Can We have a new Category

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Gang:

I submit that the ability of posters to choose a correct category is not high, at least at present, and the addition of more categories will serve little purpose.

For example, there was a post today with the keywords "VG" and "LVOL" in the subject that was posted to 'System Administration' rather than 'LVM'. In my opinion, the post belongs to LVM, but my guess is that the author felt perhaps he/she would receive wider viewing by choosing the broader category.

I have seen many questions related to Ignite but dealing with some LVM aspect. I would ask, to which category should these be assigned? I don't think that there is a black-and-white, clear choice in all cases.
Personally, I look at the HP-UX family as a whole.

We (me included) have seen some threads relating to 'glance' moved from the HP-UX family into Management Software (because that's where 'glance' is supported. I would ask, doesn't this make categorization difficult?

I would see it as a full-time job for someone to read, assess and reassign various posts to more appropriate categories, assuming that they could be confined to one category. In many cases the assignment would be subjective.

I further submit, that a few, broad categories are better than too many fine ones. I'd hate to see 'languages' subdivided into 'C', 'awk', 'sed', 'sh' and 'perl'; and this is just another extension of the "more categories" argument at some level of its discussion.

I *do* agree that there are a few categories like 'planning' and 'white papers' that probably should be remerged into 'general'.

As long as a strong, viable search engine is maintained for the Forum community, it doesn't seem to matter *how* a post is categoried, does it?

Lastly, I find it annoying to open a link and see "This question has been moved...". A now, long-time suggestion has been to add (at least!) the new link.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Patrick Wallek]

I agree with JRF's sentiments.

Another category to keep track of would only add to the confusion I think. As JRF said, there are already lots of posts that are mis-categorized.

I used to try to keep with postings in individual categories by going to the general or sys admin or ignite categories, but that became too much of a problem.

I generall stay on the HP-UX Family page and refresh occasionally to see what posts are now at the top of the list because of another response or that they have just been created.

Forcing the posters to have to pick a category instead of having Database the default would be a GREAT start.

[Wodisch_1]

Hi Shahul, me again ;-)

in response to Jim's reply:
- we could have "all posts" as the first sub-category, showing ALL postings for that category (for those of us reading *whole* main-categories - hey, I would even browse through the "all forum postings" *super-category* :-)

- on the "new posting" dialog the *pre-selected* sub-category could be "SELECT ONE" (or so) and the "submit" button would refuse to work until something has been select (ok, with a subtle, but sufficient hint, why).
Maybe that would help the posters?

- as a question to all of you: how useful ARE the sub-categories, anyway? As some of use already mentioned - I do not care about them for reading/answering, so maybe we just made life more difficult for the posters by forcing them to select a proper sub-category?

Just another $0.0000002,
Wodisch

[Michael Tully]

I believe there is already enough categories. That is one of the reasons why I wanted the search engine changed. Merging some of the unused ones into general would be better.

My Aussie 4 cents
Michael

[Stefan Schulz]

Hi,

as others i don't think we need a new category. There are a lot categories available allready. And i always thought pure scripting questions would belong to languages.

Perhaps we could rename "languages" to something like "languages and scripting" to make it more clearly.

But i think it's more important to have a good subject line. As it is sometimes really difficult to choose the "right" category. E.g. is it more important how i try to solve a problem or what kind of problem it is?

I might have a sysadmin problem which i try to solve with a script. So where do i put this question? Personally i would put this under sysadmin. In my opinion scripting is used in every category and thats all right.

Only if the solution to a problem is clear but the script won't run, than this is a problem with the scripting language. Which leads to the "language" category.

As a result i think we have enough categories, but we could rename the "languages" category to make it more "suitable" for scripting.

Regards Stefan

[Kimberly Ann]

Hi All,

Just wanted to let you know I am listening to you. Good arguments on both sides of the fence. I'd like to summarize these points and come up with an agreeable resolution. There are some very good ideas on how to approach this -- and thanks to Shahul for bringing it up.

Thanks,
Dan

[Victor_5]

Good point, I agree with that!

Actually, my wife is a programmer, I introduced her to come her to learn something about hp, generally, she only look posts related with script. I do think we need a separated topic.

Dan, when can we get it?

[Michael Lampi]

As far as I am concerned, another category would not be a problem. The current questions of the day are e-mailed to me in one big message, and I scan through the whole thing anyway looking for something that looks interesting, either as a question that I can solve, or as a question to which I, too, would like to know the answer.

The only drawback to this approach is that by the time the e-mail reaches me the questions often have multiple responses, and even complete solutions, so many contributions I could/would make are too late to earn any points.

If I had to click on each category and then search for outstanding questions, then yes, it would be an incremental pain in the posterior to look through yet another category.

[Misa]

I think a new category is fine, but have a semantic offering...

It seems to me that people consider "scripting" to be a lesser task or ability, somehow, than "programming."

Yet what do you call largish things written in Perl? Or Expect and Tcl/Tk? Are they "scripting" or "programming"? Do they count under Languages or Scripting?

Perhaps "Languages" means "in a compiled " and "Scripting" means "in an interpreted language."

Just food for thought. I'm okay with anything as long as the distinctions are made clear.

--M????a "it's all programming to me" :)

[Wodisch_1]

To Misa:

I guess many are afraid of "programming" - but afraid of "scripting"...

Just some european cents,
Wodisch

[Shahul]

Hi

Misa made it clear that the difference between programming and scripting.

I think now Dan is in trouble because of these programmers and Scripters. Anyway...
I think more 'basic scripting' related questions are posting in forum than other languages.


Shahul