Would Fluther be improved if questions were pre-filtered into categories?

Fluther already does this for you, @lloydbird.

Look at the “Questions For You” on the right side of your screen where your account info is.

edited:
What @SpatzieLover said.

Additionally, note that you added “topics” as the third step of your question.

You can click on that and see other questions asked with the same topic(s).

That was the downfall of wis.dm fyi.

Plus, you can further refine the algorithm that selects the “questions for you” by what you list as your fields of expertise and hobbies and interests in your profile, and by sorting through your “questions for you” and clicking “not interested” for the kinds of question you don’t want to see. This will help teach the fluther server what kinds of questions you like and don’t like.

You can also use the “topics cloud” in the sidebar of the home page to look at questions under specific topic categories (or here’s the main topics cloud).

@SpatzieLover Yes, but at the outset of your interaction. I go on, I look at ‘such and such’ questions. Lets say I want to ‘choose’ to look at any questions about whatever, straight away,(without any intermediary), Can I do this?

@lloydbird Okay, simply click on topics instead of questions.

@Harp The home page seems to be sunny and quite devoid of any “clouds”. Can you please direct more specifically?

@lloydbird That entire page is a topic cloud. Click on a topic you like and you’ll see lists of questions regarding that topic. Otherwise type in a topic into the search area.

@lloydbird There’s the mini-cloud way down in the lower right of the home page (scroll down, it’s under your “Lurve” window; it looks like a big pile of words, some big, some little). There’s also a link there to the bigger, more comprehensive cloud. Clicking any of those words takes you to questions that list that topic.

@Harp @SpatzieLover Yes I know about these, but do my (or anyone’s) questions fall automatically into those places?
If so, I stand informed. And thanks. If not, then I am left with the prospect of ‘real-time’ trawling.

@lloydbird If the asker lists “philosophy” as a topic to a question, then yes, it will automatically appear if you click “philosophy” on the cloud. This obviously won’t work if someone does a bad job of topic-ing their question.

I just looked under ‘Fluther’ to see if this question is there, and it isn’t?

No.

@Jeruba Concise.

@lloydbird, unfortunately, you mistyped your topic tag as ”Fluther.” (with a period on the end).

Click on that link there and you’ll see that this question is tracked with other questions tagged as “Fluther dot”

@robmandu Lurve for catching that tiny issue

@robmandu Apologies for my ignorance, but ”..a period..”?
@SpatzieLover Glad to know that you are so easily pleased by such “tiny” issues.

@lloydbird A period is an issue…many websites have “issues” most of these are human related. At somepoint, some user typed in “fluther.” instead of clicking on the topic “fluther” (notice there is no period needed). So, when you asked your question, you most likely hit the topic “fluther (period added).”

Now, go click on your topic attached to your question and you’ll see a list of the topic fluther with a period added to each question in the list.

@lloydbird “full stop” to you Brits

@Harp Oh,I see. Thanks.
@SpatzieLover Take note.

@lloydbird No thanks

@SpatzieLover You’re welcome.

Full stop. Period. Fin.

@lloydbird You might want to work on this topic a bit

@robmandu Agreed.
@SpatzieLover You know, I might want “to work on” those questions. But your reason for offering them up to me, escapes me. Would you care to enlighten?

Eh. Too wis.dmy for my taste.

@AstroChuck Never been near it Chuck. So don’t know what you mean.

I don’t think I would like that. I will see an question sometimes that I think I really don’t have anything to add to and then I will after I read it. I think I would miss a lot of good questions if they were in catagories.

I would like to look for multiple tags. For example.
http://www.fluther.com/browse/tag/computers+sex/

I agree, the ” Questions for you” are sometimes remarkably relevant-but usually to a computer.
Categories are inevitable, otherwise, if it continues to grow subtlely increasing anarchy will ensue. Then more traffic cops will need to be deployed, I am sure there will be plenty waiting for the opportunity. I just can’t see how it can maintain it’s feel without some form of categorization, I agree.