Revisiting the contentious subcategories

[lafifille]

This topic has been brought up before and from what I can see has been rather contentious. For example:  

On 8/26/2024 at 1:53 AM, floridaPalmMan said:

Neither @palmfriend nor @happypalms are in the wrong here.

There should be a place for 20x different color threads as that keeps the forum alive with new and fresh content. There should also be a place for research/identification/discussion/grow logs/general palm talk etc... that should not be buried into obscurity because of a new daily color thread.

This is more of a forum structural issue than any individuals posting behavioral.

If you look at the post distribution across the entire forum, the "Discussing palm trees worldwide" is far too general and absolutely dominates the forum.

It's post count is 8x higher than the next highest category with 682,000 posts. All other sub forums in the "Palmtalk" section only total 285k posts vs that massive 652k. That is a massive imbalance.

 

I think it would be better to break the "Discussing Palm Trees Worldwide" into sub categories, similar to how the "Exchange" section is on the site. Why can't the main thread be broken down into sub categories like the exchange section like the screenshot below?

I don't know exactly what the main forums sub-categories would or should be, but I'm sure this community of like minded people and intelligent people can figure that out.

As a fairly new user and self-considered seasoned veteran of online boards/forums, I do find the lack of subcategories in the 'discussing palms' forum... well, lacking.

I understand and respect that everybody's brain works differently, and what one person considers orderly or user-friendly is different to another, and I understand the risks of over-categorising. However, I really think it could be worthwhile to create a very small number (say 2 or 3) subcategories for some of the posts that crop up regularly as a bit of a compromise. It'd preserve both camps' preferences (for One Thread To Rule Them All on any given topic vs everything can be a new thread if we want) but still take some of the bulk (or 'repetitiveness') off the 'main' forum page.

I think it would also assist with some of the 'fatigue' associated with some of the more frequent topics (identification and 'help my palm is dying') so if people aren't in the mood to help, it's not front and centre, but if they are they have a dedicated place to easily find the relevant threads and can smash them out.

Personally, I would also enjoy it as a reader/viewer from a navigational standpoint. There are a lot of threads where the title doesn't necessarily give a fantastic indication of what to expect inside the thread (at least not to me as a newbie), but that I end up enjoying once I click. This is especially true for identification threads, where obvs if someone doesn't know what the palm is, they can't put that in the title.

This is just fast thinking, but these are subcategories I think could be helpful:

• Advice/Help! (would be my most frequented...)
• Identification
• [Showcasing established palms] (to be workshopped - but my idea is that this would be a place for people to show off their successful established palms or the evolution of their gardens over time)

Anything that doesn't fit in one of the above – like the colour thread, or threads for particular species – can stay in the main/parent forum and doesn't need a tag/subcategory.

I'm not envisioning something overly burdensome or prescriptive, just things that I truly think could help.

pls be friendly

[JohnAndSancho]

I don't disagree with you but I think a lot of it has to do more with social media taking over the bulk of the content, people getting frustrated with their posts not being seen(hi 👋 it's me!) and - I say this with all due respect, but a lot of people are just set in their ways. I think a separate subthread for ID is a wonderful idea tbh. And I like seeing that so many threads are being condensed into single threads lately (s/o @kinzyjrfor your work there) but it's hard to compete with the other social media sites that so many people are already logged into anyway where a much larger audience can be reached with zero additional effort. It's unfortunate but specialized forums like this are gonna eventually go the way of print media.