Yep, also agreed with @ssebti and @Panda re: the structure. The existing structure is still very much a suggestion at this point. We’re hoping this is something you can help us with over the next few weeks. As @Janet mentioned, we’re keen not to ‘over-structure’ it this early - we feel that creating too many categories and subcategories so soon would risk creating tumbleweed spaces, making the forum seem inactive and confusing new members. We’re also keen that the structure evolve alongside the community itself, responding to the needs and priorities of members.
Here’s the logic behind it currently:
Key:
Category - description
Subcategory - description
Forum structure
Repair in your community - an area for conversations about planning, organising, running, evaluating and new ideas for repair events. The idea here is to connect people with others in their area and facilitate practical peer support around running/attending/improving repair events.
UK - an area for UK-based members to meet and have conversations specific to repair events in the UK (e.g. finding others in the area, Fixfest UK, insurance products, legal issues etc.) and home to the Restart Party Kit.
España - an area for conversations specific to repair events in Spain and home to the Restart Party Kit in Spanish.
Italia - an area for conversations specific to repair events in Italy and home to the Restart Party Kit in Italian
[Other countries as membership of this forum grows]
Electronics Repair - an area for conversations about the wider world of repair, such as repair in the news, sharing personal stories of repair, sharing interesting articles/links about electronics. The idea here is to help people bond over a shared interest in electronics and repair as well as contextualise the work we do (linking local repair to global issues).
Repair on the airwaves - an area where we’ll publish our radio show and podcast
Small Talk - an area for miscellanous conversations that don’t fit in the other categories, but are still important for community building (like the ‘Introduce Yourself’ thread)
Help & Feedback - an area where members can ask for help using this site or offer feedback on ways to improve it.
Does this ^^ make sense for our current needs? What changes might you suggest?
EDIT: let’s fork this topic into a fresh discussion here - it’s a wiki post, so you can make edits directly.
Also, a quick note about seeing different languages in the same feed - I agree this is confusing. There’s a slight limitation with the software, meaning it’s not possible to stop discussions from sub-categories appearing in the parent-category’s feed by default. That said, I’ve now adjusted the settings to group the feed by sub-category, which should mean the different languages appear in blocks. Does that improve things a little @ssebti?
EDIT: I’ve changed this back now, as it buried posts made in that category unfortunately. We’ll have to think about this further…
In terms of badges, more than happy to take a vote. I take the point that while some like them, others find them annoying or arbitrary. One positive I’d add is that they can help new members get a quick understanding of who’s who in the community (in a more visual way than looking through stats around number of posts etc.)
EDIT: here’s the poll/discussion