It's too easy for people to forget to correctly place their new idea in the appropriate category and then have it appear under other: general. I think when ideas are un-placed at the time of writing they should end up in Fashion: Jock Strap or Public: Humiliation. As it stands, the system is too forgiving, in my opinion.-- lubbit, Dec 12 2001 Other: general http://www.halfbake...m/category/Other_3aSee for yourself. [pottedstu, Dec 12 2001, last modified Oct 04 2004] All categories http://www.halfbake...:t=All_20Categoriespilfered from Steve DeGroof's profile page. [my face your, Oct 04 2004] or have "other:general" become a hot route to deletion - if you or your annotators haven't worked out where it should more correctly be situated, within a week, bye-bye idea...-- lewisgirl, Dec 12 2001 I'm not convinced there should be an "other:general", or an "other" category. Abouyt half the subcategories in "other" are related to space, energy and similar technology things. The marriage and relationships topics could certainly go in public or culture. There's also a bunch of science, maths and philosophy ideas. Perhaps the whole "other" section could be renamed science, with the non-science bits relocated to more appropriate "big 12" categories.
Lots of people don't seem to take the time to think what category their idea is nearest to, and just take the easy option. Having an easy option facilitates this process, encouraging vagueness. Even the most ground-breaking idea can find a home, and if it's that good, it'll get a new category for itself.-- pottedstu, Dec 12 2001 Why not "Other: Unassigned" as default when no category has been selected?-- neelandan, Dec 12 2001 neel, I considered this but then thought that other: general was precisely this, but by a different name. Either way, ideas in the other: general category should be shunned and regarded as unclean in some way. *I* certainly would never post there ;)-- lubbit, Dec 12 2001 Wow. I had not realized that one of my first ideas was in other:general. I guess I had not noticed the category field when I submitted it. It's more appropriately categorized now.-- beauxeault, Dec 12 2001 Bliss - I tried to put something original in the "idea". The old system, perhaps before your time [rubs chin wisely], as I recall seemed to dump un-defined ideas near randomnly, to much mirth on my behalf.-- lubbit, Dec 12 2001 Ideas go into the category they're posted from, if they're posted from a category; if not, the category defaults to Other: General. They used to go just into Other: General. They never were dropped randomly. Any category-related mirth you experienced was due to people trying very hard to be funny (or being frustrated by the large number of categories and just picking anything salient.)
The categorization is the most difficult, fragile, and for me most time-consuming part of the halfbakery, and the one area where I have no qualms about changing user's input to fit a bigger schema. Users can't categorize their own ideas because they don't know what's there; they don't know where to look even if they bother; even left to my own devices, I can't come up with a system of categorization that unambiguously tells me where to put things. This is hard, and I can see why people hire librarians and editors.-- jutta, Dec 13 2001 To help with categories, find one that contains more than 20 ideas, find at least 3 ideas in there (or in other well-filled categories) that clearly fit in their own subcategory, where the subcategory makes sense within the rest of the system, mail me the titles of those ideas and the name of the new suggested subcategory, and don't be upset if I don't act on it because I see some problem with it that I haven't told you about in advance. (For example, I try not to have a category based on the quality of ideas -- e.g. "stupid ideas" -- but this seems to be the number one thing people request.)
In the long run, there could be a deeper hierarchy and category editors who are responsible for maintaining one subhierarchy and exchange ownership of ideas, but that means writing more infrastructure for those editors to talk in first, and having ways of detecting and dealing with editors that have gone missing.-- jutta, Dec 13 2001 Despite what I said above, I think the system works well. I just have an obsessive-compulsive disorder that manifests itself in a psychological hatred of "miscellaneous" categories.-- pottedstu, Dec 13 2001 They remind me of COMMON blocks (oops, confession of fortran usage) and global variables and vast slabs of un-modularised code.-- lubbit, Dec 13 2001 But I bet you have a '/Stuff/' sub-directory somewhere on your PC.-- angel, Dec 13 2001 It's called General actually. But I'm too scared to use it just in case I overwrite something really important that I'd forgotten about.-- lubbit, Dec 13 2001 Directories? What are they for? I keep everything in "My Documents" or the root directory.-- pottedstu, Dec 13 2001 jutta: It seems that if I am viewing a particular idea in category foo:bar the new idea will default to category foo:bar as it should, but if I am at the screen listing ideas in category foo:bar, clicking "new" creates a new idea in default location "Other:general", rather than "foo:bar". This behavior observed today.-- supercat, Mar 05 2002 I'd like to see the system set up to allow for _no_ default category at all, none. Force the user to select one, and if none is selected, the idea doesn't get posted.
