Tension about forum categories (f&s vs ctp)

I’ve had a recurring tension where there’s some topics that I feel lack a clear home and/or show up in categories where they don’t really make sense. For a concrete example, @wolftune just posted What should the HTML “meta description” be?

The #feedback-support category description says, “Share feedback, report bugs, and ask questions about our sites.” While you could technically call the example post one of those, it’s really more of an action item to make a decision about; it fits “concrete work on the Snowdrift.coop project”, much better… except, it doesn’t fit any of the sub-categories of #clear-the-path well, either (maybe #clear-the-path:development?).

I initially envisioned #feedback-support as our interface to the outside world and #clear-the-path as a place for internal-but-public discussion (and a way to communicate what we’re currently working on). Now I’m questioning whether that’s a meaningful distinction.

I don’t mind your view of some outside-world vs internal-work, but discussion of the forum specifically is different from other things. But we don’t need to fret about a few exceptions to normal patterns. The question is whether there’s a systematic problem.

I think it would be fine enough to include forum work within CtP with just a tag. But I also think it’s sensible enough to allow some amount of internal work on the forum being in the same f&s category as forum users giving forum feedback and questions.

It seems clear to me that your question here about forum categories belongs here in the forum category.

This isn’t a one-time exception, it applies to pretty much all forum work, as well as some recent discussion about crowdmatching messaging, which was in #general-discussion before I moved it to #feedback-support:website, but could fit under #clear-the-path:outreach as well.

Agree that this post is in the right place. But it’s very clearly feedback – it’s about an issue I personally have and there’s no clear right answer or action to be taken – while the original example is more cut-and-dry.

Saying that, I wonder if the original post just belongs in gitlab, and that’s it.

1 Appreciation

Yeah, but there’s some judgment call here about who to reach… so at some level, the forum is our replacement for email list. So, stuff goes here if we want it to reach wider audience. But I agree in this case, it would have worked as a GitLab issue.

(But those points I just wrote are sorta #clear-the-path:project-management instead of #feedback-support:forum )

Here’s another place where this tension comes up: @wolftune in your “announcing the forum” blog post draft, you have this (emphasis mine):

The “Clearing the Path” categories are where we discuss most of our work. The main value of the separate categories: you can choose different notification levels based on your interests instead of all-or-nothing.

But, can we really say that when something like Create a new page that explains the mechanism in more detail is in the #feedback-support:website category? I mean yes, technically “most of” is still correct, but the point of separate categories is that I can watch the ones I want without missing stuff.

I think that example probably should move to the #clear-the-path:design category. #feedback-support:website makes more sense as a place for dumping feedback that isn’t as clear of a task…

The way I see it, Robert posting that in #feedback-support:website is him acting as an outside visitor just sharing his thoughts as opposed to a team member discussing the actual work on a new page.

I’m a bit confused, f&s is for external questions and thoughts, while the discussion could be moved into ctp, they can often be resolved without having an effect on the project itself. The meta question should have been either in design or development, I would lean towards design. Am I missing something?