Hi,
I think there is a fair amount of topics getting opened in the wrong category (ie “Django Internals” → “ORM”) because the only other alternative is “Using Django”. So when one chooses to ask a question about the ORM and tries to select a “proper” category they might end up choosing “Django Internals” → “ORM” instead of “Using Django”.
I wonder if adding some other categories like Forms, ORM to “Using Django” as well might help. What do you think?
Cheers,
Florian
Tossing in my $0.04 -
Yes please. I would like to see that - and if you give me a couple days, I might even be able to come up with a list of suggestions.
Meanwhile, is recategorizing current / new posts something a moderator should be doing? (I know the right one for the task, too.)
Ken
I am more than happy to make new categories given a list of ideas. I can just make a list that feels about right, but if you want to come up with some Ken, post them here and I’ll make them.
As for moving posts - yes! One of the main advantages of the forum is that we can move posts back to where they belong 
As a starting point, I think the following subcategories within Using Django may cover the vast majority of questions raised:
These are just suggestions - general impressions from the messages I’ve seen over the past couple months.
Alright, created! Changed a few names very slightly.
I have replaced the “boilerplate” summary text of the automatic pinned posts for each topic - at least to get something out there other than the “(Please replace this text”-type message.
Now comes the fun part - going back through the existing topics and recategorizing as appropriate.
I don’t see an admin report showing the total number of topics within each category, but my stats show me as having viewed a little more than 6K topics - I’m going to guess that that’s not too far short of the actual total in the Using Django category. Using that as a baseline number, I only need to average about 20 / day to get that done in 2023.
I don’t think there’s a need to move all the posts, just enough to get people a good idea of what should be in each?
I agree there is no need to do this.
And if any of you, Carlton, Mariusz, etc say “No”, then I will drop the idea.
However, I believe it would be a good thing to do.
My understanding from your comments at DCUS, and what I’m seeing in the reports, is that this site is seeing increasing usage as a source for searches of information - moreso than the level of activity on the site itself may imply.
I believe the value received from those searches would be enhanced if the categories were consistently applied. Someone coming to the site looking for examples of queries in the ORM section may not think to expand their search to the general category.
I acknowledge that not all threads are worth moving - but I’m not personally inclined to set myself up as the arbiter for that decision.
Therefore, given the choice between moving none, <10%, or ~100%, my preference is the last. (While the task may be the very definition of the concept of “tedious”, individual entries should take very little time and can be squeezed in all sorts of available time slots in ones and twos.)
Now, after moving a few hundred, my opinion may change - but at which point I believe I will have moved enough to give people that “good idea of what should be in each”.
Alright - I am absolutely not going to tell you no, just to pace yourself and not keep doing it if it gets to be too much!
Oops - missed one. Also wanted to ask about the idea of a category for DRF?
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t recommend a category for an individual third-party package, but I think perhaps DRF fits in a rather unique niche.
And I’ve got two more that I think should be added:
Processing data
Discussions of views and related processing not directly related to other topics
(Side note - I think this could also be used to cover DRF instead of a DRF-specific category if that is preferred.)
Deployment
And then the big ??? is whether there should be a separate category for Testing. There’s not a lot of activity in that area that I can think of.
Hmm, I do want to show some restraint on how many we have - I think more than 10 is getting a little busy. How about:
and then processing data questions should go into models, forms, or APIs?
API is good! That really covers what I was trying to get at. I could even see rolling forms and formsets into it. (Maybe rename forms and formsets to API if that can be done.)
In retrospect, I could also see combining templates etc with the JavaScript category into a more general category named “Client-side concerns”. I think separating those two was a mistake.
I’m also seeing what might be a good reason to not recategorize all existing messages - it appears that in (some, most, all?) cases, it’s updating the “activity date” of the thread - potentially confusing people like me who rely upon that to see what’s new.
Alright, I have combined the client-side items into “Templates & Frontend” (I didn’t just want to say client-side as templates aren’t in some people’s minds), and APIs and Forms.
Side note: Apologies if I wasn’t clear, but I still think a separate “Deployment” topic is worthwhile.
I knew I forgot something! Added.
