Eastleigh Online Categories - what do you think?

Feedback
1

The way we categorise topics on Eastleigh Online is bugging me. What do you think of it, do you think it can be improved, and if so, how?

This is a community site, so I’d like to make sure its setup in a way that is useful to most people so your input is important.

When you post a topic, you choose which category it belongs to, but I don’t think I have made a good choice when setting it up, so I’m considering changing it. We currently have multiple categories available:

  • Local Events
  • Eastleigh Borough
    • Central Eastleigh
    • Bishopstoke
    • Fair Oak
    • Hedge End
    • Horton Heath
    • Chandlers Ford
  • Eastleigh Politics
  • Local Business
  • Chit Chat
  • Lost
  • Feedback
  • Lounge (For people who reach level 3 and above).
  • Uncategorised - for people who don’t select a category when posting. :slight_smile:
  • Private Categories - some private categories exist, which are invisible and invite only.

The problem?

  • New folks don’t understand what a category is straight away.
  • There’s far too many, making selection a bit of a bore.
  • Topics can be organised by a single categories or many tags.
  • Tags can be a far better way to organise posts as often one topic spans multiple categories (Politics in Fair Oak for example).

The alternative?

I’m thinking of collapsing them all down to a more obvious:

  • Eastleigh Borough
  • Site Feedback
  • Uncategorised
  • Lounge (Only visible to people who reach level 3 and above).
  • Private Categories (Only visible if invited)

It then becomes far easier for new members to make a post. I’d move current categories to tags, for example a post in the Local Business category would instead have the Local Business tag, a post in the Fair Oak category would instead have a Fair Oak tag.

Remember all members with a trust level of 3 or above can help with tagging posts with the correct tag to better organise information.

I think this could help better organise information in the long run - thoughts?

2

Fewer categories probably makes sense- I guess more categories might help if there were too many posts to keep up with but not sure that’s an issue yet :slight_smile:

The only one that seems like it might be worth keeping is Local Business since those posts are kind of different. Maybe.

1 Like
3

Keep the local areas.
I occasionally go for a walk in Stoke Park woods, otherwise I don’t go anywhere in Eastleigh district other than Eastleigh Town.
I’m not really interested in Hedge end and fair Oak news, but obviously important for locals.

4

Good point on keeping the local business category @jtonline

@George Local areas would still remain, they would just become tags instead. :slight_smile: .

Most posts I think have relevance across the borough so I think it would make sense to avoid the new user complexity of having to choose a local area when you post, but you still can if you like in a tag. If trusted people spot the topic is relevant to a specific area, they can also tag.

Just like categories, you can still sort search and filter by tag. This can be more helpful I think as you can tag a post related to multiple areas.

So you’d still be able to click “Central Eastleigh” and see things related to central Eastleigh only, or request notifications of all posts with that tag.

1 Like