Topics Ordered by CATEGORIES vs. LATEST

Hey cool guys - you might have noticed the layout for the main page is a teeny bit different.

To those who have been around for a bit - do you prefer topics organized by categories, or organized by its latest activity?

Poll below!

  • Categories
  • Latest/Recent

0 voters

Thank youuuuu!
-Alyssa

@Ember @walter_ego @acs @colewagoner @MrTimmy

Latest, as long as there are not that much changed topics

1 Like

Things get messy no matter which way you go. People tend to be a little lazy by nature, and if they can’t find the right category that their message fits in they’ll just post it anywhere.

But just showing the latest posts makes it difficult for people to come back and look things up. I know there’s a search function, but again with the natural laziness of the human critter. People will tend to ask a question rather than taking some action themselves to find an answer.

Sorted by categories with the ability to highlight the most recent posts is the best of both worlds. It tends to be the way most fora work.

1 Like

Thanks everyone for voting (if you haven’t, you still can). Trying to get a feel of what visibly makes more sense for everyone. Will be super helpful to get more feedback on anything you folks think should be changed, added, or removed here.

@Ember I appreciate your feedback! I think that the categories could be more specific, so we can avoid topics floating in super general categories. I think that’s part of the reason why topics get placed in weird areas. I’m working currently working on this, though.

It’s an improvement. But kind of pointless considering the flood of debris being created of late…

I noticed a large number of ancient posts being brought back up to the top for apparently no reason, but showing an edit at some unknown point in time. I click the edit “pencil” to see the changes or at least when they occurred and nothing happens. In the past we always used to be able to see what the edits were, who did them and when. Would be nice to still be able to see what is changing and who changed it, otherwise you’re just falsely attributing things to the original author or worse.

Yeah, there are over 30 posts from years ago that were topped mysteriously with 0 replies, all clogging up the front page.

@acs categories were re-named and some categories were archived. Content of posts were left untouched.

I know, it sucks a little. But there were lots of categories and sub-categories here that were unused or felt like duplicates i.e. “general”, “everything.” Things will get back to normal. :slight_smile:

@AlyssaWOAH So, just to make things clear, when the admins re-name a category or archive it, it shows as an edit?

If so, that would explain why the “changes” screen ins’t coming up. TIA.

Yes, because the categories for the posts have changed. So essentially, that’s an edit.

Ok, I can see how the software could have problems displaying that as an accountable edit. That makes sense. Thanks for the explanation.

No problem. :+1: