Is a mosque organizationally superior to discrete subforums?

Question

I am interested in choosing a good structure for an online application such as a bulletin board. I will use SO as an example, since I think this is an example that we are all familiar with, but my question is more general; it's about how to achieve the right balance between organization and flexibility in online bulletin boards.

The questions page is a load of random things. It moves quickly (some may say too fast) and contains a huge number of questions that do not interest me.

The idea, I think, is that we can use tags to find questions that interest us. However, I'm not sure if this works: you cannot use tags negatively. I'm not interested in PHP or Perl or web development. I want to exclude such posts. But with tags I can’t.

Although discrete subforums are in some ways less flexible, because they usually force you to choose a category, even if the question can fit into two (if SO had, say, areas for "Web development", "Game development", "Computer science" , "System Programming", "Databases", etc., Then, of course, some people may want to publish information on the development of Internet games, for example) is it worth sacrificing some flexibility to make it easier to find the content you are interested in and hide Content that doesn't interest you?

Is there a way with a clean labeling system to achieve the greater ease of use that subforums provide?

Answer 1

The real problem with subforums arises when you are mistaken about which topics are of sufficient interest to get your own subforums. While some topics end with their own energetic sub-communities, others turn into empty ghettos with little activity or community feeling. Topics that can thrive as random topics in a larger forum end fragmented among many sub-forums, none of which have a critical mass of people needed for an active active community.

Answer 2

Although I believe that tagging is superior to grouping, people tend to think hierarchically. In general, it depends on the target group for the forum.

Perhaps you can go with the mixture: use tagging, and then use tag groups to post. For example, Delicious uses this, and I find it useful.

Answer 3

If you are concerned about the difference between specific forums and open systems based on tags, such as Stack Overflow, consider creating a query system that allows you to perform slightly more complex queries than just the AND operator, for example, here on Stack Overflow.

I can't make a request here that will give me all the questions in .NET, SQL or C # combined, and this is the biggest annoyance I have with tags. With such a query system, you can create virtual forums at a minimum.

Other than that, I really don't have a good opinion. I like both, and I have not yet decided which one is better.

Answer 4

The idea, I think, is that we can use tags to find questions that interest us. However, I'm not sure if this works: you cannot use tags negatively. I'm not interested in PHP or Perl or web development. I want to exclude such posts. But with tags I can’t.

While you cannot currently use tags to hide content, this should not be impossible. Repeating SO as an example again, there is no reason that a system similar to the ignore function on the forum could not be created for the tag system. By adding a context menu to the context menu or a small “X” link somewhere in the tag, the tags can be marked as ignored. It will also allow the function of the current tag to function; Seeing everything (minus your ignore list) or clicking on a tag to see only those questions with that tag.

Ignored tags could be managed in your profile if you should later show interest in PHP or INTERCAL, which you previously lacked.

The real question is the performance issue. In my head, it's as simple as replacing SELECT [stuff] WHERE Tag = 'buffer-overflow' with SELECT [stuff] WHERE Tag NOT IN ('php', 'offtopic', 'funny-hat-friday'), but I 'you did not combine any databases supported by databases that are completely crammed with thousands of people.