I won’t be at EthCC unfortunately, but I’ve just shared this with some folks trying to organize more technical protocol-related sessions.
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Ethereum Magicians improvement proposal
Hello Magicians,
I’ve often heard that the current structure of the forum can be overwhelming and difficult to navigate. To address this, I’d like to propose a reorganization of the categories. After a few iteration on the forum organisation, I agree with @jpitts , the best approach would be to organize the forum with tags: Categories > Subcategories and Tags. This will not only make searching for information more efficient but also reduce duplicates and open the door to more fine-grained features (e.g., category summaries and bridged messages).
I’ve experimented with this structure on a “test discourse” instance, Ethereum-sorcerers. Please note, this instance is purely for testing features and is not an active forum, feel free to join and try. Your feedback on these changes would be invaluable, and I’d love to see other contributors participate in the forum improvement process.
Proposed Changes & Features
- Categories & Tags Organization: Aligning with EIP-1, to ensure consistency and clarity.
- Light & Dark Mode: Introducing a Solar / Lunar theme to enhance visual comfort.
- Design Enhancements: Utilizing Ethereum.org assets for category icons & banners to create a cohesive and appealing design.
- Discourse Native’s Topic Template: Implementing templates that align with @timbeiko 's proposal for the EIPs category, ensuring structured and consistent discussions.
Proposed Categories & Tags
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| EIPs | Ethereum Improvement Proposals, an EIP is a design document providing information to the Ethereum community, or describing a new feature for Ethereum or its processes or environment. The EIP should provide a concise technical specification of the feature and a rationale for the feature. |
| RIPs | Rollup Improvement Proposals, standardizing and providing high-quality documentation for Rollups in the Ethereum ecosystem, tracked through Rollup Improvement Proposals (RIPs). |
| ERCs | Ethereum Request for Comments, proposing standards for Ethereum applications. |
| Protocol Call | Discussions and updates about Ethereum protocol development and upgrades. |
| Café | A place for casual discussions about Ethereum, site feedback, and topics that don't fit into other categories. |
| General | Introduction page and the big 'introduce yourself' thread. |
| Subcategory | Parent Category | Description |
|---|---|---|
| EIPs Standards Track | EIPs | A Standards Track EIP describes any change that affects most or all Ethereum implementations, such as a change to the network protocol, a change in block or transaction validity rules, proposed application standards/conventions, or any change or addition that affects the interoperability of applications using Ethereum. When creating a topic you have to chose one of the following tag |
| EIPs Meta | EIPs | Proposals describing processes surrounding Ethereum or proposing changes to processes. These often require community consensus and do not affect the Ethereum codebase. |
| EIPs Informational | EIPs | Informational EIPs describe design issues or provide guidelines to the community without proposing new features. |
| Tags Group: | Tags |
|---|---|
| Café Category |
|
| EIP Category |
|
| EIP Standards Track Category |
|
| EIP Status |
|
| Working Group |
|
Proposed Meta Improvement Process
Each category will have a subcategory dedicated to process improvements. The Café category could include a dedicated thread for site feedback and improvement proposals. This thread would allow anyone to request the addition of a tag, category, or subcategory or suggest changes. We can repurpose this very thread for that purpose.
Transition Path
We can follow this tutorial from the Discourse team to bulk move topics. I volunteer to manually reorganize the remaining topics and tags that wouldn’t fit in the bulk moves.
Proposed Timeline
I propose a two-week discussion period to assess these changes. If agreed upon, we can implement them promptly to have those changes presented during Execution Layer Meeting 191 & IRL in the upcoming EthCC sessions.
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Thanks @nicocsgy! Some suggestions
- Should “protocol call” category be “governance” instead? Seems much clearer about what is actually happening in the category.
- I would change the subcategories for eips to be: core, networking, interface, meta, and informational
- It isn’t super clear what “cafe” is for. I think something more descriptive like “community”, “magicians”, or “AllCoreMagicians” could help.
- For EIP tags, I would change “opcode” to “vm”.
- I think we can remove the tags for “EIP Standards Track Category” because the will be denoted via subcategory?
- EIP status tags seems like a nice idea, but I think the odds of them becoming stale are super high and then they become confusing. I would probably omit them at the start.
- I think we could rename “working group” tag category to “Governance” or something of the like. I don’t really think “breakout-room” makes as much sense in a “working group” category, but might make a lot of sense in a governance one.
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Hey @matt ,
Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated !
- Should “protocol call” category be “governance” instead?
I have no strong opinion on this one. But some of the calls aren’t really governance process like “peep an EIP”
- I would change the subcategories for eips to be: core, networking, interface, meta, and informational
Yes, I think this might be a better organisation as it relies less on the tags, I’ll try it.
- It isn’t super clear what “cafe” is for. I think something more descriptive like “community”, “magicians”, or “AllCoreMagicians” could help.
Yes, I am up for suggestions “community” seems a bit vague, “AllCoreMagicians” reminds me a bit of ACD so I’d prefer “magicians”. I also think “café” is good because welcoming.
- For EIP tags, I would change “opcode” to “vm”.
Yes, sounds good.
- I think we can remove the tags for “EIP Standards Track Category” because the will be denoted via subcategory?
Yep, agreed.
- EIP status tags seems like a nice idea, but I think the odds of them becoming stale are super high and then they become confusing. I would probably omit them at the start.
So we can “enforce” the selection of an “EIP status tags” for every new topic I think it’s reasonable to expect this from authors considering that new posts are very likely going to be " idea / draft ". The hard work would be to tag correctly all the existing posts. We can add or remove them easily anyway if they become too much.
