Suggestion for discussion tabs
hamshank
January 17, 2010, 03:42 AM posted in General DiscussionI was recently reading a very long debate on whether finding the value-add comments on a discussion tab.
Now, the last thing I want to do is start another long debate on the pro's and con's of frequent posters and cliques. Instead I have had an idea....Its a rough idea and I haven't had a lot of time to think it through so please bear with me...
Ok so....Im thinking of some sort of tagging and rating system:
1) When a user adds a comment or post, we could have a drop down box (maybe next to the "convert to tone marks" button?!?!) where the user rates there comment into a predefined category
Comment type
- Study Comment (language learning)
- On Topic
- Off Topic comment (spin off comments)
- Fun (little quips, jokes etc..)
Once, the user clicks submit, the comment is then tagged and submitted.
Naturally with self certifying a comment, it is prone to errors....be it accidentally selecting the wrong category or perhaps feeling that your comment was without value when in fact many users beleive it is.
For this I suggest, we could have a simple rating system where each comment could have a vote list and button next to it, (same list box as when inserting a comment) where users can re-classify the comment (1 time per user). Note: This would also cover older comments that obviously were not classified at post time so the system would work with older lessons.
The category of the comment will then change depending on how the community reacts to it.
Finally, in the actual discussion tab you could implement a simple filter with the same categories plus an unfiltered tab.
Use cases
Person A - Only wants to study chinese, they are able to filter comments to "Study only" and be happy enough 90% of the time. If they find a comment they dont find helpful, they have their right to vote that it shouldn't be in this category
- Person B - Primarily wants to study Chinese but also is interested in maybe related on topic things that might not have a language value...for example On topic Cultural differences. They could filter first for study comments and then for On topic afterwords.
- Person C - Enjoys the social aspect of learning a language. They can either go Unfiltered or perhaps, if they don't have any further questions "study wise" on the lesson, they might just filter for off topic things to have a chat with fellow learners.
Ok, I have written a lot here in a short space of time so there are bound to be errors, but I thought It might be worth sharing this with the community to see if we can find a way that saftisfys most people.
The first issue that springs to mind for me is that, it could be possible to get comments out of context if half way through a conversation, the classification on a comment changes....So maybe this might only apply to the intial comment and all "threaded comments" there after stay with the original. That way, if people use the threaded comments properly, comments woud be in context.
Wow! That was a long post
Comments anyone?!?
hamshank
Yeah, I know what you mean. I didn't see RJ's comment. Apologies to him if i've stolen his thunder!
The way I see it (in my head) is that your comment could not be a combination of all categorys...it would probably end up falling into its natural category through the input of the community.
I'm not sure how easy it would be to implement but I can see that it would require a lot more space on their database.
bababardwan
well I can't speak for RJ of course,but I don't think it would be perceived as trying to steal his thunder [at least I didn't see it that way] and it was a different approach to the same issue and I think the more ideas put forth the better,so I thought it was clearly a valuable contribution.
"The way I see it (in my head) is that your comment could not be a combination of all categorys...it would probably end up falling into its natural category through the input of the community."
..hehe,well I've written stuff I'd find hard to stick in one category alone[hehe,others of course will assert that its all 废话 and to just keep scrolling,hehe],but a lot of posts of course are straightforward and easy to categorise thus.I guess you're right about community voting,though of course there could be a situation of the vote being split 50/50 between a couple of categories.
hamshank
Yes a split vote would be interesting. Perhaps it could remain unchanged until it is surpassed?
hamshank
January 17, 2010, 04:12 AMYeah, I know what you mean. I didn't see RJ's comment. Apologies to him if i've stolen his thunder!
The way I see it (in my head) is that your comment could not be a combination of all categorys...it would probably end up falling into its natural category through the input of the community.
I'm not sure how easy it would be to implement but I can see that it would require a lot more space on their database.
go_manly
January 17, 2010, 07:29 AMIsn't this getting just a little bit too complicated?
How many of us bother to give a rating to each lesson? And thats only once a day, not multiple times a day. Aren't the regular posters the only people who might be bothered rating posts? And I stress might.(I certainly would not be bothered.)
I think Cpod should be spending more time proofing lessons instead of fiddling with the format of these forums.
hamshank
I think it looks more complicated than it actually is. In essence all im suggesting is a new field to fill in when posting.
I take your point on who would be bothered rating and thats why I suggested rating at the time of posting. The votes only really there for people who wrongly post there comment incase it disturbs people wanting to learn.
