Category Intersections

AI-generated summary

A feature request has been made to support intersection pages for categories, similar to those already available for tags erlend_sh. This would allow users to view topics from multiple categories simultaneously, without needing to list each category in the URL. mcwumbly questions whether this is actually a category union rather than intersection. codinghorror notes that categories are not intersectional like tags, with strong walls between them, whereas tags are flexible and can be applied to multiple things simultaneously. This feature could be beneficial for certain communities, such as discourse.codecombat.com and the Rust community.

A simpler way of describing what’s being asked for here is that this would essentially mean supporting intersection pages for categories, same as we already do for tags:

So just like we’re currently able to do this with tags:

https://meta.discourse.org/tags/intersection/docker/email

This feature request asks for the ability to do something like this with categories:

https://meta.discourse.org/categories/intersection/support/howto

although ideally the category intersection wouldn’t need to be defined by a series of categories listed in the URL, but rather a single identifier:

https://meta.discourse.org/categories/{custom-name}

There’s not a strong use case for it here on Meta, but discourse.codecombat.com could really use this for their “Other Languages” category. That’d allow them to use sub-categories for each of their language categories, while still being able to bundle those language-specific categories together.

The Rust community could possibly merge their users and internals forums, which would be a big win.

Doing this properly does involve more UX work than the tags equivalent though.

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Isn’t what you’re describing a category union rather than intersection?

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Categories are not intersectional like tags are though. Strong walls versus flexible, can apply to multiple things simultaneously, tags.