Forum Request - better scoping of tag cloud??
mindrobots
Posts: 6,506
Since we're headed for a world of tags and I haven't found a way to actually search the tag cloud how about the forum software better filters the tag cloud or puts it in better "scope" for the topic you are in? Here's what I'm thinking:
If you have "All Categories" selected, the tag cloud represents the tags across the entire forum like it does now.
If you select a sub-category, like "Robotics", the tag cloud is rebuilt to reflect the tag popularity in that category. So it is in effect dynamically scoped to reflect what you are looking at and interested in.
If you got to "Recent Discussions", then the tag cloud is rebuilt to show tag popularity for the past 15 or 30 days or some arbitrary time that represents "recent" to the forum.
If I am in "Robotics" I probably don't care about tags like "Forum" or "Forum-issue" and those spots in the tag cloud could be given up to more relevant tags for the current topic. Now it is not a big deal but when more tags are around, the space to display the tag cloud will fill up and things will disappear since I imagine that display space is finite at some point.
Part #2) Will there ever be a way to search the tag space? the search function seems to ignore tags, so you are left relying on what is displayed in the tag cloud to find anything. This is a fine solution for social boards where it's a reflection of trending but for a technical board, you may really want those two posts that are tagged 74hc595 and propgcc.
Not a complaint, just a suggestion for consideration.
If you have "All Categories" selected, the tag cloud represents the tags across the entire forum like it does now.
If you select a sub-category, like "Robotics", the tag cloud is rebuilt to reflect the tag popularity in that category. So it is in effect dynamically scoped to reflect what you are looking at and interested in.
If you got to "Recent Discussions", then the tag cloud is rebuilt to show tag popularity for the past 15 or 30 days or some arbitrary time that represents "recent" to the forum.
If I am in "Robotics" I probably don't care about tags like "Forum" or "Forum-issue" and those spots in the tag cloud could be given up to more relevant tags for the current topic. Now it is not a big deal but when more tags are around, the space to display the tag cloud will fill up and things will disappear since I imagine that display space is finite at some point.
Part #2) Will there ever be a way to search the tag space? the search function seems to ignore tags, so you are left relying on what is displayed in the tag cloud to find anything. This is a fine solution for social boards where it's a reflection of trending but for a technical board, you may really want those two posts that are tagged 74hc595 and propgcc.
Not a complaint, just a suggestion for consideration.
Comments
As far as I can tell tags are supposed to be orthogonal to discussion sections. They are sort of semantic pointers that should be able to allow you reach a particular topic of interest even though it has no home under any discussion section.
As such I would have thought that restricting the scope of tags depending on which discussion section you were visiting rather defeats the whole point of tags in the first place.
To be honest I don't get the idea of tags at all. Could somebody who has implemented the tag feature please explain what the intended purpose of tags is? What are the plans for tags in the future? How should they work?
Because right now they don't seem to do anything useful at all.
If the forum software was never tested, do you really think an item such as tagging was looked at in-depth, or that there really is much of a 'plan' for them ?
Sounds like Ken or the Web team focused on Vanilla for some reason, and its a total WIP (work in progress).
I mean, the simplest of complaints that everyone has, screen width, which I solved using an extension and removing just the right most column of blank space, still hasn't been fixed....
I'm left wondering if the web team can actually implement any changes aside from small features that they can click on or off?
Maybe they're in the Vanilla Forum's themselves asking these questions, and the Mod's there are sinking those posts?
Heater at least was asking for clarification of my idea.
Koehler, if you want/need to be negative about everything, please restrict it to discussions you've started, don't drag others down with you.
Tags are currently not searchable via the search box as best as I've been able to tell.
You can see what tags were applied to the discussion by the author if you look at the first post.
You can use your browser "find" command to search for the text in tags presented in the tag cloud. (I'm glad this works for when the cloud gets bigger.)
Tags as I see them working are more an indicator of subject popularity and I'm assuming since the space for the tag cloud won't grow infinitely, at some point tag with counts of 2, then 5 then 10 will drop off the end of the tag space. At that point, those topics will no longer be accessible from clicking on the button in the tag cloud. The tag cloud will always show the top counts (basic stamp, propeller1, robotics, etc) and the mid-count tags which will be a growing number of tags but low count tags will fall out of the cloud.
