Is it possible (and wanted by other members, obviously) to create subforums to group some common topics so the general feed becomes a bit less messy? I’m thinking specifically for badge requests, as when a new user comes to ask for a badge for a game they beat at some point, they might do so for 10-15 games in a row and then everything else gets pushed down to oblivion.
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Oblivion was a great game though… oh thats not what you meant
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This seems like such an obvious solution i don’t know why i didn’t think of it first! I’d be in favour.
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Suggested sub-forum groups;
Site Discussion and Support
Video Game Discussion
Sports, Leisure, Hobbies (non video game)
General Discussion (Life, News, etc)
Badge Requests
Totally off the top of my head.
It’s like setting up a forum in the old days!
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The site does have categories which function as subforums. Currently the categories are:
- Video Games
- Meta
- Backlog Attack
- Grouvee Game-Challenge
- Podcasts
- Fanclubs
- Collections
- Off-Topic
There are even subcategories such as Meta > Game Suggestions.
When you post a new topic you can categorize your post under one of the categories.
Most of the categories are longstanding but some have been created more recently upon request. Fanclubs is our most recent category, that we created to accommodate posts specifically about game fandom.
You can filter for these categories and only view posts that are posted under each category:
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So per my last post, we do have a Video Game category which all video game related posts should be categorized under.
Site discussion is what the Meta category is for.
Sports, other media, life, etc. belong under Off-Topic.
Badge Requests are already categorized under Backlog Attack.
As an example I’ve filed this post under Meta because it’s a site suggestion. It was initially posted to Uncategorized, which is the default category if no category is chosen at the time of posting.
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Thank you. The categories are in a menu so i do forget they are there. They’re not there to select on a forum “homepage” which is what I’m more familiar with, but this is fine. Now I’ve played with them a bit, they are good at filtering out the noise.
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That is a bit what I was thinking too. I think subforums in the landing page also makes it easier for new users to know where to go and what to see. And it also kind of forces you to pick a flair (something I didn’t do when I wrote this post, as it’s not mandated, and my suggestion was floating in the flairless area, unable to be categorised).
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I think the risk with subcategories on the forum landing page is that they will bury the actual forum posts. I think that allowing people to filter for a category (which are effectively the sub forms of the site) allows one to hone in on a specific topic area without categories taking up a large amount of page real estate. Given you can filter for categories, does this not achieve what you want? Would providing a dropdown selector for the categories at the top of the landing page help?
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I’m not sure if it would do what I want because, frankly, I learnt like 12 hours ago that they existed and you could filter with them. Maybe it’s just an usage thing, something that I’m not familiar with yet. And I can’t stop generalising my own experience: if I don’t use it because I don’t know where is it/how to use it/how to filter through it, could that also happen to someone else?
Maybe a top header menu could work. Maybe making mandatory to choose a category for the post to be accepted could help making everything easier too?
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I think those are worthwhile ideas. I agree that it could be clearer that you can/should set a category when posting. @peter can weigh in, but Discuss is a forum platform and I don’t personally know which portions are customizable. It can potentially be argued that the hamburger menu is a less than ideal element that evolved as part of the last twenty years or so of Internet design language because a significant number of sites hide quintessential site features inside that menu. It declutters the UI but complicates the UX. I don’t know how much control @peter has over the layout but I think your suggestion about making it more visible is a reasonable one.
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So like @BMO said, this forum software is the open source platform Discourse. It’s actually very customizable. I just set the homepage default to show Categories on the left, and the latest posts on the right. Let me know what you think! You might have to reload the page to get it to show right. You can change the default view of the homepage on an individual basis if you don’t like it.
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I quite like it, I believe it definitely solves a few of the things I considered issues. Thanks!
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Thank Peter. It doesn’t look quite as you described in Mobile View, but it looks smarter and tidier.
Are the categories in order of which has been posted in most recently? This would make sense even if it looks random!
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Looks like they are! Posting the above reply bumped Meta to the top!
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So we’re a month or so into these “subcategories”. How does everyone feel about them? Is it just me, or is there less posting?
It’s the same for me because I toggled them off in my UI settings so I see the legacy format, lol.
And it largely feels the same to me in regards to posting frequency.
Looking at data based on just new post creation, the volume is about the same prior and post change.
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I didn’t like it so I just click on “latest” to go back to the old view. I’m on mobile 95% of the time.
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You can permanently set it to the old view if you want. I think I meant to mention this to you earlier. It’s in your user preferences under Interface. If you change this setting it will stick as your preferred default:
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Good stuff. I’ve changed it back too for the time being. Whilst i was there i also discovered the Dark Theme setting!
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