Forum Category Overhaul

Thoughts on the following for forum update proposals?

  1. Curriculum Help:
  • topics only can only be created via the “get hint” button on a challenge
  1. change “Project Feedback” to “Project Feedback/Help”:
  • Add tag for each curriculum CSS/HTML , JS , React , D3 , MongoDB , Express , etc…
  • Also “other” / “personal” / “professional” project tags
  1. Programming Help:
  • All tags here, CSS/HTML/JS/Python/PHP/C++/SQL/React/Angular/Dart/100 others
  1. Small :star: on each user for each certificate claimed
  • I know this is impossible. But, a 1 star user would have completed the HTML/CSS, 2 star user has completed the JS, and a 5 star would be a FCC “Full Stack”.

This is wishful thinking on my part, but I believe it would help.

Mostly #1 prevents the “Is this a curriculum challenge?”, “which challenge?”, “what is your code?”, etc.

& #3: open tags up for all codes/frameworks/databases

I think that many of your requests have the prerequisite of merging forum and curriculum accounts…

the stars also I don’t think should be added in the way you say, someone may have completed the JS certificate without the responsive web development one. And the stars may start to become a bit too many with the new certifications that will be added this year…

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Basically that was my idea for #1. And I understand #4 is iffy, just a thought.

But, #2 & #3 are the main forum improvements I see. If it is a project or non-FCC programming help, then filter into those sub-forums. For me #1 (Curriculum help) should always contain a link to the curriculum challenge on FCC.

I’m not big on the star thing or otherwise having visible displays of rank on users. I’d rather one’s words spoke for themselves. Heck, I’d like to take the moderator shield off of my avatar, but I’m not sure how.

As for tags, does Discourse even support those?

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for tags I mean, like for example this recent post in “general”

to me this should be in Programming Help → Angular
It could be moved to Curriculum → JavaScript

I guess my “overhaul” is basically centered around #3 in the OP. #help should have some 10+ tags for things like Angular/SQL/DART/C++ etc…

*edit: for example Python is under “curriculum” which at the current time has nothing to do with the FCC curriculum

Ah, you’re talking about subcategories then. Back in the last overhaul, there was a conscious decision to limit the number of subcategories, since they tend to add to clutter without a lot of benefit. Being able to sort and filter by tags rather than rigid subcategories would be handy, but again I’m not sure if the forum software will play along. It’s also a bit random sometimes whether a new post will be correctly tagged, as anyone who’s ever perused StackOverflow can attest.

The Python category does seem misplaced, and should probably go under “Programming Help”. Or maybe just call the super-topic “Programming” instead.

I understand that the amount of subcategories can be clutter, and if it’s already been discussed then sorry. I just feel that Angluar/C++/Python/SQL all need a home. Preferably in the #help area.

And, the #1 in the OP, that anything in #curriculum-help can only be created via the get hint button in the challenge page. (but that goes back to merging the accounts which I think was hinted at a 2020/1 thing)

Just an outside perspective from someone new here.