Organizing the categories & topics of JoeUser

Consolidation about to begin

Published on February 3, 2004 By Draginol In Work Reports

To organize the site better for future growth, we have implemented topics (sub-categories). There will be nested sub-topics as well.

What we want to do is decrease the # of channels overall and instead let users post into those fewer channels on a wider range of topics. Users interested in those topics will be able to delve deeper and deeper into that category by going to a particular topic.

Let me give you an example:

Let's say you're really into history. You click on the history forum or channel and you see ALL the articles that are of the category of history. But maybe you feel overwhelmed by hundreds of articles ranging from the Fall of the Roman Empire to weapons used in World War I. Let's say you want instead to just talk about the Civil War.

You would go to History::Civil War and see just posts that are of that topic.

Eventually it could get even deeper:

History::Civil War::Gettysburgh

What most sites do is have very seperate forums with each forum being exclusive. On JoeUser, we'll be taking the opposite path, each forum is inclusive with the broader the category/channel, the broader the articles/posts. Anything that shows up in a sub-topic will also show up in the parent topic and the parent channel/category.

Here's what we have so far.

Personal Computing

Hardware
    Desktops
    Monitors
    Laptops
    Video Cards
    Printers
    Hard Drives
Software
    Development
        Longhorn
        .NET
        XAML
        C++
        Visual Basic
        .ASP
        SQL
    Operating Systems
        Windows
        Linux
        MacOS
    Customization
        Skinning
        Icons
        Tutorials
        Help
        WindowBlinds
        DesktopX
    Internet
        Usenet

Entertainment
    Books
    Movies & TV
    Gaming
        PC Games
            Strategy
            Adventure
            Action
        Console Games
    Music

Politics
    Republican
    Democrat
    International

Blogging
    Welcome

History
    Current Events
    World War II
    Civil War
    Europe

Personal Relationsips
    Home & Family
    Pets & Nature
    Adults Only

Philosophy

Business
    Consumer Issues
    Work Reports

Hobbies & Recreation
    Gadgets & Electronics
    HDTV
    PVRs
    Photography
    Sports & Leisure

Home Improvement

The next step is to consolidate the existing articles into this structure. Feel free to suggest changes or additions.

Comments (Page 1)

russellmz

on Feb 03, 2004

why is it divided into republican and democrat? if it is posted in republicanville does that mean the article is talking about republicans only, that the article is meant for republicans to read, that the poster is a republican?

there should be a general/independent/other/misc section under most of the categories to grab the ones that don't fit.

Muggaz

on Feb 03, 2004

Good to see i am paying you for something

What about Avatars? i know it is a forum concept, but i like Avatars, and just imagine, if there was an avatar individual to me, you could just see my pic and not read what i write, rather than squinting your eyes to make out Muggaz...

oh i crack myself up...

Solitair

on Feb 04, 2004

I like the idea.

What about work reports? I enjoy reading these.

Paul.

JEPEL

on Feb 04, 2004

It's a good idea.
Don't you think that including a "fun" category would be judicious?

What about articles that potentially could belong to different categories. Could you set a system where an article can have several categories ?

Wahkonta Anathema

on Feb 04, 2004

How about 'sex'? If you don't accomodate third-party people - and we have a few - it won't work due to them muddling up the categories, whether intentionally or by accident. At least give us a margin so we can say we are marginalized here. In the grand scheme of things, separating the thoughts politically tends to enforce ignorance of other options and let's one stay ignorant of those other points of view they have to wrestle with as it is now. I guess if a Dem. or Rep. is only comfortable with one point of view, without dissent, they have that right to isolate themselves in the control of their party blog leaders though. (Hmmm.)
I would let the philosophy go into schools of thought, Rand will definitley have many posts. But then we have a blog comparing Objectivism to Relativism. Uh, OH.
It will be a great thing for your site though and one can come and peruse a library of information on the selected topic. Having said this, what about the library decimal classification system, with a index one can go to for there info? This would allow multi-classification and have a click whether looking for Republican or Democrat. Heck, you'll end up with your own site search engine before said and done.
I am glad you work at this site so hard Administrators. It is a good site and I sometimes don't appreciate it enough (being a freeloader to this point). That the simple 'click' I take for granted, was engineered and designed by someone who took the time to work it out and make it 'just a click', and I should remind myself of this more often. Thanks, whoever you are (looking up).

