@noiasca, see post #51 
@PerryBebbington got it right 
didn't spot it in #51. Anyway ... if it needs an explanation - it's not obvious. Put them together.
This is an either / or as below
"Board detection, upload problems, bootloaders" < Technically incorrect but acceptable.
"Board detection, upload problems & bootloaders"
"Board detection, upload problems and bootloaders"
Normally there is some form of qualifier for the last item in a comma separated list in English.
They could all be considered correct but the latter two are technically more appropriate.
Commas in a Series | Usage, Rules & Examples - Lesson | Study.com.
Do you put a comma when listing three things?
A comma should be used between each item if there are no conjunctions between them.
Make sure to place a comma behind each item on the list except the last item.
Prefer the last version suggested by sterretje as it flows better.
It also represents how most "True English" speakers would approach the list.
Cannot speak for other types of English as they may represent some words incorrectly. 
After some thought I wish to challenge the justification for having product specific categories. At the moment people can post about a problem with their project on, for example, their Uno in at least 2 different, equally valid places. They can post in the various relevant sections such as Programming or Displays etc, or they can post in the Hardware section for a Uno. How would they know? I don't know. Do you know? What kind of question merits a question in the hardware section for the device the person has as opposed to a question in the section for the kind of problem they are having?
Now I know this suggestion will get a lot of pushback from Arduino because I know they like a section per kind of device, so please, before saying this is a bad idea, give it serious thought.
@PerryBebbington I am 100% with you on this and was on the verge of posting something similar
I have always thought that there are far too many categories, so much so that at the extreme I suggest that all we really need is Hardware, Software and Installation categories open to user posting
Having product or hardware type categories is no guarantee that they will be used and certainly not that they will be used properly
The forum has excellent search functionality and as it is a database I would hope that it also has report writing functionality that would allow "The Management" to analyse how many topics were opened on a particular subject if that is what they want. I venture that would be more accurate than relying on a user posting in the right product specific category
As you can tell from my proposal, my opinion is that we should have a smaller number of more general categories with a minimum of subject matter overlap between them. So I am receptive to the proposal of removing the product categories.
I didn't give any consideration to including that in my proposal because I had indications that the Arduino company wants these categories.
I do see a pattern where some users monitor the categories of products they are specifically knowledgeable about or interested in supporting or discussing. Some of the newer products (e.g., #hardware:opta) have distinct tooling and software ecosystems. So I do think there is some value in this categorization structure, but you could say the same for the subject-specific categories like #using-arduino:displays and #using-arduino:motors-mechanics-power-and-cnc that I proposed to merge.
But those two are "chalk and cheese" and at best an example of how NOT to merge two sections.
Am sure that some of the Arduino hardware can be merged product wise.
Also quite sure that a couple in there need to be simply archived as they perform no active function. IIRC It was a proposal I also made many many moons ago.
A new user will probably pick the first one. With the proposals here, that would be: Development Tools / Arduino IDE.
It will be the same problem all over again, the moderators will be busy moving posts from new users.
Some say that new users should read the rules first, but they don't.
A new user that can not get a display or sensor working does not know if that is a "project" and does not know if it is hardware or software. I suggest a "General" category as the first one.
I would like to put all displays + motors + sensors + storage + programming questions + Nano family + Portenta Family and so on in the same "General" category. I never use those categories and it causes confusion for new users. Questions are often about multiple things.
One "General" landing category and when a topic is created, there should be an option to select [I2C] or [Motors] or [Portenta] and so in the topic title. Perhaps moderators can add that as well.
Less topics is better. Some might feel the urge to put sub-categories under "General", but we have to resist that in my opinion.
New users might also not know what "Development Tools" are, and might not know what a "IDE" is. It needs its own topic, but perhaps the "General" topic will also be allowed.
My suggestion is:
- General (questions about hardware, coding, everything)
- Tools (Arduino IDE, Web Editor, IoT Cloud)
- ...
- ...
- International
- ...
- ...
- Projects
- Gallery
- Tutorials
- Community
- Website and forum
- ...
Then every new user will land in the "General" topic. Finally some rest for the moderators.
Set language default as part of user profiles.
Most of the posts are really questions about a project and a mix of hardware and software. So rather than make a meaningless category requiring moderator actions why not make the General « Ask your question here » category the first one ?
I also think that International would need to be more prominent and I would call this category differently as actually the English speaking forum is the truly international one whereas other are more language / region specific - maybe more national than international (although languages are shared amongst countries)
As for simplification I don’t think we need more than 4 categories
- Post your question here
- Explore those Tutorials
- Check out those finished projects
- Come here to unwind and relax.
The forum tool has changed, it’s a database and it’s easy to see all new posts or use a search filter
There is an argument that could be made that any top category - if it’s meaningful for a specific audience - could use those 4 elements to cater the needs of that sub-community
I'm one of the people who has moved many miscategorized topics every day for years and my experience doesn't match that claim. The miscategorized posts are on every possible subject and in every possible language. They should be moved to the correct category instead of mixed into a general project guidance category.
Would that be done by changing the structure of the categories? If so, please provide a detailed description of your proposed structure.
Can you suggest a new name?
Thanks! I knew there was some previous related discussion about this, but didn't make the time to search it out before I made my proposal here.
I think this would be best done by having a home page for the forum that is not driven by the forum software and which would provide a nice adaptative layout with deep linking straight into various categories
I still need to find the time to open a new discussion on this as you requested -even though I think it is very much related to what’s being discussed here in the first place because what you are trying to solve for (newbies being lost in all the categories and posting in the wrong place and not reading the rules) is really due to the forum’s entry page that is not straightforward to grasp
If we had a nicely designed landing page then having tons of categories and subcategories would be less of a problem
I'm fully in favour of that.
