Discussion on the Idea of Creating Categories for this Forum

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#1

People have expressed interest in the idea of creating categories for this forum. Unlike in forums I’ve worked on in the past, I actually purposely didn’t create any categories in this forum because I didn’t know what categories would be appropriate, and I also wanted to make interacting on this site as easy as possible.

I’m still not sure we need categories, but I’m open to the idea and wanted to get feedback.

Here are some of my initial ideas on the issue of “categories” for our forum. Please add your own comments and suggestions. These are not complete thoughts… just some initial place to start the discussion.

I should also be clear that the categories in this forum software are not like the categories in most other forum software. They are more like just “tags” for the post. There is still a main forum listing with all the posts of the forum - the “home” of the forum, and this would not change. So you would still have this: Rapamycin Longevity News - Anti-aging User Group & Discussion Forum, Learn, Connect, Live Longer, Healthier.

I just want to be clear that we aren’t losing anything by adding “categories”. (well, I guess we are losing a little in terms of simplicity, which is something I value).

Even with categories.

Goals

My first question is what are the goals behind having Categories. What do you think the goals of the Categories should be?

One possible goal is to make it easy (easier) for navigation to content areas that people are most interested in. Minimal hassle to users. Easy to understand.

Other goals:

You only have to read the categories you’re most interested in. If you only want to read about longevity drugs you can, if you only want to read about supplements you can. But I’m not sure if this is very valuable; I think most of us are interested in anything that helps significantly in improving healthy longevity.

Another goal might be to make it easy to get all the posts on a key topic that you are interested in. For example if you are new to Rapamycin and are interested in learning all about it - maybe you want to be able to have a “Rapamycin” category without any clutter of other topics. Or if you’re planning on starting Acarbose, perhaps you want all the discussions focused on Acarbose.

Now, of course you could always use the search feature at the top of the page. But the difference in this case would be that in the categories you would only get the threads of discussion that had been self-identified as focused on “acarbose” and not all the miscellaneous mentions of “acarbose” that might pop up in the messages (like this message for example). So you’d get a more focused list of threads if you looked at the threads categorized as “Acarbose” related.

Are there other ideas for possible goals of the categories?

Possible Category Approaches

There are a lot of possible category approaches. some narrowly focused, some broader in scope. These approaches are in part driven by the goals. Here are some initial thoughts (incomplete). What are some other category approaches or ideas do you think are interesting?

Major Anti-aging/Longevity Drugs and Supplements focused categories

  • Rapamycin
  • 17-Alpha Estradiol
  • SGLT2 inhibitors
  • Acarbose
  • Astaxanthin
  • Fitness
  • General Health
  • ITP Program

Segmentation By Broader Categories:

  • Longevity Drugs
  • Supplements
  • Fitness / Exercise
  • General Health
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#2

To paraphrase a couple of wise seers…

“These are not the categories you’re looking for…”

“CATEGORIES!”
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

I think people are looking for something that this software does not provide.

Bonus points if you know where those quotes come from.

And yes, this post exemplifies why some think we need categories.

Highly ironic, isn’t it?

#3

Personally I don’t mind. The free text search is going to be the best way of finding things and I look at the forum based upon which topics have recent posts. That won’t change with categories.

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#4

I have never used categories in Discourse, I only go to the forum front page. The one which displays the most recent posts.

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#5

I personally prefer seeing the recent discussions that come up on the forum. I think categories would more than likely benefit in a organizational sense(like you mentioned), but I also think categories are really catering to the niche group of people on here who want to focus on one aspect of information or another. I mean you do have the search function on the top right of the page…
At the end of the day I like what you have done with the forum over the years. Regardless of the changes you decide to make, I will still support you and this site.
Maybe do a trial run with the ideas you talked about for “categories” and get feedback after.

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#6

I’ve had trouble using tags. When attempting to add a tag I’m informed by the software it doesn’t exist, even commonly used subjects and phrases on this site.

Perhaps if tags were more functional categories wouldn’t be necessary, as you’d just search for the tag.

Or maybe I’m just doing it wrong lol.

I do agree that the text search has worked for me most times.

