Reconsider the "Users" category?

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This is a section addressing the remarks above on tags (click to unfold)

As a new community member who has roamed around quite a bit here (and more recently at meta.Discourse.org), I haven’t added tags to my repertiore. It isn’t particularly prominent on the New Topic form, where the category field is colorful and draws the eye more than the drab Tag field. (This is an interface design issue and I’ll follow up over at discourse:org, but the point is that tags are a somewhat advanced feature–especially if one intends to use them properly and effectively).

To Erlend’s point, a member looking for full-on code review won’t be a neophyte (probably) and might be confidently expected to grok the tag options before posting their request.

New members overlooking tags seems to be a common phenomenon because less than half of the posts in Users have a tag other than the User category itself. I came here to join the community and share and learn, so I’ve made a point of learning Discourse–and am supremely impressed with it–but someone signing in just for some debug assistance is looking to solve their immediate problem, not learn about the forum infrastructure. For an obvious example, look how much effort we put into coaching posters to use code blocks.

So after reading this entire thread, these seem to be the best suggestions:

  1. make the top category the place for code help.
  2. put the ‘general discussions’ next.
  3. get the category names right.
  4. deeply consider the English 2nd visitors because they make up a large portion of the help requests.
  5. choose key words that beginners and E2L visitors will recognize and follow.
  6. name the quasi-public categories a bit cryptically to discourage mis-posting and inadvertant gate-crashing.

Key words for the ‘Users’ category:

  • Python
  • Code
  • Program/Programming
  • help (used by many E2L OP’s)

A good name might be as simple as:
“Python Code Programming Help”
“Python Program Code Help”
“Python Coding Help”
“Python Code Help” <<<
“Python Help”

Thinking ahead… We currently get many raw beginners, so it might be worth splitting Users if/when the volume and clamor gets high enough. This is sure to happen as the community grows. Happily, the community’s growth will also bring more helpers.
“Beginner/Newbie/Noob Help” category. “New Coders”, perhaps.

Key words for “General Discussion”

  • General (with one of the following)
  • ~ Discussion
  • ~ Topics
  • ~ Forum
  • ~ Interest
    (Note: beginner E2L activity not likely due to language barrier)

Avoiding the key words from the top category, “General Discussion” or “General Topics” might be fine here. “General Interest” has some appeal but could encourage non-Python topics. (“How’s your garden…?”) Tags to the rescue!

And speaking of tags in lieu of categories, this post says that Discourse provides two levels of categories, after which tags are recommended for further differentiation. This means that Python Coding Help could have multiple subcategories for Beginners, Code Review, Packages, etc. Would that be too complex and impracticable? To a degree, for sure.

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