New way of organizing a forum?
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- allspiritseve
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New way of organizing a forum?
I typically browse through maybe 4-5 of the forums on this site. Sometimes I'll peek at others, but I don't check them regularly. That often means I probably miss out on some good conversations, but I just won't want to wade through all of the other conversations for the 1 or 2 I want to read. That got me thinking about alternate ways of organizing forums.
I've been thinking about a tag system, where a single thread could have multiple tags, and thus go in multiple "forums". Also, a user could have sort of "search tags" that are saved searches and grab threads that match a given criteria. For example, I could make a tag for all threads that have the phrase "data mapper", or all threads that have a post by arborint, or all threads started by users with 100+ posts on the forum, etc... every time I log in, I could check these tags, or maybe even subscribe to a specific tag and get updates when new threads are started that match some criteria.
What do you guys think about that? Has it been done before? Could it be done? A system like that could easily emulate the existing forum > subforum > thread >post structure, if each thread only had one tag. That would allow higher flexibility, and give users the freedom to see the threads they want to see and hide the threads they don't want to see.
I've been thinking about a tag system, where a single thread could have multiple tags, and thus go in multiple "forums". Also, a user could have sort of "search tags" that are saved searches and grab threads that match a given criteria. For example, I could make a tag for all threads that have the phrase "data mapper", or all threads that have a post by arborint, or all threads started by users with 100+ posts on the forum, etc... every time I log in, I could check these tags, or maybe even subscribe to a specific tag and get updates when new threads are started that match some criteria.
What do you guys think about that? Has it been done before? Could it be done? A system like that could easily emulate the existing forum > subforum > thread >post structure, if each thread only had one tag. That would allow higher flexibility, and give users the freedom to see the threads they want to see and hide the threads they don't want to see.
Re: New way of organizing a forum?
It seems like a slightly smarter way of handling things. Most good forum software allows you to subscribe to threads already, but a tagging system would probably provide better and more accurate search results.
I was personally inspired by Google Reader at one point and I thought of perhaps having the forums, threads, and posts all visible at once. For example the left sidebar would be where people would browse the various forums and threads within in an tree-like structure and then when a thread is selected, the posts would show up in an infinite running list to the right of the browser just like Google Reader. This would eliminate the need for cumbersome pagination and might make it easier for people to make quick work out of browsing through the multitudes of forums that are usually available on any given site.
I like your idea though for the simple reason that it would make for a much more accurate searching mechanism. Let me know how it shapes up, I'm dying to see some new forum software out there.
I was personally inspired by Google Reader at one point and I thought of perhaps having the forums, threads, and posts all visible at once. For example the left sidebar would be where people would browse the various forums and threads within in an tree-like structure and then when a thread is selected, the posts would show up in an infinite running list to the right of the browser just like Google Reader. This would eliminate the need for cumbersome pagination and might make it easier for people to make quick work out of browsing through the multitudes of forums that are usually available on any given site.
I like your idea though for the simple reason that it would make for a much more accurate searching mechanism. Let me know how it shapes up, I'm dying to see some new forum software out there.
Re: New way of organizing a forum?
I've been thinking about taking the same approach for other situations. For example in a cms, instead of having mixed terminology of articles/posts/pages/etc each with different capabilities, just use tags. Assign any tag to any post and get out in templates what you want.
So I think it could work for a forum. Of course only if people do use the tag feature well.
[edit]Theory's example of gmail is good. In Gmail using the labels works very well. When an email arrives it gets the label inbox. Then you assign it another label (or more). Archiving an email is in fact only removing the label inbox
So I think it could work for a forum. Of course only if people do use the tag feature well.
[edit]Theory's example of gmail is good. In Gmail using the labels works very well. When an email arrives it gets the label inbox. Then you assign it another label (or more). Archiving an email is in fact only removing the label inbox
Re: New way of organizing a forum?
The problems I forsee in a tag based system are the obvious ones and that's counting on people to utilize it. There needs to be some level of contingency in case any given set of users doesn't know to or how to use the tagging system. Also people are incredibly lazy.
