Alphatize the Popular Tags list!

Go here http://able2know.org/newposts/ and start typing the tag you're looking for in the search box. It will pull up any tags that start with those letters, and keep whittling down as you add letters.

E. g. this topic is tagged (by me) as tags,tag,tagging. If you wanted to look up tagging, you'd start typing. t, then a, then g. You'd see all three. If you added a second g, the only tag you'd see on the list would be tagging. Try it.

Sorting by popularity makes the most useful ones (as defined by the most widespread use) prominent. If we sorted alphabetically one user could fill the homepage with aa, aaa, aaaa, aaaa etc in 5 minutes.

I've considered sorting by popularity, then sorting each page alphabetically, but I think ultimately this would be very confusing, as it wouldn't be immediately clear what we are doing.

That being said, the tag search is your friend, and one of our outstanding tasks is to add it to the homepage.

I miss the old category list. It was so easy to find the appropriate forum to post a new topic.

It's essentially the same list (as in the same items), and the old one wasn't alphabetized either so I'm not sure how it was better except that you were familiar with it after a while and didn't need to scan it anymore. You had muscle memory telling you that General was towards the bottom, reference towards the top etc.

This one has subcategories displayed, and fits in a lot smaller space than the old one. I think it's better (especially with the tag search) but your millage may vary.

It was shorter, chunkier, easier to read.

...and ultimately insufficient. i remember there were talks of needing to change that system at least since 2004 or 05.

Yep, even earlier. It was missing a lot of stuff, including things like Fashion.