A problem with prog sub-genres and styles

if you wonder, my vote is 'Yes'

I voted yes. They are just artificial pigeonholes. I doubt that any artist decides “I’m going to do neo prog but I’m not touching symphonic prog with a 10 foot pole.” Creating these artificial pigeonholes may make the bands easier to talk about but it pretends that bands don’t use a myriad of influences and styles. And shouldn’t “progressive” groups use a lot of different ideas?

I'd say that they were ONLY useful here. Thanks to this site (and a lot of time spent reading by me) I've found plenty of bands I love who I'd otherwise never have heard of. I discovered one of my favourites - Magma - through clicking on the "Zeuhl" subgenre, wondering just what the hell it was. 

but then again, I don't sit down and decide to listen to Zeuhl because there's a substantial difference between every band I listen to. I might sit down and decide to listen to Weidorje. It's a category and nothing more - if you get offended because of a perceived miscategorisation then I'd start to worry about where your musical taste really comes from.

I think they're useful. It's the best way to organize artists and not get lost in a huge prog genre, that gasps all from post rock to death metal. That would be a horrible mess, making it nearly impossible to find similar artists, and establish what they don't like. 

On the platform it's highly important and very useful. Think about a site like this without these typical subgenre-definitions, it would get lost in chaotic dimensions. If you go on the music by a artist/band itself, it's somehow just very unfocused to put the band with their music in a specific bag. One good example is the band Riverside: It's good that they are named under the banner "prog metal", since there are definitely some clear metal parts in their music and their style has that metallic edge, with which non-metal listeners could have problems with. But if you go nearer on the music, you will soon recognize that they just have very little in common with metal. Their style can at best be described as a mix of psychedelic/space rock elements, hints of prog metal and art rock. IMO they should be thrown in the "art rock" bag, but that could bring on confusions with many people. Indeedly they are a band where the subgenre definition shouldn't get that serious influence on the listener's foreshadowed expection about the music. Here it works not really well, but there are also other bands where such problems come to place. But overall, it's helpful all the way. Any one needs a idea what to expect about the artist/group's musical direction.

I think that in every field of human knowledge categories are no more than conventions to organize things and give a simple comprehension of them, because human mind longs for simplicity - in this sense I think they are useful and necessary. In other words, I find useful to know under which category is classified a band that I don't know yet, although I know I will find in that band some particular elements that make it unique and different from other bands in the same category.

It's useful if you want to get into a prog sub-genre...... to know how it is.

None are useful.

As long as it doesn't end up being a prison, I think using subgenres is definitely useful - exactly for the same reasons that Ivan has so clearly explained in the above message.

Useful.