I heavily agree with the sentiment in the main post, however I think the following two-fold approach would be preferable to that which the OP proposes.
Prefer tags in favor of subcategories.
Currently, topics are generalized via category & subcategory, tags feel almost like an afterthought. Because of this, categories & subcategories have become increasingly specific (Dev. Support; Scripting Support, Building Support, Art Design Support). This is, in my opinion, a misuse of categories; which are supposed to be broad themes that topics under them have in common. And so, the splash page of the forum has become overburdened by the amount of categories and takes on a horribly cluttered appearance
(So much so that I have to zoom out incredibly far to screenshot the entire thing! For ease of readability I’ve labeled each category in a bigger font.)
However, even at a cursory glance we can immediately see that a number of these categories are all very closely related (check how many have “Development” in their name or description.)
As such, I believe that the following categories should be subsumed by the category “Development”, with each of their subcategories collapsed into a more broad subcategory of the “Development” category. From there, tags should be used instead to denote more specific themes of topics posted in these categories.
Were this implemented, the forum’s splash page would look more so like this
Move away from the problem-solution paradigm and instead to a question-answer one.
As many users have stated thus far in this thread, the problem-solution paradigm creates a number of issues:
- Users, especially those seeking to attain a higher trust level, feel pressured to reply the fastest so that their answer is accepted by virtue of it being the first, functional, answer.
- This leads to under-developed or even incorrect answers, including answers which don’t actually attempt to solve or, sometimes, don’t even pertain to the topic as a result of the reply-er misinterpreting the question while reading it in a rush to answer.
- Accepted answers are seen as the end-all be-all answers, which is a fundamentally flawed idea given the open-ended-ness of a lot of questions (especially programming-wise!)
Because of this, I think Q&A topics should instead use a system familiar to that of Stack Overflow and the like, wherein answers may be voted on (and are consequently ordered by their score) by community members. This solves the issue of the race to post first & the closed-ness of the problem-solution paradigm.
Inspiration could be taken from this discourse plugin.
Misc.
These are much smaller solutions to issues I have which I don’t feel are as needed as those listed above.
Misuse of flagging.
Unfortunately, discourse’s flagging system isn’t as granular as one might hope it to be; from my cursory inspection of their API there is no way to change which trust levels can flag & the influence of flags per specific trust levels (aside from # of trust level 3 users needed to block accounts).
However, I think by way of using plugins that interface with things like Google’s Perspective API, the # of flags needed to hide posts could be increased such that it’s harder for posts to be hidden due to the misuse of the flagging feature by new users (to be honest, it kind of bothers me that new users are trusted with ability to report posts, but at the same time are prevented from speaking in the #public category, likely due to a (justified) lack of faith in the decorum of new members; unfortunately as I mentioned above, there is little granularity in terms of flagging permissions).
International Users
Speaking honestly, I think it’s kind of absurd that Int’l has essentially been ‘quarantined’ to its own little box. By doing so, the forum essentially deprives Int’l users from the organization that English-speaking users benefit from. I personally think the Int’l category should be disbanded, and instead an International tag should be introduced.
I also think it would be to the benefit of both Int’l and english-speaking users if a translation plugin (such as “Discourse Translator”) were introduced.
Feature Voting
Lastly, and probably least importantly, I think it’d be cool if a feature-voting plugin was introduced for topics in the #forum-feedback & #platform-feedback categories (which, I think, should be condense to a feedback category with subcategories for client, studio, and the forum/meta, with tags for 'bug’s and 'feature’s & devices (PC, Console, Phone))
RDC
I don’t personally believe RDC necessitates its own category, I think it’s better suited to be a subcategory of Public. Announcements and Q&A could just be pinned topics.
All in all, I think the forum should look like this:
Although it goes without saying: I’m open to suggestions/refinements.
