Thank You Bob Beatty
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
I think it would at least be good to have categories for certain technologies, Say Windows Client OS, Windows Server, AD/Group Policy, Linux, etc.
Those are really tough. It's actually pretty rare that any topic goes cleanly into any one of those. Something that is Windows is likely both workstation AND server and sometimes neither. AD and Group Policy normally overlaps with any number of things, including both Windows Server and Windows Desktop. It's much more complicated than it seems and I've never seen a community where it works. The community that you are thinking of has people constantly missing things because they are in the wrong category or not able to be in enough of them.
I think that tag subscriptions would be idea. That way you can subscribe to "Everything about Active Directory" rather than just "things so obviously about AD that they didn't get put anywhere else."
Then many mandatory pre-denfied tags in addition to user-defined tags would be the way to go.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
The many mandatory pre-denfied tags in addition to user-defined tags would be the way to go.
That would be nice.
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@IRJ said:
The occasional visitor doesn't want to subscribe though. At least that is my opinion.
Probably not, but if they are going to take the time to go through a hierarchy of subgroups, why not just call tags "subgroups" and get the same effect?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
I think it would at least be good to have categories for certain technologies, Say Windows Client OS, Windows Server, AD/Group Policy, Linux, etc.
Those are really tough. It's actually pretty rare that any topic goes cleanly into any one of those. Something that is Windows is likely both workstation AND server and sometimes neither. AD and Group Policy normally overlaps with any number of things, including both Windows Server and Windows Desktop. It's much more complicated than it seems and I've never seen a community where it works. The community that you are thinking of has people constantly missing things because they are in the wrong category or not able to be in enough of them.
Nothing has to be categorized perfectly. It just needs to be matched to the best category. I would say workstation that wont get group policy updates should be under AD and Group Policy since it has to do with Group Policy. Even though the issue may lie in the workstation itself.
Nobody is going to critique the categorization down to a T. In fact Microsoft forums have issues with it too. Its understandable and acceptable to general place topics in the best match category.
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@IRJ said:
Nobody is going to critique the categorization down to a T. In fact Microsoft forums have issues with it too. Its understandable and acceptable to general place topics in the best match category.
It's not about critiquing, it is that if the subcategories are useful then they have to be accurate. If they aren't accurate, then they aren't useful. Does that make sense? If you are using them for filtering, and they filter out things you should have seen, they fail. And they make it far more complex for someone who is posting a question, because the person least prepared to know what category something should be in is the one more or less forced to pick where it goes. At least initially.
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You can direct link to tags if you want:
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@scottalanmiller said:
You can direct link to tags if you want:
That shows deleted threads. such as http://www.mangolassi.it/topic/3589/maxed-out-my-pertino-devices odd.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@IRJ said:
Nobody is going to critique the categorization down to a T. In fact Microsoft forums have issues with it too. Its understandable and acceptable to general place topics in the best match category.
It's not about critiquing, it is that if the subcategories are useful then they have to be accurate. If they aren't accurate, then they aren't useful. Does that make sense? If you are using them for filtering, and they filter out things you should have seen, they fail. And they make it far more complex for someone who is posting a question, because the person least prepared to know what category something should be in is the one more or less forced to pick where it goes. At least initially.
I understand what you are saying, but I can't think of another IT forum that doesn't have some type of sub categorization.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
You can direct link to tags if you want:
That shows deleted threads. such as http://www.mangolassi.it/topic/3589/maxed-out-my-pertino-devices odd.
Yeah, I don't like how that happens. Not exactly sure why that happens but it feels like a bug to me.
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@IRJ said:
I understand what you are saying, but I can't think of another IT forum that doesn't have some type of sub categorization.
Agreed, I know of none either. It was a careful decision not to have them here specifically as an improvement. It was a big piece of the planning before the community went live - specifically to fix problems that historically exist in other communities. It might not prove to be the best decision, but the decision was specifically around improving existing problems that over-categorization tends to cause, especially in a technical community.
In our video gaming community we use the sub-cats because the way that things work is so different.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@IRJ said:
I understand what you are saying, but I can't think of another IT forum that doesn't have some type of sub categorization.
Agreed, I know of none either. It was a careful decision not to have them here specifically as an improvement. It was a big piece of the planning before the community went live - specifically to fix problems that historically exist in other communities. It might not prove to be the best decision, but the decision was specifically around improving existing problems that over-categorization tends to cause, especially in a technical community.