I have long been thinking about that. I did not participate in any topics for the new forum (before 2021) so missed my chance to add the suggestion. Once the new forum went live I considered it a boat that had sailed.
Discourse (or the forum) supports combo boxes as far as I can see (e.g. when creating a new topic, one selects the category from a combobox).
So adding a combobox to force a user to select a board should be possible.
- It would basically make the "Official Hardware" category redundant; for 3rd party boards (e.g. ESP8266/ESP32, STM..., ...), a board category "Other, please specify" in that combobox can be used.
- It will result in participants always knowing which board is used regardless of which category is selected.
One can think of other required information; it might not always apply to a specific category but the used operating system comes to mind for certain categories.
As I hinted in my proposal to remove the product categories I suspected Arduino would not like it, I'm glad you do. How do we persuade Arduino that this is a good idea?
One possible solution to the issue of the product categories is to have a major and a minor category or categories for each thread. After all, these categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive. It should not change what has already been discussed, which could be viewed as a restructuring of the major categories. It could also be simple to implement. The user creates a new thread/topic based on the selected major category. Say he opens a thread under the proposed "Programming" category. Now he is given an additional pull down option of a minor category and can chose the "Product Category" say "Arduino Nano Every". The thread would be appear under both under the major category of "Programming" and also under the Product Category of "Arduino Nano Every".
This would also support volunteers who scan only a subset of the product categories.
EDIT
The same could apply to languages: Chinese, English, German ....
The All Category page gives some statistics about those top category usage, usually in posts per week or month or a total number of posts (I suppose when traffic is very low)
| Top Category | posts / week |
|---|---|
| Using Arduino | 536 |
| International | 114 |
| Hardware | 35 |
| Software | 24 |
| Community | 18 |
| Project discussion and showcase | 8 |
| Development | 7 |
So it seems to me there are 2 clear winners in terms of focus: people go into "Using Arduino" or the International section. After that it drops pretty quickly.
When it comes to the Arduino hardware dedicated categories, the traffic is at 35 posts a week overall with some stale categories probably as the forum tool does only report the total number of posts and not the weekly or monthly traffic
| Category | posts / week |
|---|---|
| Nano Family | 15 |
| Portenta | 11 |
| GIGA R1 | 11 |
| MKR Family | 6 |
| Arduino Due | 3 |
| Opta | 3 |
| Arduino WiFi Rev2 | 2 |
| Arduino Education Kits | 2 |
| Nicla family | 2 |
| Arduino Zero | 1 |
| Arduino GSM Shield | 1 |
| WisGate Gateways | 1 |
(it does not add up to 35/week so I suppose there are some roundings happening and monthly posts would probably be more meaningful)
just for completeness, some of the stale categories have a fair number of posts.
| Category | Total Posts |
|---|---|
| Arduino Yún | 4100 |
| Arduino 101 | 727 |
| The Arduino Starter Kit | 520 |
| WiFi Shield 101 | 177 |
| Arduino Esplora | 125 |
| Materia 101 | 100 |
➜ in my opinion that traffic would not justify separate categories for the weekly use of the forum
➜ but they do constitute over time probably a good repository of frequent issues or questions about a given hardware, making it easy to see everything in one place or have a focused search. This could be the value of those specific categories if they were THE knowledge base for all the questions about a specific hardware product but in practice those questions are all over the place and often in Using Arduino's subcategories (Programming Questions and Project Guidance). => I wish we could tag a post with topic labels or let the forum tools add them automagically using AI/ML
Zooming onto Using Arduino there are also 2 clear heavy weight
| Category | Post / week |
|---|---|
| Programming Questions | 223 |
| Project Guidance | 141 |
| General Electronics | 39 |
| Sensors | 25 |
| Networking, Protocols, and Devices | 23 |
| Displays | 19 |
| Avrdude, stk500, Bootloader issues | 16 |
| Installation & Troubleshooting | 14 |
| Motors, Mechanics, Power and CNC | 14 |
| Microcontrollers | 8 |
| LEDs and Multiplexing | 6 |
| Interfacing w/ Software on the Computer | 4 |
| Audio | 3 |
| Storage | 1 |
whilst the tutorials seems to be barely used as no weekly/monthly reporting
| Category | Total Posts |
|---|---|
| Introductory Tutorials | 167 |
➜ seems to me this is not a frequent posting place and should not be part of a subcategory. It's probably a destination for those willing to learn and would benefit to stand out.
And Zooming onto the so called international category shows also that some are more used than others (and discrepancy because the language in the India category is in English - why are they standing apart then?)
| Category | posts / month | Note |
|---|---|---|
| French | 224 | |
| German | 182 | |
| Italian | 102 | |
| Spanish | 93 | |
| Portuguese | 11 | |
| Dutch | 6 | |
| Russian | 2 | |
| Chinese | 1 | |
| Scandinavia | 1 | They have different languages there ! |
whilst India seems to be barely used as no monthly reporting
| Category | Total Posts | Note |
|---|---|---|
| India | 315 | posts are actually in english with tons of locked topics… |
Such data could be used to inform the decisions (and hopefully build a meaningful landing page)
The Hardware Section - seems to me not to be used often. Who needs it?
At least one change could be done:
Hardware / Nano Family
Beside the questionable naming convention of "Nano Products" imho the Subsection "Classic Nano" should be closed and the people should be guided to use an appropriate section like for any other UNO or MEGA.
The situation might improve if we learn something about why some people hit the wrong category and if something is done then to address the root cause. I don’t think people post questions in tutorials as the result of a conscious choice of posting there for example.
That’s how I understood the idea of the honeypot.