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alex.barylski
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- allspiritseve
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Re: New way of organizing a forum?
That's an interesting idea as well. I wonder if you could keep the idea of pages, but display everything running vertically-- so you could click on page 15 or whatever, and jump down to a certain section of posts. I would find it less daunting that way, because some of these threads can get quite long.Theory? wrote:I was personally inspired by Google Reader at one point and I thought of perhaps having the forums, threads, and posts all visible at once. For example the left sidebar would be where people would browse the various forums and threads within in an tree-like structure and then when a thread is selected, the posts would show up in an infinite running list to the right of the browser just like Google Reader. This would eliminate the need for cumbersome pagination and might make it easier for people to make quick work out of browsing through the multitudes of forums that are usually available on any given site.
I think I'm kinda leaning in that direction as well. I've also been tossing around the idea of making the implementation underlying PMs and forums the same thing. I had a client request threaded PMs "like facebook" and I'm starting to see little difference between a threaded forum and a threaded PM, except that access is restricted to fewer individuals.matthijs wrote:I've been thinking about taking the same approach for other situations. For example in a cms, instead of having mixed terminology of articles/posts/pages/etc each with different capabilities, just use tags. Assign any tag to any post and get out in templates what you want.
Gmail's label system was partially the inspiration. Also, see Remember The Milk's saved search tabs.matthijs wrote:Theory's example of gmail is good. In Gmail using the labels works very well. When an email arrives it gets the label inbox. Then you assign it another label (or more). Archiving an email is in fact only removing the label inbox
matthijs wrote:So I think it could work for a forum. Of course only if people do use the tag feature well.
It's interesting that you both brought this up... I almost thought this was a solution to my laziness! I am too lazy to check every single forum on this site for interesting topics, so I basically only look at Theory & Design, Testing, Enterprise, the Skeleton forum, and Security (once in a while). If I set up a couple of tags, I could either subscribe to them or only browse them as needed.Theory? wrote:The problems I forsee in a tag based system are the obvious ones and that's counting on people to utilize it. There needs to be some level of contingency in case any given set of users doesn't know to or how to use the tagging system. Also people are incredibly lazy.
There could also still be set tags for each forum, so to a user just logging in, it would appear like any other forum. Once you start adding customized tags though, that's when it gets interesting
Last edited by allspiritseve on Thu Feb 05, 2009 10:08 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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alex.barylski
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Re: New way of organizing a forum?
There is a skeleton forum?Theory & Design, Testing, Enterprise, the Skeleton forum
- allspiritseve
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Re: New way of organizing a forum?
Yeah, for arborint's Skeleton framework. You can PM him if you're interested in helping out.PCSpectra wrote:There is a skeleton forum?
Last edited by allspiritseve on Thu Feb 05, 2009 10:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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alex.barylski
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Re: New way of organizing a forum?
I don't think I could help out much, but I'd certainly follow along with the conversations...is it a private forum or something?Yeah, for arborint's Skeleton framework. You PM him if you're interested in helping out.
- allspiritseve
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Re: New way of organizing a forum?
Yep... like I said, PM arborint for details.PCSpectra wrote:I don't think I could help out much, but I'd certainly follow along with the conversations...is it a private forum or something?
Re: New way of organizing a forum?
I'm active in a rather large php dutch community and we're actually working on migrating to new forum software (as the forum we're using now was written by hand a long time ago, remember php 3?). When we gathered to discuss how the new forum should look and what it should do, someone has brought this up, I think he'd seen it somewhere. To be honoust, I was intrigued by the thought and I really do like it.allspiritseve wrote:I've been thinking about a tag system, where a single thread could have multiple tags, and thus go in multiple "forums". Also, a user could have sort of "search tags" that are saved searches and grab threads that match a given criteria. For example, I could make a tag for all threads that have the phrase "data mapper", or all threads that have a post by arborint, or all threads started by users with 100+ posts on the forum, etc... every time I log in, I could check these tags, or maybe even subscribe to a specific tag and get updates when new threads are started that match some criteria.
