Agree completely with these two esteemed posters. Now’d be an excellent time to put this change into place.
Just over a week ago I launched a thread about the then-impending Hurricane Isaias intending that we could discuss its progress, our preparations, and if necessary our response to the disaster as it befell those of us in the path from the Windward Islands to the Canadian Maritimes. The thread, like the storm, was a bit of a damp squib. But that was unknowable when I posted.
And I dutifully put it in MPSIMS while thinking just how inappropriate that forum was, despite that being the TPTB’s guidance for news threads. And so the thread began with the semi-obligatory disclaimer:
Neither mundane nor pointless, but …
When we routinely start threads whose first sentence amounts to “I know this is the wrong category but it’s the closest we have”, there’s something wrong with our categories.
Further on @Riemann’s meta-point about Discourse enabling things that vBulletin could not. …
Discourse is much less category-centric. One can choose to view the flow of posts and and topics through the category mechanism or one can view them across the board holistically via the latest & unread features.
Yes, there is a danger to an excess number of too-finely divided categories. But I submit that Discourse’s design reduces that risk. Which alters the terms of the trade-off in favor of a “News & Discussion” or “Current Events” category. The fact it was judged not-really-worthwhile under vBulletin does not mean that’s still the right answer under Discourse.
The last challenge will be how to distinguish between "political" news that belongs in Politics and Elections versus "non-political" news that belongs in News & Discussion.
A fine example of this challenge is a topic posted earlier today that the NY AG is suing / charging the NRA’s executive leadership with fraud, embezzlement, etc. It may be news and it may be current, but almost immediately the discussion broke down along LW vs RW lines.