Internally at Monzo, we often write “RFCs”, “Requests for Comments” when we want to implement/change something and it’s helpful to get input from other members of the team. And now externally too!
The existing category structure
I’ve got a few suggestions on some tweaks to the categories to the forum here to make it easier to understand for newcomers, more useful for regulars and more consistent — I’d love your thoughts
This is my proposed structure:
Monzo (A general category)
Ideas (Renaming the existing Feature Ideas category)
Sneak Peeks
FinTech (Discussions about fintech and the industry in general)
The Foyer (Off-topic discussions about anything non-Monzo, non-fintech related. Books, movies, tech. Whatever you want.)
Blog Discussions
Travelling with Monzo
Community
Crowdfunding
Help & Bug Reports
iOS / Android
This would mean deleting/hiding: Feedback, Technology, iOS and Android, Community Feedback, Students, Miscellaneous.
I’d also like to edit/add descriptions for each category so they make sense and then group them together into general themes by color (broadly split up above by lines).
I’d personally like to split “The Wider World” into two sections - Fintech and General - the latter one to talk about anything and everything!
I tend to find that when some people have one similar interest, they have others too! For example, we may have many people here that are into the same movies or books and it’d be cool to discuss them.
I wouldn’t want General to be confused with The Wider World so it might be better to stick with Monzo as the former’s name?
I think keeping iOS & Android (as sub-categories for Bug Reports only) would be quite useful because it helps users find issues that’re specific to their platform & makes it easier to answer questions because users can see which platform the user’s on.
It looks like you’ve already replaced Community Feedback with Community so that’s no longer needed
PS - I’m going to take the dedicated Crowdfunding category as a sign that more rounds of crowdfunding are planned
I think technology should stay, but anything can be discussed. I know I made a thread about Philips hue and it got deleted as it was not Mondo related but it was still tech related.
Also maybe just a general one for general talk like cars or I lift 210kg bro
Updated the original post to take into account the feedback! Brought back Monzo instead of General and split out “The Wider World”. Keep the comments coming
I think this would be pretty good - Feedback and Community feedback would be fine as “Ideas” - to be honest people mostly leave feedback if something isn’t working and suggest a solution which would fit perfectly in “Ideas”.
iOS and Android are IMO unnecessary because the goal is to make the two apps equivalent.
Technology would be merged to FinTech which is good - that’s what 90% of the threads would be about anyway on an online bank’s forum.
Students and Misc would be fine in the off topic section.
While planned new app features or functions should be the same so perhaps discussed in one thread, it can be argued that the OS are different so bug reports need to be separated to avoid confusing people, otherwise people will need to keep restating which OS they are talking about in every post
###Travelling with Monzo
Should we consider separating the new wiki posts from discussion in any way?
###Crowdfunding
How about Crowdfunding and [Investment/Investors]?
###Help & Bug Reports
Unsure about merging all of the iOS, Android, Bugs, and Help together. I think there’s some difference between someone who is asking a question or requires support and the kinds of bug reports that some of the more involved community might produce. Though I can see the argument of merging them if an initial request for help then gains reproduction steps through discussion to turn into a bug report.
As for merging Android and iOS, I would run that by the app teams. If we don’t have specific categories, we can simply request that users state their platform when posting. I’m suspecting that the category will be more of @simonb’s territory, being someone in support who also spends time here in the community.
Deletes/hides
Feedback
Merge contents in to either Monzo or Ideas.
Technology
Move contents to The Foyer or FinTech.
iOS and Android
See feedback on Help & Bug Reports.
Community Feedback
Move contents to Community
Students
Little used category, remove!
Miscellaneous
Discourse has a built in untagged category so this was mostly unnecessary, especially if The Foyer exists.
The problem was that before we had these categories, users weren’t posting their platform & the dedicated catories is a very visible prompt. Topics can be recategorised once we find out the platform if users forget to select it too.
This is true, we didn’t have a good prompt to remind people to post their platform though. I also question as to how effective verses how confusing those sub-categories were to users.
The main problem we had was with pointing to features that weren’t available on Android. The way I normally got around this was by taking a few more minutes to pick up clues in the post and reply with guidance for both platforms where possible.
Looks good.
However i probably speak for a number of android users when i say i do not want to have to trawl through iOS posts. So keeping separate would be nice.
OK, this is now all done! A few color tweaks still to come Please feel free to recategorise any posts you notice and we’ll start doing a few on our end too
