Hello,

I'd like to come back on this "Category" feature that I think would be very useful. It is actually the only way to create a clean way to organize the content users are sharing. Let's be honest, Hashtags are only used by a fraction of users as it is not relevant for most of them. Hashtags give way to much freedom to some users that wants to make sure their posts are viewed by everybody and in my opinion pollute the stream making any search difficult and at the end user stop searching...

Hashtags are great for open community like Facebook, but I think most of us aren't trying to be facebook but we are trying to create community base on a specific theme like Art, sport, game, photography and so on.
In this case, Categories make thing very easy to categorize, filter, search and understandable by everyone. Category give a structure that users can follow, hashtags are more subject to personal interpretation. If both are present, then you covert everything.

I have the same categories in easyblog and easydiscuss, I wish I could have the same categories in easysocial stream.

Her an example of why we need categories:

In a Art community. User could use the Dance category then use hashtags to precise the style like Salsa. When user a interested by dance, they can filter the stream with the dance category and see all related dance post and decide to use hashtags to search Salsa. That way the get only "dance Salsa" not "Salsa dip". haha!!

Here is the link of the user voice I created a while ago: http://stackideas.com/voices/item/92

Thanks for voicing a lot of my opinions on this. The Salsa dip example hit it pretty close to home. I too know of scenarios where this sort of issue can happen.

The added bonus to Status Categories is that it would allow News Feeds to give the user a more precise method of finding the content they want to view. If I post a content post that had the hashtag #goofy and I had a custom filter for #funny I'd miss the #goofy post. Specific examples for me would be if someone had one for #hiking but my custom filter was #adventure, #climbing, #hikes , I'd most certainly miss the #hiking one. Now don't get us wrong, hashtags are a great little tool. But it creates limits for viewing because of how precise it is.

With Joomla content they specifically have articles set to use categories. Tags can work, but we still use categories as the default. This is done for a very good reason. Obviously status posts are different, but one of the complaints I've heard about Facebook is relevancy. So if we can help people get more of what they want, this would help make the social experience a lot better.

Because I intend to have quality support on my site, anyone who asks how to give them more relevant feed items, I'd be able to tell them exactly how to do it. If this was added, it would open up further possibilities such as showing the categories the user wants to see (not just one category). An example might be lets say the user doesn't want to see "Humor" or "Inspirational" in their feed. This would help filter content the user does not want to see out. Hashtags don't really have that sort of capability without stripping almost every post out of view.

Thanks for the heads up on this guys, appreciate it very much. To be frank, centralizing "categories" can never be done in a short period of time because we are talking about centralizing all categories that are used in EasyBlog, EasyDiscuss and EasySocial. To make this happen we also need to think about users that doesn't utilize EasySocial or EasyBlog or even EasyDiscuss. It's going to be really tricky

Hello Mark,

I don't think centralizing "categories" is a good ideas either. Having them separated give the possibility to arrange them differently in every components... But having categories for easysocial stream would be great.

Again this is to help content driven community. I just want users that join my community but are mostly interested in a specific art style to be able to filter the content and get immediately to what they are interested in without having to enter hashtags all the time.

Let say, a user can select only one category when writing a story but he can select as many categories as he want to show in his activity stream and even save the setting to be his default stream.
That way he always get what he wants.

This is my biggest frustration with Facebook. I can't filter by post type. I follow people because I like their art but also get their personal/family post... even if I don't know them.

aikigi is right that we are not talking about "status categories" being integrated with EasyBlog, EasyDiscuss, ect. But if the admin wanted to create those categories separately on EasySocial, they could if this was added. We are not proposing to centralize the categories. Not only is our method simpler to create but actually leaves more room for flexibility in terms of not depending on the other software's for the categories.

Let say, a user can select only one category when writing a story but he can select as many categories as he want to show in his activity stream and even save the setting to be his default stream.

Exactly! This is the sort of power that can come through this feature. Bringing relevant content.

A friend of mine would rather see family posts instead of art. That's why we believe it's important to give the freedom to choose what to display.

Hey guys,

I really think that hash tags is already doing similar tagging options but again the user is not forced to add a hashtag when they post. Perhaps we could think of another method to work around this (Although it appears as category but the mechanism utilizes the hash tags). Again, I am not going to speculate anything yet as right now our hands are so full

Hello Mark,

We perfectly know that you and your team are working hard and are doing an amazing job! So promise this is my last post on this topic (at least for a while )
Yes it is true that Hashtags can already do more than but it there is still a few thing that, as of today, Hashtags can't.

Now (maybe) it could be done with Hashtags:

1. The most important for me would be to have an option to limit the number of Hashtags user can add so we don't see post with 20 or 50 Hashtags on a two line post.

2. Maybe the possibility to create predefine #hashtags (like normal tags) visible in a drop-down menu (like categories) or visible when the user type "#". This could help user who aren't familiar with Hashtags (70% of users) to select one.

3. When creating filters, Having two separated Hashtags field. The first one (not require) with the predefine Hashtags. The second one for any other #. The idea is to help narrow the search result.

Ex: First field "#Dance", second field "#street, #competition". That way the search result will only show result for #street and #competition within the (category) #dance. Not post of a cooking competition in the street... Of course, user could say #street_dance_competition but in that case, user interested in Dance in general would miss the post or their filter would have to have 2000 hashtags!! not really practical. Does this make sense.


This could help going toward a category style using Hashtags, but i'm not sure it would be user friendly.

Hashtags and Category aren't meant to do the same thing and when creating a community content base, category are as important than Hashtags. Facebook or Instagram have no limitation in content type which make Hashtags the perfect choice. My community is dedicated to Art and the categorization of the content is very important. As I said in a previous post, Hashtags is base on a very personal interpretation while categories help structure a site and give limitation which help keep thing simple, understandable, homogenous and at the end, user friendly.


I know you are crazy busy but I hope you'll give another thought to it later one...

Thanks

Thanks for the input on this