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Categories in the Mac Guides

 
I think I deleted/edited all the pages and categories you mentioned that you didn't have permission to change.

I moved the Forum Posts category into the Mac Guides category. I don't think it deserves to be listed on the main page since it's more a secondary categorisation of articles and not generally a logical place to look for something.

Some brief comments on the Guides category since I'm not sure everyone fully understands its purpose; it contains 'how to'-type articles as opposed to encyclopaedia-type articles, so it's not just a catch-all. Having said that, it might not be the most logical categorisation structure so I'm not completely against removing it.

The new Mac Hardware/Macs categorisation seems strange. Having the extra step of having to go to the "Macs" category after going to the "Mac Hardware" category seems unnecessary and could make hardware articles hard to find. For example, someone looking for "MacBook" might go to the "Mac Hardware" category and see articles such as "MacBook Upgrade Guide", but would have to read the list of subcategories quite carefully to realise they need to go into the "Macs" category. "Macs" and "Mac Hardware" have much the same meaning so it seems quite confusing.
 
HexMonkey said:
I think I deleted/edited all the pages and categories you mentioned that you didn't have permission to change.
Click to expand...

Thanks

HexMonkey said:
I moved the Forum Posts category into the Mac Guides category. I don't think it deserves to be listed on the main page since it's more a secondary categorisation of articles and not generally a logical place to look for something.
Click to expand...

That sounds sensible.

HexMonkey said:
Some brief comments on the Guides category since I'm not sure everyone fully understands its purpose; it contains 'how to'-type articles as opposed to encyclopaedia-type articles, so it's not just a catch-all. Having said that, it might not be the most logical categorisation structure so I'm not completely against removing it.
Click to expand...

I've been doing some changes, but I'll stop on this one for now. The problem with the guides category as it stands is that a lot of the articles should be somewhere else as well or just somewhere else. I think the best way forward is to give every article in it another category unless it really isn't appropriate and then go and recover any articles that are actually tips like that.

It'll need need a bit more work, but it'll make sure nothing is missed.

HexMonkey said:
The new Mac Hardware/Macs categorisation seems strange. Having the extra step of having to go to the "Macs" category after going to the "Mac Hardware" category seems unnecessary and could make hardware articles hard to find.
Click to expand...

I think you're right. Maybe its worth bringing the main articles into Mac Hardware and keeping the G3-G5 Macs in a category called G3 to G5 Macs or something.
 
I've emptied both http://guides.macrumors.com/Category:Networking_and_Internet_Guides and http://guides.macrumors.com/Category:Troubleshooting_Guides

The former doesn't have an equivalent in any other category, and the latter wasn't being used very effectively.

Of course if it looks like they'd be useful they can be re-added at a later stage.

Now I'm going to re-add articles to the Guides category as required and we should then be done apart from a small number of articles with no obvious category in Old Categories itself.
 
OK I've redone the guides category. So I've finally finished this :).

There are four articles remaining in Old Categories all of which frankly should be deleted.

http://guides.macrumors.com/High-Voltage_Differential has nothing to do with Macs or Apple.

http://guides.macrumors.com/I²C is only tangentally related to the sudden motion sensor, but still should go.

and the final article is on Vista Beta 2, which I have already whined about asked to be deleted.

The categories that are subcategories of Old Categories are all now empty and can also be deleted.
 
I've deleted "Old Categories" and everything in it. Thanks for your many hours of work Eraserhead.

I think the next big project might be to reorganise the Guides category by adding appropriate subcategories such as (for example) Mac Hardware Guides, Mac OS X Guides, iPod Guides etc. It's getting quite large as it is, and it might make it easier to find relevant articles.
 
HexMonkey said:
I think the next big project might be to reorganise the Guides category by adding appropriate subcategories such as (for example) Mac Hardware Guides, Mac OS X Guides, iPod Guides etc. It's getting quite large as it is, and it might make it easier to find relevant articles.
Click to expand...

It shouldn't be too bad, there are only 120 articles in the Guides category, so any changes should be much simpler than what I've done. And also you can also go through the standard categories to find the guide articles now.

I think getting more people editing the rest of the guides and getting people using the guides is the next step, especially from the iPod/iPhone side.

As well as a lot of very short articles there is a lot of good content already there.
 
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