Reorganizing categories

[Laura F.]

I'm thinking about combining the Most Active Software Boards and Most Active Hardware Boards into a single "Most Active" category.  The reason is that we have some boards that span both sections, like Machine Vision.

At the same time I would move some of the not so popular boards like Measurement Studio for VC++ and VB, Lookout, and Signal Conditioning into the Additional Product Boards category.  I would move Real Time Measurement and Control (soon to be called RIO Family) into the Most Active Category.

The boards also could use some reorganization with most popular at the top (LabVIEW, CVI, DAQ, Instrument Control) followed by the rest in alphabetical order. 

Thoughts?

-Laura

[JackDunaway]

Laura, you taking full discretionary control on board grouping would be best, since you've got traffic stats! People who care about certain boards will do as I have done and float them, so your reorganization will not affect those people. Yet people who are new to the forums will benefit from the reorganization. Win-win situation!

Now, if you want to know what I'd really like to see happen, read the spoiler!

Spoiler

How hard is it to combine boards? 😉

An organizational strategy that is becoming popular is a flat storage mechanism for objects (one single board), and each object gets one or more labels to categorize or classify the object (tags on posts). Two stellar services I use, both engineered by superstars, employ this method - GMail and Stack Exchange.

A folder (or board) is nothing but a mutually exclusive meta field. Example: you have a question that flirts the line between three boards. With our current system you must roll the dice and pick a board, hoping the correct audience is visiting that board. However, if we only had one (or a few) generic boards, you could ask your question and place all three meta tags on the question. Now, instead of one group, you have piqued the interest of three groups of superusers waiting to answer the question in their field of expertise. This also promotes cross-pollination.

I'm getting out of line here, because a meta-tagged file system requires a seamless sorting and searching service, which Lithium is still scratching their heads over. 😉 But I can't reasonably complain. I realize it's easier to monetize a product with native Twitter integration than to market a product that engineers find useful.