# Uncategorized Category : looking for a good practice

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/uncategorized-category-looking-for-a-good-practice/145746
**Category:** Community Building
**Created:** [March 26, 2020, 9:53pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uncategorized-category-looking-for-a-good-practice/145746 "2020-03-26T21:53:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![pixelemotion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@pixelemotion](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pixelemotion)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2020, 9:53pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uncategorized-category-looking-for-a-good-practice/145746/1 "2020-03-26T21:53:29Z")

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Hello,

As I am creating categories in our new forum, I want to set them the right way 🙂 and have feedback from experienced users.

We will have a main category called **COMMUNITY** that will probably drive most of the discussions.

In COMMUNITY, we will create sub-categories like :

- General
- Show & Tell
- Jobs
- etc.

For now I still have this category called **Uncategorized** and I see this is a “sensitive” one.

- Should I rename this category to be “community” so that every default conversation be directed there?
- Or should I rename it to be “General”, a sub-category ?
- Or neither of these 2 options… maybe there’s a better common & good practice ?

Thanks a lot for your feedback and advices

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### Author: ![Johani](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/johani/32/176920_2.png) [@Johani](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Johani)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2020, 10:03pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uncategorized-category-looking-for-a-good-practice/145746/2 "2020-03-26T22:03:02Z")

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Hey 👋

You mentioned this in your post

> [@pixelemotion](#):
>
> I still have this topic called **Uncategorized**

Are you referring to an actual topic here, or are you referring to the Uncategorized category?

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### Author: ![pixelemotion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@pixelemotion](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pixelemotion)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2020, 10:05pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uncategorized-category-looking-for-a-good-practice/145746/3 "2020-03-26T22:05:55Z")

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Yes sorry I was referring to the Uncategorized **category**

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### Author: ![Stephen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/stephen/32/95011_2.png) [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2020, 10:09pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uncategorized-category-looking-for-a-good-practice/145746/4 "2020-03-26T22:09:25Z")

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If you think you’ve neatly defined all the boxes that posts will fall in, you can disable the Uncategorized category in /admin. The setting is called `allow uncategorized topics`. With uncategorized disabled there is no default category, users will then have to pick a category for every post, which makes mis-categorization unlikely.

Renaming Uncategorized had the potential to create confusion, and is no longer possible. Personally I only leave it enabled to encourage users to post even if they can’t see somewhere the topic will fit.

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### Author: ![pixelemotion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@pixelemotion](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pixelemotion)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2020, 10:21pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uncategorized-category-looking-for-a-good-practice/145746/5 "2020-03-26T22:21:31Z")

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Thanks @Stephen, good suggestion to disable it.

We spent quite some time to think about our categories. And “General” will probably be the default category to choose from, for the most hesitant user.