I like the system as it is now. It is not perfect but the best we can get right now I think.
What is the Challenge Category now ?
To meta-discuss challenges. How to post them? What kinds of challenges do exist /doc jams/ discussions – the meta-information you mentioned. How to moderate a challenge. How can people collaborate on them. Etc.
Why the Challenge Category still on top ?
(1) to have the guide “How to post a challenge” + other challenge tutorials prominently on top
(2) to have clear signal: this forum is about challenges
Why to post a challenge in all categories except the challenge category?
When I tested the forum, and I clicked on the challenge category – I was immediately lost, completely! All this lines of text, without context. Why should I read them, why should I care? I need a bit of meta-information to pull me in. The city is the perfect meta-information. “Ah, what are they doing in Shenzhen”… This would made me curious and help me to play and see how everything is connected in the world.
And often you care for stuff, that is close to you. Because you can do more with it.
In my test-run I had also this problem: Where to post my challenge/thing? Organizing a local event could be like a challenge or some parts of it. An idea or question could turn into a challenge. I never knew, where to post this. Now I know. I post it in the right category – my city, global documentation or whatever and add the challenge tag. I invite people to help me.
Yes, we saw the problem too – a challenge is about to be worked on in several cities across the globe. Isn’t this the main point of the OSCEdays? So why put it in a city? Exactly to make the global collaboration possible. What!? …What I like about the OSCEdays is the challenges. This means a real person raises a real question and is willing to work on it – there is already someone there. This someone is the initial and most important resource for that challenge. And a person has a location. And this location is almost the most important thing about this person. The best starting point – for international collaboration! I don’t recall if it was Hitchcock or Orson Welles who said something like: “You can’t let the story of a movie happen in an abstract time and place – it has to fail/suck.” Context is key.
Yes, yes. But what happens, if a challenge is started between different cities. Then I guess, let the people find a hack. For example they could post the challenge in “Other” or we could have a category “Global Collaboration” or they could use “Resources” or they could post it in “Brussels” and do all the work there and have just a topic in “Kuala Lumpur” too that links to the “Brussels” topic. - It’s a hack, it is not perfect. But all in all the best we can get at this point. Their decision what hack they will use, might be the first important meta-information you will get about this challenge.
btw. in the old system we had City-Categories and City-Tags. That was ultra-confusing. We don’t need this anymore.