Wahkonta Anathema

on Feb 04, 2004

Paragraph 3 line 3 of Wahkonta reply amendment: 'there' changed to 'their'. Sorry

JeremyG

on Feb 04, 2004

So the general idea here is that when I make a post to my blog I need to fit my post to a more specific catagory. Thanks for trying to narrow a previously open, creative forum.

I tend to think this will just add alot more posts into the "MISC" category, or worse, poorly categorizing something that could fall under two sections. I could easily write a philisophical essay on specific sexual acts...and where would I put that?

JeremyG

on Feb 04, 2004

So do you think i'd critisize without offering a better suggestion? Of course not. Here's what I propose, and proposed a while back too.

Scrap blog groups as we know them (no one uses them anyway). Instead you make "User Catagories".

So pretend I'm Brad, and I start a blog group named "StardockDev", to hold work reports for stardock employees. So I create my own user-category, and classify it under "Development". Then I set it to be a "Public, Managed" category which means ANYONE CAN READ IT.....but ONLY CERTAIN PEOPLE CAN POST. Poof I now have a fun new focused category.

Now lets say that I am Jeremy. And I want to start an "Advanced DX Scripting" category. So I want anyone to be able to read it, and anyone to be able to post to it (though I might want to ban people).

Then lets say I'm JoeSmithUser. I want to make a category for a a church group i belong to. I want all my members to be able to post to it, and only those members should be able to read them.

JeremyG

on Feb 04, 2004

Benefiets of this sort of system would be:

1. No need to maintain a "difinitive" list of possible categories. This would be done BY THE USERS.

2. Posting to a popular user-category would result in people finding your blog, which was the original intent of a Blog Group.

3. Restricting your category too much from other people would simple result in your category being un successful.

4. Users who want to can have a relatively private debate, while not clogging up the public forums.

5. Categories will be more likely truely stay on-topic.

T-Man

on Feb 04, 2004

why is it divided into republican and democrat? if it is posted in republicanville does that mean the article is talking about republicans only, that the article is meant for republicans to read, that the poster is a republican?

there should be a general/independent/other/misc section under most of the categories to grab the ones that don't fit.

interesting...

JeremyG

on Feb 04, 2004

why is it divided into republican and democrat? if it is posted in republicanville does that mean the article is talking about republicans only, that the article is meant for republicans to read, that the poster is a republican?
This is exactly my point in proposing a different system than sub-categories. If you have user-based categories you'd get things like "American Conservative Viewpoints", which might not be at all the same flavor of articles that would appear in "The Modern Republican Party".

JeremyG

on Feb 04, 2004

grrrrr why dont blog comments work the same as forum posts....

[/

This is exactly my point in proposing a different system than sub-categories. If you have user-based categories you'd get things like "American Conservative Viewpoints", which might not be at all the same flavor of articles that would appear in "The Modern Republican Party".

Draginol

on Feb 04, 2004

By their nature all categories have a misc/generic topic. The topics and sub-topics are purely if you want to get more specific.

JEPEL

on Feb 04, 2004

I think you make a lot of good point Jeremy... I hope you will get heard

Not convinced

on Feb 04, 2004

A fixed single-inheritance taxonomy is so... 1990's! Heck if I wanted that I would go to Yahoo! or (ugh), I would open the Yellow Pages.

Can software professionals be no more innovative ?

I have a truly revolutionary vision - but not the resources or expertise to implement it. Imagine self categorizing topics trees based on content inside and outside the blogverse. An article appears on the New York times exposing a political scandal, and suddenly blogs written three months ago become categorized and correlated to the new thread - talk about the "I told you so" factor.

As you are editing, replying to threads - on the side of the page you see related topics - links to sites, articles, blogs - dynamically updating content. You can easily click on them for background, or quickly drag them into your message as references. And this all happens not based on a human sitting down and categorizing things, but computers monitoring content around the web, statistically correlating topics, weighing value based on popularity; relevance.

Bots scour the web and based on bloggers surfing and posting habits, automatically post new articles to groups. Relevance is weighed by users, and the bots get more and more intelligent. Instant, automatic meme identification.

It's ambitious, but it would blow people away. Probably only someone big like IBM could do it.

Who's will help me create this?!?

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