If you put some sort of scope on the tag cloud, say by categories, you would show only the popular tags in that category. For example, if you are in the Propeller1 category, it's 99% likely that you really don't care about posts tagged 'basic stamp', 'javelin', 'forum-issue' or 'sx-48' but you may very much care about low count tags like 'p1v', '16-cog' or some such more propeller related tags. You may not get to see the lower count tags that are relevant to the category you are in are pushed out by the popular tags in the other categories. Likewise, if I'm in the BASIC Stamp category, the gcc, propgcc, propeller2 and 'verilog dev' tags are just taking up space in my BASIC Stamp tag cloud.
I'm not sure how well the tags will work for finding things and refining thread selection, we'll just need to see how it develops, but by it being a forum wide popularity listing, it seems much less useful to me.
Tags are user defined.
Not doable.
Mike
-Phil
The forum build the the tag cloud based on the tags in the first post. The author is free to create any tags and thy will show up in the tag cloud. It also knows what category that post is associated with, so it has all the information it needs.
1) A user clicks on a category - that puts a number of discussions into the active set that will be displayed for that user (now, the forum displays the most recent page full from that set).
2) Display the tag cloud in the side bar. Currently this is the global tag cloud. The only additional step is to rebuild the tag cloud from the active set of discussions the user has selected. Display this category based tag cloud instead of the global tag cloud.
PhiPi, that's not what I was headed for but that would also be a nice feature to leverage the data in the tags with a little data mining! There could be a 'Popular Tags" cloud and an "Associated Tags" cloud!
Heater at least was asking for clarification of my idea.
Koehler, if you want/need to be negative about everything, please restrict it to discussions you've started, don't drag others down with you.
Keep your shirt on Mindrobots.
What your asking for seems like a heck of a lot of work, and I don't see anything wrong with pointing that out.
You may, however most people here would probably appreciate just the standard accepted features being worked on, and implemented before we get into P2-style feature creep of the forum tag situation.
Very few people are going to end up using it, or using it consistently, so it will end up being automated or just left to bit-rot.
However i'll remain mum since you asked.
Enjoy!
Mike
Enjoy!
Mike
Don't be negative, rather than saying "is as useless" you could be positive and say "just as good". Sure, it's the same thing but at least you are being positive!!
Look though at "POPULAR" tags !? it seems not only are basic stamps *most* popular but the javelin is right up there above any of our posts, amazing don't you think. I tried tagging several of my threads and the tags barely crept into the bottom even though the Tachyon thread has over 2,000 replies and 265,000 views. The problem....sorry, the interesting thing (trying to be positive) with these forum features is that they do not reflect the status of the forum at all.
[*]software 2[/list]
You are absolutely right that I have still to work on my English language issues or challenges.
Sure it sounds nicer and may be more polite, but Germans are not known for being polite. Actually I sometimes get called rude (whatever that is, need to google it sometimes).
So political correctness is not really a thing I am able or used to do. I am more a honest person and say what I think is right to be said.
The tag cloud as is was generated by the forum import, using the old categories as a marker. But a new post in a Tachyon thread will NOT be marked as Tachyon by itself. The user has to do it.
And they will not do it. It is a complete useless feature in my personal opinion, trying to be polite and not rude. Same goes for the activity page.
Besides the unwanted public 'private messages' you see there on 'the wall' you can see how much user just registered. WOW.
I have to disagree with you.
Both are simply useless and not 'just as good'.
Mike
I have to disagree with you.
Both are simply useless and not 'just as good'.
Mike
Yet begin part German too I totally agree with you and the "just as good" is like saying "about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike" etc. Not useful, not good.
It just seems like we get all this foisted upon us without invitation, consultation, or warning and we are the ones left to waddle in the mess which seems to be immensely technical and complicated to fix for some reason. But I am trying to keep my lips zipped as I am a guest in this "house" and I can put up with it or .... I can leave.
-Tor
Thank you for the well thought-out suggestion. I will add it to the issues list so that IT may evaluate it.