Perhaps a warning screen? Maybe not. Offenders would learn fast enough.-- waugsqueke, Mar 05 2002 we could rename it other:blainez and just make ideas in it invisible to anyone but himself. he'll soon wonder why no-one's annotating.-- sappho, Mar 05 2002 [waugsqueke] Beat me to it. NO default catagory and if you click submit prior to selecting one, you get kicked back and prompted to select one.-- phoenix, Mar 05 2002 I think that there is a good reason for |other: general| to exist. Some ideas legitimately fall outside of the existing categories. What does irritate me is when ideas are plainly categorizable and the poster just cannot be bothered to think about it a little.
Grrr.-- bristolz, Mar 05 2002 Umhm. bris, I agree the category has its place. I think the user should have to select it purposely, though.
(Quite the formidable grrr, btw...)-- waugsqueke, Mar 05 2002 When I was young(er) and stupid(er) I popped a few things out there without regard to categorization. Perhaps there needs to be a further 'hint' on the page where the idea itself is created.-- thumbwax, Mar 05 2002 I never minded this much. It's hard to find one's way around these categories, and I don't blame newcomers for not having the patience.-- jutta, Mar 06 2002 It helps a lot if you go to some random idea in the category you want to post and click "Idea: New" from there. If you do that, the proper category will be auto-selected. It would be nice if the same thing would happen 'out' one level, but it doesn't. Still, if you know that going to a random idea will cause the right topic to be selected without having to scroll through the endless listbox, you can set your category much more easily.-- supercat, Mar 06 2002 My emphasis is on "plainly" categorizable. I agree that many ideas are really hard to classify and that it can be awkward.-- bristolz, Mar 06 2002 Jutta: One thing which would be quite useful if it doesn't exist already would be a page listing all of the topics. On IE there's no way to search for text within a list box, and I doubt there is on any other browser either.
Also, unless things have changed, hitting "New" within an idea defaults the new idea to that category, but hitting "New" within a category defaults to "Other: General". It might be good to make it default to the current category in that case as well.-- supercat, May 11 2003 //but hitting "New" within a category defaults to "Other: General". It might be good to make it default to the current category in that case as well. // I think that might add to the confusion.
as things are at the moment, all miscategorised ideas, at least are mainly grouped in one place. seems to me there are quite a few halfbakers who are prepared to shout suggestions after the idea gets posted.-- po, May 11 2003 supercat: see my_face_your's link. I too have that amongst my library of views, so I can locate the more arcane categories.-- DrCurry, May 11 2003 and so Other: general - is the only category that might at any one time be empty.-- po, May 11 2003 Could you provide a dialog box that says "Warning: Really post to other:general?"
I've noticed that if you're currently reading an idea in products:car:tires and you click "NEW", then your new idea defaults to products:car:tires. However, if you are in products:car:tires but not actually reading an idea, then when you click "NEW" you default to other:general. I think that last aspect should be changed. It's fooled me several times.
Thanks, -Phundug-- phundug, Jul 17 2003 halfbakery:forgot-to-assign- a-category.
I've found it helps very very much to have a copy of "All Categories" <linked> saved to disk (unless of course you *like* downloading half a megabyte each time)in MyDocs somewhere, and Bookmarked from there in the browser for easy access prior to Adding a post.-- FlyingToaster, Sep 28 2009 What [Phundug] said.-- wagster, Sep 28 2009 I'd be curious to know how many ideas there are on the bakery, it'd be nice to know what tiny fraction of a percentage my content makes up.-- kaz, Sep 28 2009 Statistics are a waste of time on the Halfbakery. There are 38,725 ideas and you have 32 ideas which is 0.08% of the total. Do you feel any better for having that knowledge?-- hippo, Sep 28 2009 Considering that we're probably either trying or accidentally being original, i think "other:general" has to exist simply because we're so brainy it should be easy for us to think "outside the box", except when it comes to avoiding management buzzword cliches, perhaps.-- nineteenthly, Sep 28 2009 [hippo] yes. It will have ceased to be an accurate number not long after you posted it, but my curiosity has been sated.-- kaz, Sep 28 2009 HERE'S an oldie that I found while searching. How about making the default "Other: Marked for derision until properly categorized" ?-- normzone, Jan 14 2014 [norm...] you are not fit for human consumption...PS: well done-- 4whom, Jan 14 2014 Other: Forgot to choose category-- FlyingToaster, Jan 14 2014 random, halfbakery