Categories reordered

We recently had some internal debates about the order of the categories on the site as we felt their order didn’t really reflect the priorities in the community. For now, we settled on one that priorities artwork (we’re Blender Artists, after all), Support and Coding.

I also got some feedback that the alternating category colors were annoying, so I’m trying a single-color scheme now.

Feedback welcome!

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What’s with the “Misc:” category at the bottom?

Can’t believe you guys buried the General Forums category down there. This is one of the most important category here, it should remain on top, imho.

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The miscellaneous category used to hold Off-topic Chat. That’s been migrated back to the General Forums category.

To the contrary. This is BlenderArtists. We want to emphasize that. Furthermore, the Artwork and Support forums are by far the most positive aspects of this community. It makes sense to promote more positivity.

You might not notice but a lot people comes to this forum looking for blender news in the first place, and that section was a quick answer for that. Now it just looks like there’s no section about it, because is buried really deep right now, besides, the top row already emphasizes the BlenderArtists side of this forum well enough.

I don’t think that was a smart move, but hey, that’s just my opinion. :v:

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Oops, I thought I had hidden the old ‘parent’ category - fixed now.

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speaking for myself I would love it if latest news and general discussion want back to the top. Because honestly that what I am usually here and I think many other people as well.

I also wish 2.8 threads stopped becoming multi headed hydra every time the went a little bit off topic things are now so fragmented there that its hard to follow what is going on. I know you guys are trying to stop flame wars and thread going off topic

And some categories got merged down. For example do you need an animation(a virtual ghost town), focused critique and work in progress cartogory…you could merge that all down into work in progress

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General category merging is on the map for the future, but there might be a few technical limitations there.

While I don’t care too much about the order, I don’t really see the logic behind the new ordering. Why would “Blender and CG Discussions” not be on top? Also, why are the contests after coding? I suppose people who come to Blender Artists would rather make art instead of code OSL shaders…

Artwork and Support being on top makes sense, the rest seems to be ordered randomly.

To put the Artwork Forums first makes sense.
But to put the General Forums to the bottom is completely nuts.
I mean come on, this site is also about NEWS! Most posts and traffic is there, no?
Contests, Jobs, Game Engine, Coding, and Support is less important than the latest Blender News.
Many many people come here to keep up to date with whats happening around Blender, hide that at the bottom of the site and you will loose users. I can look at Art on Artstation. You can not compete with that. But on Artstation i can’t get the latest Blender News. You loose the thing this site is used for most.

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Hey folks, quick note that I did say ‘feedback welcome’, so we’ll definitely note your comments here. Keep them coming!

If nothing else, could we not have off-topic chat mixed in with the other “general forums”? The way it is now if you browse all the general boards at once (a feature I’ve really been liking since the move to Discourse) you now get a random politics slap-fight in with your CG industry and Blender dev news.

General forums to the top please…

C’mon… I mean… C’mon…

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Pretty sure politics aren’t really even supposed to be discussed here so could just report those posts/threads.

Priorities of the community have news and 2.8 aaaaaaaaaallll the way at the bottom? after job offers and even the deprecated game engine? oh man seems like i have totally misjudged the community.

image

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its true that we are artist, so the art categories should go up, but cant you creat something more like a legacy button ? we got used to the old oreder, so its to hard this way.
anyway it,s just an opinion

I just want to reiterate some of the opinions expressed here.

I get putting the art forums first, I really do. It is an art forum after all. I think burying the general forums that deep is a bad idea. In my opinion, the order should be:

Artwork
General Forums
Support
Etc…

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+1 for general forums back on top

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I also think the majority checks BA to get the latest news and read mostly interesting discussions about latest developments in the Blender space.

Do you have any statistics @bartv ?

I’m also a proponent of enhancing what the site is already used for instead of pushing it in a desired direction.