Hey, I noticed there is no Datomic category. I believe it would be useful, as Datomic is (along with ClojureScript) a technology that is often used in tandem with Clojure. It also serves an excellent showcase of Clojure’s powers: “Clojure is so powerful, you can build a cloud database in it, and never need to ‘drop to Java’ for performance reasons”.
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At first blush, it makes sense to me. Let’s carry that thought a little further. Should there be separate categories for each Clojure library or associated technology? Each Cognitect product? Each company product which uses Clojure or ClojureScript? If no to any of these things, what limits make sense? Please note that these questions are not meant as an argument for or against inclusion or exclusion of any particular topic as a category: they’re only meant as an exploration to assist in framing an approach to what should be a category.
Furthermore you could just tag your post here with the Datomic tag.
Good point. I think it makes sense to direct people to the appropriate forums when they’re available.
Under Projects I generally add categories when there is interest from the project maintainers, in particular I’ve always invited people to use this as an alternative to a project mailing list, an offer that I feel far too few projects make use of. People who like mailing lists can subscribe/post/reply from the comfort of their email client, the rest can use the web interface, or subscribe with RSS.
I’d also consider adding topics there if there is general community interest to have them, even when the project maintainers aren’t necessarily hanging around here. I think this is especially relevant for “flagship” or other noteworthy projects. If this community wants to discuss certain things then that should be fine, regardless of the existence of other online communities.
In other words as far as I’m concerned I see no reason to object a Datomic category, but maybe instead of adding categories directly we can tell people to initially use a tag. When after a period of time it turns out the tag is really quite active, then that would be a good reason to convert those posts into their own category.
It would seem I have misunderstood what Clojureverse is and/or wants to be. For example I was quite surprised there is a Boot category, but no Leiningen one. Same with Datomic and ClojureScript.
The suggestion to use a tag is a valid one, but I feel it creates a sort of a chicken-and-egg problem - if there is no Datomic category, fewer newbies will post Datomic related questions. Therefore there would be less reason for Datomic experts to hang around to answer those. And so on.
Note that I’m using Datomic purely as an example here, I have no vested interests in it.
So between Slack, the mailing list, Stack Overflow and project-specific forums, I don’t quite get were Clojureverse fits.
I’m not sure I agree there should be a Datomic category given that Cognitect already provides a dedicated place for discussion / getting help.
Regarding project specific categories: I created the Tenzing & Boot categories and I think in the beginning of ClojureVerse the idea was that any project could, without much discussion, get a category under “Projects”. I believe this is still largely true if a project is looking for a place to centralize discussion and user support.
So to some degree I think of categories under “Projects” as “This is the place to discuss around X” usually with an accompanying note on a project’s README or similar. For Clojure or ClojureScript this will most likely not happen.
Whatever comes out of the discussion here should be documented in the “Projects” category’s description.
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There is a boot category because the boot folks explicitly asked for it. There is a ClojureScript category because people were already posting a lot of posts about ClojureScript. In hindsight should ClojureScript have been a tag? Maybe. It’s not an exact science. But deleting a category breaks links, so while creating a category is easy, deleting one is not.
Lately there has been a request for a new category about once a week, and I end up being the referee for that decision, but I very much do not want to decide these things on my own, so I push back a bit by default and see what comes out of the discussion. I personally like Datomic and would be happy to see a category, but it’s not about me. As an admin I need to make sure we strike a balance and don’t end up with hundreds of categories.
Our category structure is largely inspired by the elixir forum. Note that they only have two categories for specific projects, Ecto and Nerves.
Their “Dedicated Sections” became our “Topics” (note to self: start a discussion about “Testing” and “Deployment” topics).
But there are not projects in our “Topics” because we have a dedicated “Projects” parent category. This stems from the fact that ClojureVerse started out as the Chestnut mailing list, and that when we became ClojureVerse, we invited other projects to also use it as a mailing list host. The benefit here of a category over a tag is that you can subscribe to it (or mute it), so the project’s in-crowd can be notified of every message. They’re almost like sub-communities.
The value propositions of ClojureVerse are: a deliberately welcoming and inclusive space, a focus on learning and community development, and long-form, asynchronous discourse.
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