Is there a way to create and/or petition to have a new community category created? I’d like to see a new category for CoRE, perhaps as a subcategory of SmartApps. With the rise of this as an extremely popular, powerful and flexible rule engine app, the current threads are getting long and hard to follow. It would be nice to have a new category, allowing us to easily create individual threads for topics related to this app without using topic naming conventions as a workaround. I’m guessing creating new community categories is an admin-level decision, so I’m throwing it out there to see what others think.
7 Likes
We previously requested subcategories for smart lights and smart home monitor, but we’re told that the forum software doesn’t support that many levels of subcategories. 
I think it’s a great idea, I just don’t know if they can do it.
1 Like
A subreddit then?
1 Like
Whelp. I made one 
1 Like
hmmm why not use tags then? cc @slagle
1 Like
Tags would work. I’m not opposed to new categories either, but it’s not at the top of my list of things to think about. Tags you guys can do today. 
You can view all tags here: https://community.smartthings.com/tags
Core tag is here: https://community.smartthings.com/tags/core
You an even select to automatically watch new threads with the tag “core”.
Tags don’t serve the same function.
- we’re already using them to tag community created smart apps and device handlers and because there is a max of five tags on one post we’re already hitting the max for a number of threads.
Two) tags don’t provide the same discoverability for new community members. It would be nice if they did, but they just don’t. For example, no one would find the FAQs if they were just looking by tags.
-
New community members don’t know that they should use tags, so they don’t. That means their questions wouldn’t appear in a way which is likely to get them answers as quickly as subcategory organization would.
-
you can’t use the advanced search features on a list of tagged posts the way you can on a subcategory
So I like tags and I use tags, but they don’t meet the same purpose as subcategories.
(Btw, I am aware that one of the cofounders of discourse thinks that tags are useless and would have liked to see them limited to three max instead of five. I think that’s a common conflict between software people and hardware people.
Once you get into devices, there is a real world spec being reflected.
For example, multi sensors have many different features depending on the exact model.
Some have humidity, some have Lux, most have motion, some have acceleration. It’s perfectly reasonable to tag a device type handler with each of those because it’s quite common for user to be looking for one of them, like Lux. So hitting the artificial limit of five tags reduces the searchability of the archives. Nobody gets confused about the tags, nobody mistags them. A humidity sensor is a humidity sensor. It’s just that it might also be a Lux, motion, acceleration, and temperature sensor. Or just a humidity and temperature sensor.
End engineer rant. 
)
3 Likes