Strip down amount of categories?

First 2 are not our problem, second 2 are “one time in a life” occasions.

In German there is a saying “wo ein trog ist sammeln sich die schweine”.

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 “other” category.

My 2 cents:

Both of you are right, @dmitry and @lefherz. OTOH, having a catchall category like ‘Other’ 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, I’ll also support getting rid of the 'Other" category.

However, huge thanks to @lefherz for your efforts.

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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 “Other” category makes sense. That’s my two cents.

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Hey,

i’m also in favor of dropping the “Others” category at all for various reasons:

  1. It is often just wrongly used (i had just moved a topic from there a few minutes ago into the correct “server” category).
  2. Opens the door for people to not make any effort to think about which category could fit. Just “dump” it into the others category.
  3. 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.

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I agree in general, but…

This is IMHO far too rigid, unfortunately it’s 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.

Hey,

in a perfect world a moderation team would be the responsible ones. :slightly_smiling_face:

Yes, of course. But then, I expect we’ll soon have a similar situation like stackoverflow.
Too much moderation disturbs.

If you don’t want to answer a question, don’t answer it. That’s fine :smiley: I don’t 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 I’d 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 “Other” 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 didn’t think about all of the effects our restructuring could have.

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Then we have a bunch of “no reply” topics. This does not look good. This looks either like this forum is dead of no one cares. This is at least my opinion.

I understand what you mean, but IMHO this is not the case. Good questions within suitable categories are always welcome and will be answered.

Exactly! That’s why we need suitable categories = only ownCloud related categories.

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Sorry, it took me a while. I posted our category proposal: We will restructure the Central Categories after next week!

Nice, this is really great and no need to say sorry :-).

One concern about the “Apps” category:

I have seen that sometimes a post was done there concerning Mobile-Apps like Android/IOS. I’m not sure but maybe it helps to call it “Server-Apps”?

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I changed it to say Server-Apps.

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Okay, nobody objected. I will change the categories to the new layout next week :slight_smile: Have a nice weekend!

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THX, same to you! :+1:

Okay, I deleted the old categories and tagged & moved the topics to the correct categories.

Thanks to everyone for the collaboration and constructive discussion!

what I did:

Tagged & Moved topics

Development/Client Development -> tag
Development/Client Development -> Development
Development/oC Internals -> tag
Development/oC Internals -> Development
GSoC -> tag
GSoC -> Development
Apps -rename> Server-Apps
Server-Apps/Themes -> tag
Server-Apps/Services -> tag
Server-Apps/Themes -> Server-Apps
Server-Apps/Services -> Server-Apps
Other -> Server
Server/Hosting Area -> tag
Server/Hosting Area -> Server
Server/oC modifications -> tag
Server/oC modifications -> Server
Server/Help -> Server
Server/Server-Enhancements -> tag
Server/Server-Enhancements -> Server
Desktop Client -rename> Desktop
Desktop/Desktop-Help -> tag
Desktop/Desktop-Help -> Desktop
Desktop/VFS -> tag
Desktop/VFS -> Desktop
Desktop/Desktop-Enhancements -> tag
Desktop/Desktop-Enhancements -> Desktop
Android/Help -> tag
Android/Help -> Android
iOS/iOS-Help -> tag
iOS/iOS-Help -> iOS
Marketplace -> tag
Marketplace -> Server-Apps

Deleted Categories

Client Development
oC Internals
GSoC 2017
GSoC 2018
GSoC
Themes
Services
Other
Hosting Area
oC modifications
Server-Help
Server-Enhancements
Desktop-Help
VFS
Desktop Enhancements
Android-Help
iOS-Help
Market-Help
Market-Changelog
Market

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@lefherz Thank you very much, this is really great work and hopefully makes the category overview a little bit better to understand.

I just have noticed a few left-over descriptions in some of the category descriptions like:

If you are looking for help, please check the FAQ first. For further questions, ask at the Help subcategory.

I think this could be trimmed down to:

If you are looking for help, please check the FAQ category first.

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Hey,

Migration to “devicemapper” to “overlay2”? and Beginner - Is Port Forwarding Safe? are now a really good examples about the “Other” category. This questions really doesn’t belong in any of the pre-defined categories, what about that now? Close it? Delete it? Re-Introduce an “Off-Topic” category?