#7

When I go to the bookstore, it is usually to browse. If I wanted a specific book, I could order it online, and go and pick it up. Same with visiting the NYPL. Searching limits your interests. Browsing presents you with books that you may not have been interested in, initially, but catch your interest with the title. So you read the back cover, and the first few pages. Browsing expanded my interests, which a zeroed in search could not produce.

Same experience with age reversal forum. I did not know about GDF11, but it is presented as a category. So I click, and poke around. I did the same with AMPK activation. The latest post directs you to the most recent interest, which may not present you with other topics, if they had been discussed fully, long before you became a member. Senolytics is one such example at age reversal forum. There is a post there that run (is running) for three years, but has now had no new input.

There is a section there, on latest posts. So there is the benefit of both features – categories and latest posts. Latest thread, running, is not about aging. So I can just go to the categories, and not have to scroll way down.

I concur with your proposed categories. I would add testing though, because there have been posts about various tests, their price, and value in biological age calculation [Bryan Johnson belongs there, because their efforts (Johnson and Zolman) are more abut testing and the Zolman clinics. There is little info about rapamycin or other aging strategies].

I would also add a section on buying, because there have been queries about where do I buy this and that, so new members can just go to that category if searching for places/websites to buy from.

The categories can evolve, and new ones added, as members post new topics that generate responses. Single posts with little interaction can go to “Miscellaneous”.

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#8

I don’t see a need to change the format, and the search function works well. Also, there is so much overlap in topics that categorization will become a time-consuming task.

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#9

‘Topic restriction’ as a form of website life extension.

I like the ability to come here and read about rapamycin-related info, and then in the process learn about some of the other healthspan/lifespan related drugs. And the skin-restoral thread has been very enlightening and helpful.

But do ‘fitness’ and ‘general health’ topics belong here? Is it a good idea to expand the scope of what the website covers?

JMO

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#10

I’m not trying to expand the scope of what the website covers - its always going to be rapamycin and other longevity drugs as the primary focus. But some people occasionally bring up fitness topics, and I need somewhere to put them if they’re going to be categorized. But perhaps those are the types of things that are just left uncategorized. I guess we can’t expect to have categories for everything…

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#11

That is one of my concerns. Figuring out what “category” a post goes into is not that easy in many cases… as it could fit in many. Just look at the forum topics over the past week and try to categorize them… its going to be a hit or miss sort of situation in many cases.

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#12

The only separate category I would put in would be for prescriptions, purchasing and logistics.
Everything else stays the same.

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#13

There can be more categories, I just don’t think most would use them. It won’t make a difference for those who just read among the latest posts. And people who lurking which is the majority of users. Those who start new threads will have more categories to choose from. So it doesn’t have to mean more work for RapAdmin. Except choosing new categories. Maybe it will help search results with more categorization.

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#14

Tags are more useful and more flexible than Categories. Tags will give you the best of both worlds (categories and no categories). Does this software support tags?

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#15

Yes, when you create the title of the post you can add tags.

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#16

I’ve found this site hard to use for a long time, and I think it’s the lack of categories or sub forums. I think this has led to attempting to split off threads, ie., the canagaflozin part 1 and part 2. In that case, the discussion happened in part 2 for a long time, before switching back to the original thread for some reason. At other times, parallel threads pop up that have similar names, but if someone is reading an older thread (like canagaflozin part 2) they may be unaware of the new discussion. If there were a SGLT2 sub forum for example, it would be easier to see current discussion topics happening in that category.

Second, some of the threads get very unmanageable, which could be related to the lack of sub forums. The cardiovascular thread is a good example, which has about 1500 posts in it currently. I feel like people add to that thread rather than starting a new post related to that topic because there’s no sub forum.

Another related point is the lack of pages for organization. Like the main forum page, each thread is an continuous scroll of discussion. The smaller scroll bar is somewhat useful, but then I feel challenged to remember what month and year something was said if I’m trying to go back and find something. It’s easier to remember what page something was on. Again, imagine the cardiovascular thread having pages: this would be anywhere from 30-75 pages on other forums, if say, there were 50 or 20 posts allowed per page. I have to believe a 75 page thread would get broken off into the other side discussions that happen.

