There could be bigger categories like DIY, Visual, Audio ... and hopefully lot's of smaller ones. I personally think it's easier to go through sub-sub-categories then try to find that one post about something you don't quite remember. If there's lot of posting going on, some topics easily get buried. If there would be sub-categories then you wouldn't have to go through pages and pages of post's. Dunno, never made a forum before :) Just throwing that out there...

Nice suggestions.

Yep, definitely want to add some styling.

I guess one key question is - what we have on the right are really artifacts of the old Noisepages schema, things people just went and created on their own. On the other hand, I like democracy, and now that we're on a forum that doesn't hugely suck, I like the thought of some of them growing.

I would separate the "support" pages from the rest, and of course the Meeblip will need more than just a cathegory. Other than that, it really depends on the volume of posting you expect to happen here (as has already been pointed out). I think some "macro" cathegories (like software hacking, DIY, video and so on) would be great, then in case create subcats. But I can't remember how well vanilla handles that.

One thing I always find troublesome with forums and strict sub categories is that things get pigeon-holed fairly quickly (i.e. show visuals, audio, meeblip). Because we're always trying to push boundaries and incorporate new things, things tend to end up with many different aspects to them, at which point I can never decide which specific categories posts go in. Then you wish you could post it in multiple sections, etc, etc.

I'd almost rather see tagging be at the forefront of the organization, and maybe some big categories (Audio, visual, hardware, software, etc) just for more general chat and browsing.

The problem with tags is that, if anybody can add one, it quickly turns into a giant mess. I'd suggest to use tags but without allowing to add new ones (basically there's a set of predefined tags you can choose from. The problem is that Vanilla will not handle tags this way, anybody can add their own... maybe there's a plugin to handle that, though.

How about having two levels of categories? This forum covers a lot of topics, there are many categories which are vast enough to make a forum in their right.

For example PD could do with subsections like: help wanted, user submitted patches, tutorials.... LibPd (noise everywhere) could also do with subcategories like announcements (release notes), help wanted, tutorials, product announcements....

I also noticed that Reaktor already has two categories, it would make sense to have one category, with subcategories.

Peter: "best would be tags + a few big buckets" - you said it! ;-)

Generally, categories suck, because you may not think like the categoriser does (or did: that categoriser might have been you! - when you didn't know what you do know, or hadn't yet forgotten so much ... the point is, we all change, and so does our thinking; and experience continually teaches us to broaden our concepts.)

Tags, on the other hand, can be multiplied at will. Despite our immediate reactions, that is not a bad thing, it's a benefit. Why? Because, as sketched above, our thinking is always changing along with the scene; we will always need new concepts, which are more flexibly handled by user-added tags than admin-controlled categories.

Further, the very statistics of a tag's popularity can be used to gauge their usefulness. On the one hand, a universal or near-universal tag, e.g. "music" on this forum, is almost useless, and users can ignore it. On the other hand, a rarely-used tag conveys more information than a more popular one, and helps users find something novel or unusual very quickly.

And finally, on the third hand (!), any categories created by the admins will very likely correspond almost exactly to the most popular dozen or so tags; but as the scene changes, those categories will increasingly poorly reflect the currently popular tags, and will present a maintenance problem for the admins.

So I suggest relying on the wisdom of crowds, and basing the structure of the forums on tags; with the possible addition of a handful of major categories that reflect the main topic areas anticipated for the forums as a whole.

An important part of using web-based data well is learning simple and effective search techniques. These skills are easy to learn and teach. The user need only consider what the important words in his or her question are. For example, to search for discussions on Pure Data, a user might select any of these tags, if available: Pure Data; PureData; PD; pd; Pd; and even LibPD or libpd etc. And to restrict the search to Android devices, the user should also select the tag: Android; or possibly Google, droid, tablet, or phone. Further, search terms need not be limited to tags; however, this requires website to search the whole text of its pages, a process which can be sped up enormously by fully indexing its webpage texts. By the choice of prompt wording, a website can help users make their searches more effective; there are many examples of websites which do so. But I'm sure, Peter, you already know all this! So I'd suggest always indexing the forum contents, to enable both tag and non-tag search terms to be found quickly; and, as above, providing helpful prompts to the user to help make search more effective.

Perhaps I've now said about all I need to on this topic!