box partition which are unrelated to ownCloud. What about these?
Making ownCloud.org a subcategory does not help anything, letâs keep it a top category.
Development and Apps are now the only Categories which have subcategories; Itâs mainly used by experienced community developers, we can expect them to be able to use subcategories.
In every system, you need a category like âOtherâ. There will always be topics which do not fit into our narrow framework. Letâs keep it, so people donât have the feeling that their unusual concern is not welcome.
Are you okay with this proposal? It is mainly cutting off subcategories, But I think this is the more important change anyway. On the other points itâs more conservative, as I said, there is always someone in a distant corner of this community who needs an Extrawurscht.
But it is. This is an ownCloud forum not a âhow do I use VirtualBoxâ or âHow do I user DNSâ.
We canât google stuff for people they could have found on their own.
I personally donât see the point in sub categories. We donât have 1000 of people writing every day in the forum.
Also I think if you want to subscribe to a category itâs easier if there is only this category and not sub categories. But @michaelstingl knows best.
What is the point of the staff category? Is it mandatory?
I understand that some questions are out of scope, or burden the community because the OPs made no effort at all to find a solution themselves. But: There will be topics which donât fit into a specific category, but still can not find out with google/still arenât out of scope.
Keeping things out of scope is okay if you do a very specific task in a small organizational unit; but if you keep track of the whole, of everything which happens and could happen in a project, like our central, then you have to deal with topics which donât fit the scope.
tl;dr: we need a category like âOtherâ or âUncategorizedâ.
wrt subcategories: I just found out that we can also just apply a tag to every post in a sub category, and then move it to the parent. This would keep the information intact, but make organization easier. We could also do this for the very few subcategories I wanted to keep 2 posts above, therefore eliminating all subcategories.
Staff is not mandatory I think, but hidden anyway. Our users will not be confused by it. If we wanted to delete it though, weâd have to move the hidden topics to the surface, or delete them and lose the information. Iâd opt for just keeping and ignoring it, until we need it some day.
Well, I already explained why I think we need this. I suggest we vote about it; if you think we need the category âOtherâ, like this post, if you think we should delete it, like dmitryâs post above.
âBut: There will be topics which donât fit into a specific category, but still can not find out with google/still arenât out of scope.â
This is the reason. I just figured it out
Can you name me 5 examples of this being true and making sense to be in this forum?
If you have a problem with server - server category, apps - apps category and so on. What is unrelated to any category and has to be posted in this forum?
Iâm not sure if it makes sense to argue about individual cases here. The point is, that we canât predict that future cases wonât happen. If the majority thinks this is not a valid concern thatâs fine, thatâs why I think a vote makes sense.
I admit that I only found 4 posts this year, all others seemed to be fine on first glance. You could argue that some belong to the Meta category. Well, I still think we should keep the category for future uncategorizable stuff. I explained it above, if Iâm the only one who thinks that, fine, letâs get rid of it.
First 2 are not our problem, second 2 are âone time in a lifeâ occasions.
In German there is a saying âwo ein trog ist sammeln sich die schweineâ.
Transferred to the forum it would mean - if we have a category for people to write non ownCloud related questions then people will write non ownCloud related questions that active members of the community have to deal with.
anyway I am voting yes on removing the âotherâ category.
Both of you are right, @dmitry and @lefherz. OTOH, having a catchall category like âOtherâ means we will have more work, one more category that requires to be cleaned up regularly. So the arguments of @dmitry are IMHO somewhat stronger, Iâll also support getting rid of the 'Other" category.
However, huge thanks to @lefherz for your efforts.
In my optimistic world, I see central as an entry point for the community. People can ask a question in here and when waiting for an answer to his question, he/she can read other topics, join any discussions as well.
Because of that, it is better to get a question in terms of productivity and growth of the forum, even if it is in the wrong category. I agree with @lefherz to keeping a category for this kind of situations.
However, if central is only a support portal and if we want to reduce support tickets, removing âOtherâ category makes sense. Thatâs my two cents.
iâm also in favor of dropping the âOthersâ category at all for various reasons:
It is often just wrongly used (i had just moved a topic from there a few minutes ago into the correct âserverâ category).
Opens the door for people to not make any effort to think about which category could fit. Just âdumpâ it into the others category.
It will be used for questions not related to ownCloud
If central had hundreds of active users answering questions IMHO it could make sense to allow non-ownCloud related questions. But with the current user base of a few active users (which is very likely also not increasing by allowing non-ownCloud related questions) i would even close non-ownCloud related topics directly.
This is IMHO far too rigid, unfortunately itâs not that simple.
If the form of a question makes clear that the questioner has absolutely no clue on linux, networking and refuses to read any documentation, most of the help we can supply is on those topics.
So who decides, when a question goes out of oc scope, has to be closed?
Example topics: raspberry, Docker and all that vm stuff etc.
If you donât want to answer a question, donât answer it. Thatâs fine I donât think there needs to be a decision on that. It could always be that someone else wants to answer a question that is out of scope. So Iâd suggest not to close topics where you are not sure. If they are asking questions about ownCloud administration, it would be very rude to send all of them away - and who knows at which point you actually need ownCloud-specific knowledge to solve a problem.
Then we drop the âOtherâ category. I will post a proposal later and pin it for a week, so the community can veto if they really need one of the categories we want to drop, or if we didnât think about all of the effects our restructuring could have.
Then we have a bunch of âno replyâ topics. This does not look good. This looks either like this forum is dead of no one cares. This is at least my opinion.