I use no more than 5 prefixes.
That seems to work well.
Any more makes it messy.
And there are those of us who use a lot more as we push what benefit they can provide...
The issue is that for those of us who do use prefixes in place of multiple forum nodes, it' makes (especially when on mobile) the interface problematic. Collapsing categories that can be expanded would resolve much of that.
I have 116
Prefixes
currently in use just for the various forum nodes that they are of benefit in (13 nodes compared to 116 nodes). Usually they deal with a specific device type or manufacturer.
I have about another 30-40 in use by add-ons I have installed.
Prefixes are better than the use of
tags
as with prefixes, you have standardized spelling, which is easier for filtering.
This is another simple example of where using
Prefixes
reduces the need of having multiple "categories" (this is specific to my Classifieds area).
It suffers similar issues from the prefixes used in it when using the
Filter
function.
Having each of those categories collapsed (and expandable) would take only a small portion of the space shown initially.