Could we get a strictly alphabetical categorization like before?

I miss the option of having all the categories listed alphabetically instead of them split up into Featured Categories, Chronological Categories, and Other Categories. Maybe it’s just me, but I find the former version easier to navigate and I’ve used this site less because it’s harder for me to find what I’m looking for. Could we get the option to lump everything together instead of splitting it into the different meta categories?

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Hey @Grimlock205, let me give this some thought. The list of categories was getting really long, and there were a lot of ‘uninteresting’ categories in that big long list. I felt like having the separate categories page, split into sections, provided a better experience.

I’ll share this feedback with the rest of the team and see what people think :slight_smile:

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Personally I liked the alphabetical system better as well. While I understand the issues that come with a long list, it feels much more convenient and easier to navigate. However, I want the site to do as they see fit. Just trying to provide some additional feedback

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Hey, sorry for the late reply. I understand why the changes were made and many probably like the new system, but it just hasn’t clicked for me. Is there any way you could provide both options to people? For instance, you could keep the new system as the default version and the old system as a sort of legacy version. The old one could probably fit nicely at the bottom of the page with all the other links. Thanks!

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Hey, I’ve thought about my issue with the new categorization and I think I’ve figured out why it isn’t working for me. My main problem is that I can rarely tell which “meta category” a category is located in.

For instance, you’d expect Mara Sov, an extremely important character, to be listed under “Featured”, yet she’s listed under “Other”. We have characters such as Saint-14, Ana Bray, and Asher Mir listed under the Featured category. These aren’t particularly important characters. And we also have characters like Petra Venj and Praedyth in “Other”. What’s the difference between Saint-14 and Praedyth in terms of relevance or interest? Does Asher Mir really deserve a spot in Featured over Petra? Why is Ana Bray specifically in Featured? Wouldn’t it make more sense to put The Bray Family in Featured, as Ana is kind of an obscure topic, whereas her family has their fingers in nearly everything Golden Age related?

It just feels kinda random. That makes it harder to find things. I think obscure and oddly specific topics (about things that aren’t usually relevant) should go in “Other”. Like Eris’ individual fireteam members or Holborn. The more important topics, such as Calus or Mara or Oryx, should be in Featured.

That’s a really good point, thanks for sharing.

I can tell you that “Featured” doesn’t mean what you think it means… “Featured” means that the category is of a good enough standard to be featured on the home page.

But I can completely see why you would think that, and I think we should do something to make this work better.

Thanks!

After thinking about categorization even more:

Your reasoning for dividing up the categories was sound: with more and more categories getting added, the list was getting cluttered and harder to navigate. But it is (in my opinion) even harder to navigate now. Due to the seemingly random classification of “other” and “featured”, I have to scour both meta-categories to find what I want, meaning not only do I have to search through two alphabetical lists, I must wade through every category in the archive. This accomplishes the exact opposite of the design goal. This perpetuates the problem!

By establishing a meta-category of important categories and one of obscure categories, you can effectively divide the archive in half whilst also signaling what each half contains. This can not only speed up and optimize users’ experiences, it can also allow for the creation of more specific and/or semi-redundant categories. For instance, I was reading some lore about the Pilgrim Guard and I thought it’d be nice if there was a category for it or for Titan orders in general. However, I realized that there probably wouldn’t be enough lore to warrant a category cluttering up the lists. If the archive is split into “important” and “obscure”, though, a category as insignificant as that could be safely added.

These are just my thoughts on the matter.

A post was split to a new topic: Missing categories