Purpose of posting catergories

[Scouse]

Hi Folks.
Idle moment.... what purpose is served by the six categories listed at the start of a new posting? Is there some sort or filter system? The "You must choose a category" command before the posting is accepted seems odd.

[Graham L]

You want a purpose?:| This is a computer system.;-)

It's probably just one of those things which seemed a good idea at the time. I suspect the basic code to include this was in the standard forum software, and it was easier to leave it in than to take it out.

It's been discussed a few times ... the forum is not "big" enough to be split into multiple streams, and people would find it a pain to switch between streams anyway. Apart from that, the categories selected will be wrong .

[Bill Boolean]

I agree. What the f@*ck's the point of that!

[Graham L]

You want a point?:| This is a computer system. ;-)

[metla]

The forum should imo be broken down into operating systems,the amount of posts would easily warrent it.

Windows 98/me
Windows XP/2000
Linux
Off Topic

[Scouse]

>>You want a purpose This is a computer system.<<

No No No - I didn't say I wanted a purpose.....

[metla]

And

Buy and sell

[marke]

Hi There -

Graham's partly right ... it was something that seemed like a good idea at the time. The thinking was that categorising postings would potentially allow a number of things:

1) We could do digest emails for each category .. so you could set yourselves up a weekly or monthly email summary of all the posts in a particular category

2) You could "filter" the results of searches etc to just those posts in a particular category

3) It would potentially allow "channelising" of posts (rather than seperate forums ... which I too am not in favour of) i.e you could view just the hardware posts, or just the software ones if you wished.

We didn't add these features in at the time because at that stage of course the forum was new, and there weren't the postings to justify it.

Would be interested to hear if you guys think there would be some merit in some of these options. And what you think the categories ought to be?

Mark Evans
CTO & Online Business Manager
IDG Communications Ltd

[Capt.Hook]

I'm quite satisfied with the way things are, and don't see the need to change anything.
This is just my opinion.

[Susan B]

I would rather the forum be left as it is, thank you.

A lot of people would get confused about which category their thread ought to go in and thus threads will end up in places where they shouldn't be.

I really hope that this forum's homepage never gets sectioned into different categories like the big overseas sites are, it is hard enough keeping up with everything now. In fact the way that it is is one of its big advantages - it's manageable. ;-)