Way too many categories

I'm not sure if anybody else feels the same way, but I find this forum very confusing to navigate. There are like 30+ categories and many of them are either entirely barren or somewhat redundant.

Given how low-traffic this forum is already, probably would be good to be as low-friction as possible to use. Could we possibly get rid of like, the majority of categories and only keep maybe 4 or 5?

Jack Waugh

@andy-dienes How do you feel about proposing the new and reduced hierarchy of subject areas? Then we can ask whether anyone opposes the change.

@jack-waugh

How about

Single Winner
Proportional Representation
Other Reform Discussion
News / Advocacy / Projects
Meta / Forum Business

And with no subcategories. Just those 5 as top-level.

rob

@andy-dienes I agree, but I just go to the "recent" link at top, which is the little clock. It allows me to completely ignore categories.

I would prefer that be the default page, which would especially make it friendlier for newcomers.

Narrowing the categories down to the ones you suggest would be a big improvement though.

bumpbump

Jack Waugh

I sent a request for the council to meet about this. I said I don't object to the proposal and I pointed out that no one else has registered objection either. I want them to meet about it, because I recall quite a bit of thought and discussion having gone into the current hierarchy. In fact, establishing the hierarchy was considered a prerequisite to opening the forum. On the other hand, there is something to an argument that would say that if the other council members haven't been monitoring new posts and haven't see Andy's proposal to simplify the hierarchy, they can't really care that much.

By way of background: the council for this forum has not been meeting regularly lately. The habit has become to call a meeting when someone thinks there is a reason to. In each case, I have been that someone.

More background: two people volunteered to moderate the forum and the council accepted them. Only one of those two has taken an action by way of moderating. I did not volunteer to moderate, because I felt I had put in enough work by setting up the server VM, installing NodeBB, setting up a half-assed backup scheme, and coding the archive presenting software and the site home page. I have not even really bothered to master the admin ifc to NodeBB; I pointedly left that work to others. I mention this in reply to @rob saying that I "run" this forum. I do not run it, in a social sense. I do have the keys to the server and can change privileges in the user list.

rob

@jack-waugh said in Way too many categories:

I mention this in reply to @rob saying that I "run" this forum. I do not run it, in a social sense.

That's reasonable.

If you do get a council meeting to happen, can I suggest that in addition to trimming down categories, we make it default to going straight to the "recent activity" page? (even bypassing the intro page that has search and such) I'm sure nodebb allows you to prominently put a link to those pages on somewhere on the forum pages themselves.

Jack Waugh

@rob said in Way too many categories:

default to going straight to the "recent activity" page?

I could just make the "Discussion" button on the home page point directly there. And I don't suppose council approval is necessary for that. I wanted to ask them about the other thing because I remember there having been a long discussion about it.

rob

@jack-waugh said in Way too many categories:

And I don't suppose council approval is necessary for that.

Do it! You have my approval, and that's all that is really necessary.

Jack Waugh

Hey, we should do this. Who is the council, and why are they important? There are like 5 active users, at best, and it seems like 3 of them agree.

rob

This post is deleted!

Jack Waugh

@andy-dienes, sorry I dragged my feet on this. I just now sent a link to the council members so they can vote on when to meet. To see who they are, you can go all the way back to the home page and click on About.

BTernaryTau

@andy-dienes said in Way too many categories:

Single Winner
Proportional Representation
Other Reform Discussion
News / Advocacy / Projects
Meta / Forum Business

This seems like a good set of categories, though it does awkwardly place non-proportional multi-winner methods under "Other Reform Discussion".

@jack-waugh said in Way too many categories:

More background: two people volunteered to moderate the forum and the council accepted them. Only one of those two has taken an action by way of moderating. I did not volunteer to moderate, because I felt I had put in enough work by setting up the server VM, installing NodeBB, setting up a half-assed backup scheme, and coding the archive presenting software and the site home page. I have not even really bothered to master the admin ifc to NodeBB; I pointedly left that work to others. I mention this in reply to @rob saying that I "run" this forum. I do not run it, in a social sense. I do have the keys to the server and can change privileges in the user list.

I know at one point I tentatively volunteered to be a moderator if necessary. Unfortunately I haven't been active enough on these forums to justify an application, but maybe it would be worth it for me to try and become more active if the forum is in need of moderation? Or maybe I'm just misunderstanding the situation.

Jack Waugh

@bternarytau said in Way too many categories:

if the forum is in need of moderation

I feel that we have been lucky so far and not needed much moderation, but maybe others don't agree.

I only said what I said about it here to make clearer the nature of my own involvement. The context of a mention of the existence of the forum council seemed like a good context in which to write that clarification.

Toby Pereira

@bternarytau said in Way too many categories:

@andy-dienes said in Way too many categories:

Single Winner
Proportional Representation
Other Reform Discussion
News / Advocacy / Projects
Meta / Forum Business

This seems like a good set of categories, though it does awkwardly place non-proportional multi-winner methods under "Other Reform Discussion".

I thought this as well. I think a better category would be Multi-Winner Methods rather than one for PR specifically.

Toby Pereira

Thinking about this, I don't think we even need five categories. I would just have one main one for everything this forum is really about, one for forum business as already suggested, and then one for off-topic - so three in total. Some discussions can cut across the categories, like a method that could have a single-winner or a multi-winner version. And as I know I'm not the only one who generally sorts by recency, it's not that important to have very specific categories.

Jack Waugh

What is the cost or what are the drawbacks of having too many categories?

I feel there is merit in separating discussion of well-known systems from proposing crazy new ones. Also, some of us are really interested in the political significance of single-winner systems and I feel I am not intelligent enough (or not willing to pay the required level of attention for understanding) to spend much time on the effort to delve into multiwinner systems.

Marylander

@jack-waugh We could use tags to retain some of the information lost by cutting the number of categories.

@jack-waugh The cost is that the forum is difficult to navigate, and it is hard to stumble upon interesting material. For example, say I'm doing research into a novel proportional representation method for a legislature that gives substantial control to parties for candidate nomination (e.g. closed list). I've both developed new mathematical models as well as designed some statistical analysis on simulated data and created some visualizations.

Do I put that thread in Research and Projects, in the subcategory Research, or in the subsubcategory Simulations. Actually wait no, I want this to be actually used in my home country, so I should put the thread in Election Policy and Reform, but that one too has a seemingly relevant subcategory Forms of Government which looks like it might be right since that's what my method is: a new form of government.

Don't even get me started if I should put it in the top level category of Voting Method Discussion, its seemingly synonymous subcategory Voting Methods, or that subsubcategory Multi-winner, or the subsubSUBcategory Proportional Representation. Any of these could be the correct category, unless of course I want to just stick my thread under New Voting Methods and Variations like everybody else seems to be doing

There are 10 different places that I could reasonably put my thread, many of which are redundant, and many of which are barren. Personally, I think this is a huge and unnecessary barrier to engagement for new users of the forum.