- I think we could rename “working group” tag category to “Governance” or something of the like. I don’t really think “breakout-room” makes as much sense in a “working group” category, but might make a lot of sense in a governance one.
So “working group” isn’t a tag it’s actually just the tag group name it’s not shown anywhere it’s just to name the group. I think it’s fine to leave it as is.
Thank you @nicocsgy!
+1
Does this mean the naming of the “Cafe Category” also doesn’t matter, because it’s not shown anywhere?
fwiw “cafe” is more unclear/ambiguous to me than “magicians community” or something along those lines.
I like light/dark mode! But I would keep design choices generally very neutral and minimal, also wrt to ethereum.org assets etc.
Hello @caspar, thanks for the feedback
Does this mean the naming of the “Cafe Category” also doesn’t matter, because it’s not shown anywhere?
Yes “Cafe category” is the name of the group of tags related to the “Café” category. The name of the tag group is hidden but the Café category is there.
fwiw “cafe” is more unclear/ambiguous to me than “magicians community” or something along those lines.
Alright, probably worth a renaming and a better description then.
I would keep design choices generally very neutral and minimal, also wrt to ethereum.org assets etc.
The icons / banner could be an optional theme not on the default one. But I generally think a little touch of design (maybe not the ethereum.org assets indeed) would do good and align with the different websites across the ethereum ecosystem.
I like this as a starting point but I’m more interested in [bottom-up] curation over time than [top-down] curation upfront. If this is a community venue it shouldn’t need centralized curation or maintenance.
My proposal was that instead of “Working Group” being one more permanent category full of things that can go stale or need a top-down refresh every year, each category only exist as long as there is a Working Group actively curating it (tagging/untagging, splitting threads, etc). Heck, I’m sure there’s a discourse plugin that trigger actions when none of a given category’s designated curators have logged in to check their moderator inboxes for 30 days…
As someone else (seemingly with ChatGPT’s help) put it:
The primary goal is to ensure each category has clear, active curators
Hey @bumblefudge,
I don’t think the changes proposed introduce the need for curation or maintenance. The idea was indeed to propose something light enough so that it introduces no maintenance. The only actions required would be a few changes in the settings, some commands for the bulk moves and about 20 lines of CSS/HTML styling.
The changes would ensure that new topics in certain categories use the right tags (e.g. you open a topic in EIPs and you have to select the right subcategories and tags). Those categories and tags would be defined to best fit the current EIP process as described in EIP-1 and other finalized Meta EIPs.
I think it’s ok to expect from EIP authors that they follow those rules as ultimately their task to champion their proposal outweighs the few clicks to select the right category and status. As for the rest of the users, they remain free to reply and to create a new topic of their choice and to suggest a new category, as they are today. And the subcategories improvement process would stimulate meta discussion as this one.
The only thing that would change is that one would have to reply to propose tags in a meta thread rather than being able to create tag by himself (that might be modified if creating tags doesn’t mess with “tag groups”).
What you’re proposing is actually introducing maintenance. I am not against the idea, but I am not sure how to articulate it or if enough volunteers would show up. So I’d like to start with a lighter version that can work as proposed and build from there.
I’m also not convinced about the structure having a working group category full of things that can go stale so there would be one main category and people that are part of those “working groups” are assigned to the moderate the other categories ? IMHO for the protocol related categories we simply need a clear structure that mirrors the Meta EIPs (as this leaves less room for interpretation) and a few open categories for the community forum.
I do agree that more moderation would do good. But I don’t think there is a need for a plugin linked to moderators activity.
I applied the suggested changes to the sorcerer test discourse.
- Reorganised category to mirror Standard tracks EIPs with subcategories rather than a
Standard categorygroup tag - Bulk moved topics
- Renamed category
CafétoMagicians - Changed tags
opcodetoEVMand group tagsEIP categorytoTopic category,Café categorytoMagicians category - Removed Ethereum.org assets as category banners
- Removed Ethereum.org assets as category icons
- Enforced the EIP template in the corresponding EIP categories
To keep the design minimal I removed all the ethereum.org assets but I’d like to see some assets for EthMag as I think this forum could use some cool logos / icons. This would align with the overall ethereum vibe across websites, even tho I agree that EthMag’s doesn’t require a lot of assets as it’s a technical forum. I think we could agree to design a few good logo / icons, e.g the ethresear.ch logo is nice.
I suggest to keep doge-computer from William Tempest as a “small icon” which is displayed on the top left when you read a topic. Currently on EthMag the “small logo” is just stars. But IMO the “doge-computer” is an amazing small logo to represent the “reading EthMag” activity and it will be hard to design a better one.
vs
“doge-computer” from William Tempest :
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Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that your one-time update to the categories introduces MORE need for curation, I think the need for deputized curation has been a constant since inception and shuffling around the categories would give the false sense of having solved the problem for as long as it takes for them to go out of sync with where the humans are talking over time.
To put it another way, what the available categories are at a given point in time is orthogonal to how usefully they are curated over time, and no amount of tweaking the signage is good enough to do away with the need for humans to direct traffic in a context this noisey and emergent. Getting and retaining humans to direct traffic is, IMHO, the higher priority, and one classic way to retain volunteers is to give them ownership over their labor (i.e. the application of tags and categories, and the list of available tags and categories). Like reddit mods, a little bit of [highly local] authority and recognition goes a long way.
Letting them choose a category-specific icon might also help 
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No worries, I agree on the need for more curation and that human effort is needed at some point. I think that with an organised forum it reduces a bit the need for manual work hence the changes. But yes it will require some people to help as this is growing.
Cool ideas, I do agree recognition goes a long way and there are a lot of cool titles with the magician theme.