Does-this-site-have-a-forum-section-by-categories

Hi Larry, no this site doesn't have forum categories.

Those 'logical groupings' on the WL6 website required constant maintenance because as a rule users would place their topics in the wrong section. It's good that we've dropped those categories here.

That's your point of view and that's fine.

But this "discussion" forum is mainly a support forum, nothing more, nothing less.
The topics are all about feature requests, bug reports, and how to use the software.
Content related topics about strategies, indicators, optimizations, trading many other interesting points using this software are rare.

This is partly or even mainly due to the community but also because everything runs through one channel.

Agree, I’d love to see categories like on the old site but I’ve been outvoted 🥲

I've been holding out on this suggestion because Apache Solr is designed for indexing huge website and enterprises of over 500,000 pages. You're really killing a sparrow with a sledgehammer to used it on a small website. But if you use it conservatively, it could do some good.

I would use it to:
1) Automatically create five/six "running compiled indexes" of common categories like the WL6 forum has. Take time to define the selection criteria for these five indexes. "Minor" overlapping between indexes is acceptable.
2) For ranking the searches, I would give words in the Subject topic higher rank than those in the body of the discussion.
3) Create a glossary of key buzz words, and up the search ranking of those words as well.
4) Add an autocomplete feature on the search line, which could be based on the primary glossary.
5) Have your hosting service maintain the Apache Solr code base.

Disable most of the other features because your website isn't big enough to need them. For example, do not try to do subcategories; that's for sites like Amazon to do. The five major indexes should be enough. Keep it as simple as possible so it's easy to support! (And you don't want to give users too many search choices either.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Solr

Solr is Java software, we're all NET-based. We don't need more overhead and maintenance for absolutely nothing gained.

Correct subject topics for Solr ranking would not appear out of nowhere. Original titles always come short and it's been a tedious everyday job of summarizing all those "Questions about the building blocks" into "Buy when Close is above MA +/- ATR factor in Blocks?"

QUOTE:

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Original titles always come short and it's been a tedious everyday job of summarizing all those "Questions about the building blocks" into "Buy when Close is above MA +/- ATR factor in Blocks?"
...

Imho you don't need to do that. That's an overhead you create yourself.
A standard search tool will help the user to find the right topic and content.

It makes sense for you as a developer to answer feature requests, bug reports, and user handling topics.
Tagging and renaming the topics for you is certainly helpful for you or for the users.

But it is not necessary for general discussion posts.
Here is ultimately the moderation in the foreground, where you are mostly passive as a moderator. The idea is that the community exchanges. The moderators only pay attention to the fact that the contact with each other is correct and the topics are appropriate. Of course, a moderator can also participate in a discussion as part of the community, in case of personal interest.

Well, none of this matters as long as the community does not offer topics.
A handful or two of posts that were not "support" related in 5 months does not justify an outline. At best, however, it would be encouraged.

For me, I love forum categories. On the old site, I would actually go to the categories I were interested in and read them daily. I also went back thru a good portion of the history. Very good learning tool.

When I post a question, and someone posts it was posted before, just so you know, I do do a search, but don't find what I was looking for. However, it there was a category for Strategy Monitor, I would read and brows on that category.

I would think it is possible for us to have categories and also possible for the Moderators to view all messages regardless of Category, so they can answer.

Also, I think not having categories makes more work for the Moderator, as I would think categorized topics would have input from the larger participants.

Thanks,
Larry

QUOTE:
Solr is Java software, we're all NET-based. We don't need more overhead and maintenance ...

So use a simpler NET-based (or Google-based) solution instead. You don't need anything as feature rich as Solr. The Google-based solution won't have running (real-time) search indexing as a local solution (Solr) would, but it would probably be fast enough.

Also, I wouldn't redesign the Java code base for Solr. Have your hosting service host Solr and just configure the package as necessary with minimal changes to the code base itself.

QUOTE:
Correct subject topics for Solr ranking would not appear out of nowhere. Original titles always come short ...

Agreed. Google search has the same problem. What Google did was create an autocomplete on the search line--and the topic line--which can be based on the primary glossary. The goal here is to help the original poster come up with a meaningful topic title using the right buzz words.