💬 [Question] Categories - why we don't need them ;)

Created by: ulfgebhardt

💬 Question

As you all know, I have trouble with the Concept Categories. I think we will have to undergo a decision about how to approch it soon. Therefore I want to advocate my request to remove them here(again) in length:

What are Categories used for

1. Display Icons on the Post, including a Tooltip with the Category name on the post (card and post page)
2. Filter by Categories
3. The user is obligated to choose at least one Category when creating a Post, but a maximum of three

That is all they do as far as I know.

Whats the problem, can't you just shove it already?

4. The Implementation is according to @Mogge suboptimal, making it very hard to change the existing Categories or make them dynamic in any form
5. The admin has to define the Categories(once he could do that properly) - its not the user who defines them - therefore Categories are very static - the admin might not guess correctly what Categories the Community needs.
6. Translations have to be handled and is a lot of work assuming you have several languages
7. The use is very limited as stated above

What is your suggestion?

I believe we should replace categories completely by Tags. A Tag fulfills everything a Category does except the limits (it is very unpractical to define a maximum of Tags per Post like it is currently with Categories) A Tagsystem would enable to do the following:

1. Display Icons on a Post if certain Tags are present
2. Filter by a certain amount (admin defined / most used / any other metric) of Tags
3. We could force the user to choose at least one of the admin defined Tags for his post, a maximum would be unpractical but could be done on the admin defined Tags
4. The Tags would be dynamic by default since they are user defined
5. The admin can analyse the Tags used by the community to define useful filters. The admin actually gets help guessing what would help the user
6. Translations are not needed at all, since the users define the Tags. It would be useful to allow to define synonyms for filtering for the defined Tags. (e.g #Tree = #Baum or more practical #desk = #furniture)
7. The system is very dynamic and allows much more flexibility for the user, the admin and the developer (build a dynamic filter menu defined by the admin through tags etc...)

So what now?

We agreed on making it possible to disable Categories via an environment variable.

I understand @Tirokk when he says that a lot of work was put into that and it might be unwise to throw that away in light of some networks may be in need for static Categories.

Tho I want to spark the discussion if we want to use the chance that posting is currently not possible without defining categories (which are currently not seeded) to refactor the whole thing - Tags could (they cannot do that yet) fulfill all what categories do, as stated above.

We can consider these options

1. Disable via Config (✅ we agreed on that)
2. We could remove everything regarding Categories crippling the Software (features are lost)
3. Leave everything unchanged (🚫 I do not agree)
4. We could change it directly to a Tag system (e.g. Icons on post (which might need a synonym system already)). Removing the requirement to have Categories on a Post would not delay the release.

Please review your position in light of this wall of text