Which categories to create in the site

[avsm]

Sure. Would it just be called ReasonML? (the name should be short)

[vramana]

I think that would be a little unfair for BuckleScript.

May be we can treat both Reason and BuckleScript as tags for now. Just have simple JavaScript or Web Category. OP or moderators can tag the topics as them seem appropriate. Along the same lines js_of_ocaml will be a tag as well.

[rgrinberg]

A few categories that i’d like to see:

• Windows
• Editors
• Opam
• Compiler
• Lwt

[bobzhang]

BuckleScript would be a killer application to the OCaml ecosystem if we can
get more love from traditional OCaml programmers : )

[avsm]

In the interests of avoiding early categorysplosion, I’ve created a Web category that can be a catch-all for ReasonML, Bucklescript, js_of_ocaml and the library ecosystem around this. If someone (@bobzhang @vramana?) could pin an introduction post there covering some of these, that would be appreciated.

[antron]

Does a category or pinned post for Lwt, and related projects, make sense, for general discussion and the issue/question traffic it gets? If a category, I am able to moderate it.

[paurkedal]

@mars0i

As a beginner, I don’t have strong feelings about this question, but I’m not against having a special category for beginners’ questions. The only complication is knowing when you have enough experience to ask a question outside of the beginners’ category, but that can’t be helped.

An alternative would be to have a broader “Learning” category, where it’s okay to post everything from basic questions to advanced topics, but where the interest is to learn new techniques. Experts can probably easily spot and skip over beginner threads if they wish. Would advanced topics scare away beginners? Or would it be an encouraging peek into topics to learn about later, like peeking through a book while still reading the introduction?

[mars0i]

@paurkedal

An alternative would be to have a broader “Learning” category, where it’s okay to post everything from basic questions to advanced topics, but where the interest is to learn new techniques. Experts can probably easily spot and skip over beginner threads if they wish. Would advanced topics scare away beginners? Or would it be an encouraging peek into topics to learn about later, like peeking through a book while still reading the introduction?

My opinions won’t serve as a representative sample of beginners’ opinions : -) but to me the name “Learning” and the presence of other beginner questions seem like sufficient encouragement.

[avsm]

@antron

Does a category or pinned post for Lwt, and related projects, make sense, for general discussion and the issue/question traffic it gets? If a category, I am able to moderate it.

@antron, rather than expand the few categories we have now, how about encouraging Lwt users to post on the forum, and then we can tag/categorise them as they come in? We have a couple of experimental categories for now, but the general advise has been to create them in response to traffic.

So you could create a pinned post about Lwt here, what sort of questions to ask, put a note in the Lwt README, and then when the questions come in we can create the appropriate categories. I’d like to do the same for Mirage as well, in the beginning.

[avsm]

@paurkedal

An alternative would be to have a broader “Learning” category, where it’s okay to post everything from basic questions to advanced topics, but where the interest is to learn new techniques. Experts can probably easily spot and skip over beginner threads if they wish. Would advanced topics scare away beginners? Or would it be an encouraging peek into topics to learn about later, like peeking through a book while still reading the introduction?

This seems fine to me; there is a rich history of great responses on deep typing topics on the caml-list

I’m travelling for the next few days, so I’ll catch up asynchronously on the discussions and see what @bobzhang (as moderator of the existing beginners list) would prefer to do, and then we can enact any changes to the existing category.

[objmagic]

sorry for the late reply. Maybe Jordan can help maintain ReasonML, Spiros can help maintain web, Jeremy/Frédéric/Mark can help maintain compiler (if they don’t have time I can try to help)?

[avsm]

@objmagic

sorry for the late reply. Maybe Jordan can help maintain ReasonML, Spiros can help maintain web, Jeremy/Frédéric/Mark can help maintain compiler (if they don’t have time I can try to help)?

All sounds plausible, but my recommendation would be to focus on picking one category first, establishing it (create the pinned post, send traffic here from the various online sources) and then move onto the next one. The original scope of the site was for beginners, so I just want to make sure that isn’t forgotten amidst the rush to move all the other things over

[mseri]

I think a Mirage category as suggested above would be useful, and probably I would also add lwt, js/js_of_ocaml and js/bucklescript

[bobzhang]

How about having questions and more refined tags like languages, libraries, typing etc

[bobzhang]

Btw, I am actively looking for a place for offline discussions about BuckleScript and its toolchain. I think having a dedicated category here would be ideal so that I would direct people here, other options would be a google mailing list but I think topics about BuckleScript may interest non-web programmers too.

[gasche]

I support the idea renaming the current “beginners” category in “Learning”. @bobzhang, would that work for you?

P.S.: Done.

[bobzhang]

It looks good to me, actually I get a little busy these days, would be
happy to transfer the maintenance to people who are interested, let me know
what I can help the transition!

[avsm]

@bobzhang

Btw, I am actively looking for a place for offline discussions about BuckleScript and its toolchain. I think having a dedicated category here would be ideal so that I would direct people here, other options would be a google mailing list but I think topics about BuckleScript may interest non-web programmers too.

Hosting Bucklescript and jsoo conversations here seems fine to me. Given there are no other discussion forums for it, I could create a category for it. It would be helpful if you could first create a post for the forum that describes it, points to online resources, and then I can pin that to the category.

[antron]

I’ve created a basic post about Lwt (About Lwt…). Can you please pin it?

By the way, I wanted to just call it “About Lwt,” but there is a 15-character minimum limit on the post title. That does seem too restrictive to me, though I’m sure it’s not the biggest issue for the Discourse site right now.

[avsm]

@antron

I’ve created a basic post about Lwt (About Lwt…). Can you please pin it?

I’ve gone ahead and created an Lwt category, which should nicely alongside the Core/Async them. For both of them, now would be a good time to direct users from your respective README/websites to point them to the category topic here.