Ultimately I feel like the people who designed this forum software wanted to reinvent the wheel to make something that looked different from traditional forum software. Even after using it for about five months, I still do not find it intuitive.

#17

Thanks for the thoughtful response and considerations. I’m still thinking about adding categories, but as I look at the main forum thread (e.g.

> https://www.rapamycin.news/latest

and think about how I would put all these threads into said categories it gets a lot more complex. There are so many threads that don’t fit neatly into a single category… if a post is talking about using rapamycin and acarbose does it go in the rapamycin category or the acarbose category? Does a thread about Joan Mannick and mTOR go in rapamycin, or some other “Rapalogs” category? Where does a thread on " Aspirin while taking Rapa and Acarbose? go - Rapamycin or Acarbose?

And the issue is not so much what you or I would decide - its that everyone is going to make a different call, so you’re going to have stuff “misidentified” compared to how you or I might categorize things… as you can see, in discussions people frequently meander off topic onto other things. I’m not into heavy moderation, and spending a ton of time reclassifying things, so that is also a constraint.

My question to myself is do the categories provide any benefit over and above just searching on key words you are interested in?

Here is a draft of the categories I’m still considering:

  • Rapamycin
  • 17-Alpha Estradiol
  • SGLT2 inhibitors
  • Acarbose
  • Fitness / Exercise
  • ITP Program
  • Ordering / Shipping / Etc
  • Fitness / Exercise
  • General Health
  • Supplements

Suggestions for improvements on this list are welcome!

The paging aspect is something I’ve never considered, but each message is identified by a number and has a discrete permalink - so I kind of see it as similar.

Some threads do get very long - e.g. the 17 alpha estradiol thread was getting long and when discussions started to shift from the science and papers to implementation - I created a new thread focused more on use and experiences. The Rapamycin and Cardiovascular thread is so long and meandering it was hard to see how to split it up into subdiscussions once it got going…

The “part 1, part 2” are kludges I use to get around the fact that I’m using forum software for both the forums and the home page “blog” aspect. I perfer having a single piece of software to use rather than a wordpress/forum software mashup, as it simplifies my management tasks (mostly) but it does have some downsides.

I appreciate the thoughts and input. Ultimately I’m going to continue to try and improve what we have (not throw it all out and go back to the old school forums that admittedly many people may be more familiar with).

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#18

Yeah definitely not advocating going clean slate, but there’s probably a way to organize a bit better. Here are a few ideas I had:

  • Rapamycin
  • 17-Alpha Estradiol
  • SGLT2 inhibitors / Acarbose / Metformin => Glucose control
  • New/Emerging Drugs/Therapies (maybe once something gets a critical mass, it can be split into its own category)
  • Topical drugs/skin + hair issues
  • Fitness / Exercise
  • ITP Program
  • Ordering / Shipping / Etc
  • Fitness / Exercise
  • General Health
  • Supplements

You might also consider a category for people’s logs, as there seems to be quite a few of those posts.

Personally, I see rapamycin as the backdrop for everything on this site, so anything that’s “rapa + X” would go in the category of X.

I can also definitely see moderation and moving stuff around taking up time, so minimizing that is crucial. In theory, if there was a uniform system of tagging stuff, you could look up by tag. But many people either don’t tag properly or at all. So maybe if people go to a certain category/sub forum to create their post, they’d be more likely to get things categorized somewhat more correctly.

Either way, I’m super glad this place exists and I found it!

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#19

It’s never going to be perfect. I really think this forum is far superior to most other forums I visit. Personally, I mainly use “News” to keep abreast of what is currently going on. If I have a question or want to post on a particular topic, I just use your search function to find answers and an appropriate place to post.

Nothing is really broken and I wouldn’t be in any great hurry to fix it. The occasional tweak will do.

I have nothing but kudos for this forum.

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#20

I enjoy the current format and see no need to change. I definitely agree with a previous post that mentioned stumbling across topics that are new which I know nothing about which expands knowledge in this field. Rarely am I looking for something in particular except to hear about other’s opinions and new research or ideas.

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