We have a huge list of categories, I think it is too cluttered and it is hard to spot the right category. There are even some duplicates like for spreedme (https://help.nextcloud.com/c/apps/spreedme and https://help.nextcloud.com/c/support/spreedme). It is nice to have a sub-category for each app, however this increases the number of categories a lot and there are very few topic within most apps (or at least place them in the end of the list).
I’m not sure what’s the best way to solve it, if we can somehow hide categories in the main view (e.g. you get all the app names only after you chose the category “app”). Discourse has a plugin that allows to use tags. We would need to tag topics carefully but this way more people could subscribe themselves to specific issues. E.g. authentication issues, NAS, …
Categories can not be created by non admin users so they must be created in advance. Every app has a forum to keep dicussion and comments off the app store. When a new app registered, the app store automatically creates a new category in the apps category and links discussion to this place. That’s why apps has so many sub categories and that’s totally fine.
Support categories seem to be split up into things that are not covered by apps like integration and desktop apps. The Spreed category seems to be a leftover before the app store was in use.
I don’t know how you use Discourse but I haven’t had an issue at all with the current amount of categories. I just watch the main feed of new entries and respond to the ones that I can.
But yeah having /apps/<appname>/ and /support/<appname>/ indeed doubles, the way it is used now by members. There might be some reason to separate, e.g. using /apps/ for general questions, dev discussion, ideas etc. and /support/ for urgent issues, bug report, support requests etc.
But even then, people don’t get this separation and topics will mix between this to categories.
faq might double with howto and is until now unused. A real FAQ (list) with just short answers to “faqs” does not really fit into a forum (my opinion) and could be e.g. added as “nextcloud.com” page.
_€: Jason is already on it: https://help.nextcloud.com/t/reminder-for-some-topics/20591/5_