Disappearing topics?

Yes. Only serious (or “real”) topics are allowed now.

I think they basically deleted all the topics that were not used in any questions, and then they have been editing the rest.

Hm… Ah ha. I liked some of the weirder topics I came across in profiles. Gave more of a sense of personality. :-/

Plus… “anthropology” is missing. That’s definitely a genuine topic, in my opinion. That’s like deleting “psychology” or something.

I liked that, too, but then some people “abused” it. Besides, they say they want to do more stuff with the topics, which requires that they all be serious.

I don’t know how I miss these things. How dare school take away from my fluther time and the announcements! :D

Thanks for your help. :)

Anthropology should be a valid topic… any chance it was misspelled, or had an errant punctuation mark in it?

Edit: http://www.fluther.com/topics/anthropology/

@augustlan No, I think it was because I had a specialized branch listed (“cultural anthropology”) instead of just the general field.

Ah, that’s probably it.

@augustlan Thank you, lady. :)

@DrasticDreamer Yes. I had “hostile negotiations”, and just like that, poof, it’s gone.

They didn’t delete this topic, though XD

@bob_ Oh god, that’s great. Haha!

@DrasticDreamer THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID! XD

It’s only a matter of time… :p

I think the reason for the more streamlined topics is to make the search function better. It also plugs into profiles better to find people who have the same interests as you etc.

I could be wrong on this put I am pretty sure that is where all the massive work is going. Last I looked nearly 100k edits were done to correct topic spelling and to unify them more.

I am awed by the complexity of all this. I can’t even figure out how to Halloweenize my puppy.

@JilltheTooth Your responses always make me giggle. :)

OMG nooooo! XD

@bob_ That’s a bummer. I thought it was hysterical.

@Pied_Pfeffer Eh, rules are rules. I do think they could have applied a grandfather clause, but whatcha gonna do. It’s really not that big a deal.

@bob_ how and why do you not have “Sandwiches” listed as a topic? Now, that is an egregious omission. Anthropology I can live without, but not sandwiches.

@CyanoticWasp I had “ordering sandwiches” as a field of expertise. They killed it. I make pretty mediocre sandwiches.

@bob_ I don’t doubt for a minute that you make awful / mediocre sandwiches; given how often you have to order them. (I make great sandwiches, but not to order.) Still, “Sandwiches” should be a topic, shouldn’t it?

I swear to Vader, if the Star Wars topic disappears, we are going to have problems.

@CyanoticWasp I actually think it is. Still, it’s not something in which I consider myself an expert.

EDIT: sandwiches is indeed a valid topic.

@rangerr Star Wars will never disappear! Besides, the beauty of disabling is that it is easily reversed. We enable and disable. :)

@free_fallin You’re so good to me. Forget Tim, we can get married.

Many of the topics that have “disappeared” are only currently disabled. When we start cleaning up the 90K topics, you’ll probably see some of them reappear.

@rangerr Hawt.

I was waiting for someone to ask about this!

A bunch of people myself included have been hella cleaning up topics. Topics that aren’t directly relevant may be removed, also topics that aren’t actually a topic e.g. “I like birds” on a question about birds, will be removed as well. Also like @andrew said, a ton are still disabled. If they make sense to the question, they’ll be left alone :)

@bob_ RE: Applying a grandfather clause: That wouldn’t necessarily be a smart thing to do because the topic pages are kind of like directories of knowledge. If we left crap topics and unrelated topics on questions, those knowledge directories wouldn’t work as well and there would be a bunch of stuff that wouldn’t make sense. If someone wants to know about sandwiches and went to the sandwich topic page, they’d have to sift through a mess of unrelated stuff which would most likely be really frustrating. It would also defeat the whole purpose.

@chels I wholly agree with that part: topics that do not “fit” the question should be removed (e.g., a question about music should not list “sandwiches” as one of its topics. I meant that the “silly” (or crappy or whatever other adjective have been used or might be used) topics could have been grandfathered. I don’t see how that would disrupt the “knowledge directories”. Furthermore, there is nothing in the guidelines that says that topics should not be humorous. The only two instructions are “Add a few keywords that describe your question” and “Try to add a broad category as well as a few specific words”. Rules should not be applied retroactively.

@bob_ I will address this is a blog post soon. The point is we cannot use “grandfathered” topics without shooting ourselves in the foot for what we’re trying to accomplish. There are plenty of other opportunities to flex your sense of humor. The reason we haven’t re-worded the topic section of the ask process is we’ll be removing it altogether in the future so a team of trained topic editors (which will be a much broader, less exclusive team) can properly assign topics. Point taken though, we’ll fix the language about topics in the ask process.