We have many people asking for subjects that we don't already have here at OpenStudy. Just like Math, there are subtopics, and the Mathematics subject to pretty much catch all. When someone clicks on the "Find More Subjects" button at the top, a list appears, and you scroll to find your subject. Instead of trying to find the specific subject, you can click the general subject. Once you click that general subject, it will expand into more specific subjects, almost like a tree view.

Question

anonymous · Answer

Instead of having to try and find the specific subject, you can just click on the general subject and you can have the other topics in the expansion. For example, you click the general subject "Science" it comes up with the topics Earth Science, Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Earth Space (and any other they decide to add) There can also be a specific topic of Science to catch all science related questions. With this, I feel like many people will be pleased, and if they don't know which subject to post their question in, they can just post it in the general section.

anonymous · Answer

I love this idea.

mathslover · Answer

Kfins99, we're already struggling with the users to post their questions according to sub-sections. But actually, students now-a-days are a bit lazy, they don't believe in clicking on the sub-section and waiting for it to load and then ask their question, some may be in hurry, but overall many questions are still not posted according to the sub-sections. We have distributed the education into several subjects and subjects into sub-sections for the ease of students/experts to help or to get help on here.

If we make a general subject, and then users click on that to get a long tree view of all the subjects , then, actually, it will be hard to search our group from the long tree view of all subjects. 

Another reason (very common) that this should not be taken is that most of the users will enjoy to spam there, many questions will be frequently posted there which may be off-topic etc. 

Not sure, if I had understood your questions rightly, but if I had understood it correctly then above are some points which make me think that it will be not much successful .

Though, will like to have views from other users/ambies/mods about this and will re-think about it.

anonymous · Answer

I do agree, many people would post questions off topic, or irrelevant to the subject. I feel like if they are truly aware of the options they have, they can possibly use that to their advantage, instead of using the general subject. It wouldn't be too long of a tree view, just a few branches of the stump. I don't see spam as a problem, because, if anyone who is responsible sees that it has been posted numerous times, they will report it, with that being said, a Moderator or someone would look into it.

Many people are lazy, but if they truly want a better answer, they will realize what they have to do. Just like anyone, if you want to actually get help, you will look into it better. I don't quite get what you mean by "it will be hard to search our group because of the long tree view", but all I can really say about that is if it was too long, it shouldn't be there. Mathematics has many subtopics, but Science, or English, and others don't have that many.

anonymous · Answer

There are subtopics for Mathematics, people just post it in the Mathematics section, not even what type of Math it is.. So I'm not too sure if this feature would be used. However, it is a really good idea! :)

e.mccormick · Answer

As a minimum, I think it could be looked at as a way to improve the find a subject interface.  A tree view could help people in finding things.

anonymous · Answer

Indeed, it would really help point out where the subjects are, instead of scrolling down a huge list to find what you want, it would just be there, to see.

anonymous · Answer

This will be much better!

preetha · Answer

Hmmm.  I do not like the idea of huge number of topics with few questions and fewer helpers.  I could imagine a catchall . A huge group of everything that doesn't fit in neatly.

kittiwitti1 · Answer

@Preetha What about a Prezi-style map instead of the list we have now?