I respect your opinion on how you think it would be best to move forward with the site, however, this whole topic seems to be a recurring point of contention. Therefore it seems to me that some sort of resolution IS needed so without pooling some ideas together on how to improve our user experience we will forever be treading water.
I'm just throwing this out there as a suggestion in the hope we could generate some ideas that would help improve everyones experience without ending a lot of the good stuff that is already going on.
bababardwan
hmm,I still can't figure out why when I hit reply as I did just now under go_manly's comment,that it will sometimes give me a box like this to write in that doesn't have the usual title at the top of "replying to go_manly"..my earlier theory about it being a 24 hour cut off is clearly wrong as this one is only minutes later and the reply button is not working like it should and yet earlier i replied to a comment from a few days ago and it did work like it should.Some of the reply buttons just aren't working properly.It's no biggie though,I'm just making an observation and trying to figue things out as I go along.
funny you should raise the lesson rating thing because I was just thinking about this earlier.I basically never rate a lesson for 2 reasons.Firstly I'd find it hard to find any I wouldn't rate 5 out of 5 [and I'd very often wanna give more than 5 out of 5] and secondly because I think there are so many aspects to a lesson,that it would be hard to know which aspect your rating was referring to...a more comprehensive rating system might have some meaning.But anyway,as all the lessons have been great and useful I don't really care what it's been rated as,and further I think for others often what may interest is either the latest lesson or ones on topics of interest from the archive.Yeah,I'd be very surprised if any poddies out there were studying a lesson based on it's rating.Are there any?
ps I agree that likely on the whole most people probably wouldn't bother rating others comments as to those categories [but who knows,it's just my guess as well] but I think hamshanks main point was about self categorising to tidy things up and add applicable filters for those that want 'em.
hamshank
January 17, 2010, 07:50 AMI think it looks more complicated than it actually is. In essence all im suggesting is a new field to fill in when posting.
I take your point on who would be bothered rating and thats why I suggested rating at the time of posting. The votes only really there for people who wrongly post there comment incase it disturbs people wanting to learn.
I respect your opinion on how you think it would be best to move forward with the site, however, this whole topic seems to be a recurring point of contention. Therefore it seems to me that some sort of resolution IS needed so without pooling some ideas together on how to improve our user experience we will forever be treading water.
I'm just throwing this out there as a suggestion in the hope we could generate some ideas that would help improve everyones experience without ending a lot of the good stuff that is already going on.
bababardwan
January 17, 2010, 08:08 AMhmm,I still can't figure out why when I hit reply as I did just now under go_manly's comment,that it will sometimes give me a box like this to write in that doesn't have the usual title at the top of "replying to go_manly"..my earlier theory about it being a 24 hour cut off is clearly wrong as this one is only minutes later and the reply button is not working like it should and yet earlier i replied to a comment from a few days ago and it did work like it should.Some of the reply buttons just aren't working properly.It's no biggie though,I'm just making an observation and trying to figue things out as I go along.
funny you should raise the lesson rating thing because I was just thinking about this earlier.I basically never rate a lesson for 2 reasons.Firstly I'd find it hard to find any I wouldn't rate 5 out of 5 [and I'd very often wanna give more than 5 out of 5] and secondly because I think there are so many aspects to a lesson,that it would be hard to know which aspect your rating was referring to...a more comprehensive rating system might have some meaning.But anyway,as all the lessons have been great and useful I don't really care what it's been rated as,and further I think for others often what may interest is either the latest lesson or ones on topics of interest from the archive.Yeah,I'd be very surprised if any poddies out there were studying a lesson based on it's rating.Are there any?
ps I agree that likely on the whole most people probably wouldn't bother rating others comments as to those categories [but who knows,it's just my guess as well] but I think hamshanks main point was about self categorising to tidy things up and add applicable filters for those that want 'em.
henning
January 17, 2010, 10:53 AMI like this idea.
But "RJ's second tab" (Q&A vs. Discussion) might be indeed the simpler approach.
bababardwan
January 17, 2010, 04:01 AMYeah,good idea mate.I think the key issue here is to be able to identify quickly and easily language related learning questions both so the teachers can address them without overlooking and learners can benefit from those answers.There are probably several ways to do this ,including RJ's recently suggested separate tag altogther,but I suppose it might come down to what CPod find technically easiest or most efficient to implement.I do like the idea though of being able to tick all sorts of boxes [including read as I recently posted ..but there's an example of something that was a bit tricky to implement ] and then apply filters.I'm not sure you need the other categories as much but they sound not a bad idea too.I wonder what you'd tick when your comment is a combination of all categories,hehe.