In our video gaming community we use the sub-cats because the way that things work is so different.
People are creatures of habit. They become used to do something a specific way and its hard to force them to change. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. We fight that battle as IT admins everyday. Sometimes you want to make changes on your network because you know its for the best, but the users just can't adapt to it. Sometimes we have to step back and realize IT isn't the money maker in a business, we support business.
The same way with the community, sure we can argue what is the best way to do it. At the end of they day, its all about the users. Are they comfortable with the design of the site? Is it useful to them? Are they coming back and posting frequently?
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@IRJ from watching tons of new users at other communities, I feel like no system is ideal, but sub categories are too hard. It's a barrier to simple things. Even I struggle posting at popular communities because sub categories become such a quagmire. It makes it hard to identify new content, know where to look for it and find what you are looking for.
Other than the name, what does it offer? If tags were presented "as if" they were subcategories, would that fix things? Would you even really be able to tell?
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This is an area where I only see people struggling and never see them succeeding because the only interaction that I have anywhere with categories is when a category is wrong and people either miss a thread or it misleads them (MySQL topic gets put into a SQL Server thread and people answer about MS SQL Server instead of MySQL because that's how it is categorized.) Since I don't use categories when viewing topics, I never see how successful interaction works with them.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
I think it would at least be good to have categories for certain technologies, Say Windows Client OS, Windows Server, AD/Group Policy, Linux, etc.
Those are really tough. It's actually pretty rare that any topic goes cleanly into any one of those. Something that is Windows is likely both workstation AND server and sometimes neither. AD and Group Policy normally overlaps with any number of things, including both Windows Server and Windows Desktop. It's much more complicated than it seems and I've never seen a community where it works. The community that you are thinking of has people constantly missing things because they are in the wrong category or not able to be in enough of them.
I think that tag subscriptions would be idea. That way you can subscribe to "Everything about Active Directory" rather than just "things so obviously about AD that they didn't get put anywhere else."
Then many mandatory pre-denfied tags in addition to user-defined tags would be the way to go.
Agreed.
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Maybe a script that suggests tags before the post goes live and maybe gives you the option to add some and even gives you some suggestions based on keywords in your post.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Other than the name, what does it offer? If tags were presented "as if" they were subcategories, would that fix things? Would you even really be able to tell?
I was thinking about this the other day. Because I searched for something and the result sucked.
If everything was tagged, then tags would work here like labels in Gmail. Similar to how folders in Outlook compare to categories on a forum.
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@JaredBusch said:
If everything was tagged, then tags would work here like labels in Gmail. Similar to how folders in Outlook compare to categories on a forum.
Yes, perfect example. Tagging should offer everything that sub categories do and more. Taxonomy is an area that I have studied in IT heavily for about sixteen years now and am very passionate about. In a case of a thread, the information about it is a many to many. Each thread can be and almost certainly is many different things. Tags are the taxonomical tool for that case and are how modern meta data systems like Sharepoint are advancing file storage to handle a more taxonomical world. Categories (and sub categories) are like folders and are for one to many relationships where a thread would below to only a single thing. But that's not how threads are.
We learned this lesson when designing systems for hospitals long ago. We got burned badly by enforcing strict hierarchies of buildings "a room goes on a floor goes in a building." It seems obvious, categories that contain each other make sense and each room belongs in a single place.
But this wasn't true. Rooms moved (room 212 moved to different places, the ER took up multiple floors, etc.) Floors crossed building boundaries (the "second floor" would refer to the same floor everywhere.) All kinds of things turned out to have been wrong assumptions. Tagging was what we should have done. We needed a flexibility that categories would break.
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Others may feel different, but I like the layout of stackoverflow for some reason. It just seems to flow for me, but after using ML for awhile I've gotten used to it and have a ritual when I visit. I first check my notifications, them move on to the recent and unreads, then I start checking out the categories.
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Also the badges on Stackoverflow amuse me and the bounties are kinda fun...
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@lance said:
Others may feel different, but I like the layout of stackoverflow for some reason. It just seems to flow for me, but after using ML for awhile I've gotten used to it and have a ritual when I visit. I first check my notifications, them move on to the recent and unreads, then I start checking out the categories.
.You like Stackoverflow I can't stand the layout of any of their websites. Nor how strict they are on posts.
