Robotics = Projects?
erco
Posts: 20,256
It appears that the Projects forum (oops, category) has been renamed Robotics. Thanks, Parallax, that's a small step in the right direction. But soon you'll actually make separate robot & project categories (maybe more), yes?
Comments
Before we had a Projects area, it held Projects, Contests, Robotics, Multirotor, and there were some plans to add even more sub-forums in the future. Over the course of its life we've had over 100 forums, not all visible, created on the Parallax Discussion Forum; it took a considerable amount of resources just to spin up a new forum, decide on owners internally, and then decide on the life expectancy and best means of control over that forum.
With this new forum we needed to collapse some categories.To this end archived threads were tossed into microcontrollers, all associated 'accessories' made their way into the accessories forum, and everything that was a project found its way into the projects category.
We have added tags to all discussions respective to their location as threads from the vBulletin forums. It is our hope and intention that tags catch on.
The why of tags? We would like more discussions to spawn about technical topics and reduce the burden of choosing the correct category for any given topic. With tags it is possible for an individual to start a discussion in Propeller 1 that also includes tags for 'robotics', 'education', 'beginner', or whatever else they may be stuck with. Then robotics discussions could pop up anywhere, likewise a project could pop-up anywhere. Why not post a Propeller 1 project on the Propeller category? Why not post a Propeller 1 tag on the Robotics category?
As we continue developing means to use and administer tags the process of adding tags will also become more streamlined; you won't need to enter tags by typing, instead tags will be suggested based on the content of your post or by popularity and could be selected via click.
Forums, Categories, Tags are all just means of separating like content.
It would be good to think of a technical backout now, for when that eventually happens. Or, we could just do another forum migration
Unless Chip wants to send me some walnuts and taco shells for Christmas.
The thing about auto-generating tags from content or subject line is that the programming for it is usually pretty simple. So you get lots and lots of the same tags, i.e. 30K tags for Basic Stamp. At some point, about 29,750 tags ago, the tags ceased being of any real value.
The tag cloud looks to be limited to the top 25. Not sure if you could go higher, but there's no way to search for tags. Given the potential for thousands of tags, without a UI to them, the very vast majority will never be seen. So in the end, it's a feature with little payback. (Other than SEO, which of course is important.)
The discussions that were tagged today help everyone find messages that were previously secluded in their own forums. Going forward, applying several tags to a discussion will make filtering discussions more effective.
Jim
-Phil
*******Bribe Alert ********
What about mangos and mangosteen?
+++++++++++++
Phil's idea of a select list may work, but someone will always desire to lobby to add to the list. Why can't we just have Google search seek out all this?
Pop-ups? I am violently against pop-ups. Just the Edit pop-up annoys me deeply. I have turned off all the notification pop-ups.
Payment shmayment.
How about an honorarium of $1 per tag?
Perhaps a drop-down menu can list the 25 tags.
Forum Moderators can add tags. Some of them are really happy to help out, too.
It's probably okay if the tagging thing doesn't take off on these forums since we still have categories. I guess it's like the FaceBook connection - nobody is making us use it.
I'm still learning about the usefulness of tags, too. I recognize it forces us to rethink the way we've relied on forums.
Ken Gracey