The only problem, which is already mentioned, is that you're expecting people to choose the correct tags. Now, I'm a moderator at the aforementioned forum and I can tell you that I usually get reports because people ask a question on "how do I do a query in mysql" and then place the topic in "Object Oriented Programming". So, although the thought is nice, it won't always work when people get involved
In contrast, a mix between the traditional "forum - topic" relation and an additional "topic - tags" might be crazy enough to work, and work well. That way, you force the user to choose a forum (which is really a finite tag list with a 1-on-1 relation) and you keep the tags optional. You could then display the forums on a normal way, or tag based, based on the preference of the user that is logged in.
From there, you can start educating your users on the usage of tags, and perfect your system. An addition I would certainly like is the autogeneration of tags: given the words "object" and "instantiation" are in the topic's text, the tag "OO" would be automatically placed on the topic, although the user would still have the ability to remove the tag when they think it's incorrect. You could even implement a Bayesian system which calculates the probability of the importance of a tag on the topic's text and tag it using a treshold you could then tune.
All in all: nice thought, but I wouldn't shift from traditional forums to a tag based forum in one step.
- allspiritseve
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Re: New way of organizing a forum?
Well, the main part of my idea was that users could make their own tags that others don't see. For example, I may be interested in all topics that have "TDD" in them, whether they are actually posted in Theory & Design, PHP Code, Testing, Security, MySQL, or whatever. So whether or not there are default forums (or 1:1 tags, like you mentioned) the user has the ability to organize all threads on the site into categories of their choosing.webaddict wrote:I'm active in a rather large php dutch community and we're actually working on migrating to new forum software (as the forum we're using now was written by hand a long time ago, remember php 3?). When we gathered to discuss how the new forum should look and what it should do, someone has brought this up, I think he'd seen it somewhere. To be honoust, I was intrigued by the thought and I really do like it.
Part of that I think is some people don't really know what OOP means, or "PHP - Theory and Design", so they don't really know how to select the right forum. What I was thinking is maybe tags like "PHP", "MySQL", and maybe to distinguish between code help and theory you could have "Beginning" or "Advanced" tags. Depending on your defaults, maybe people with under 100 posts would automatically get a "Beginning" tag (though a moderator could change it depending on the content of the post).webaddict wrote:The only problem, which is already mentioned, is that you're expecting people to choose the correct tags. Now, I'm a moderator at the aforementioned forum and I can tell you that I usually get reports because people ask a question on "how do I do a query in mysql" and then place the topic in "Object Oriented Programming". So, although the thought is nice, it won't always work when people get involved
Another aspect I was thinking about,that may solve the problem you mentioned, is I'd like you to be able to exclude certain posts... maybe posts by users with less than 100 posts, for example. Also, maybe all users could flag certain posts as potential spam (adding a hidden 'Potential Spam' tag). Thus you could set your saved user tags exclude posts that are flagged "Potential Spam" or maybe posts that two or more users have flagged "Potential Spam".
Wasn't planning on it, as you mentioned the 1:1 tag/thread would emulate traditional forum layouts. I'm wondering how successful a forum would be if you had all threads post in one place though, and you added tags (more like saved searches, as people on sitepoint pointed out) to get the threads you want and exclude the ones you don't. I think it would be best for a site like DevNetwork, but maybe not so well for a site like Ubuntu Forums (where your post gets lost after a day or two because of the sheer number of posters). Then again, maybe this method would be a good way to 'slow down' a site like that, so individual posts don't get lost in the crowd. I don't know... guess I won't know until I try it.webaddict wrote:All in all: nice thought, but I wouldn't shift from traditional forums to a tag based forum in one step.
- Christopher
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Re: New way of organizing a forum?
Seems like there are two solutions -- either have poster label their posts or analyze the posts for keywords/content and have the system label them. The second would be a pre-index for keywords. But would Google do a better job at that than you could?
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- allspiritseve
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Re: New way of organizing a forum?
Hmm... the actual labeling of threads is one thing, but what I am really interested in is the user-made tags that are only visible to the user who created them. Sort of a saved search that acts like a forum. That kind of system would work whether you had a single forum for ALL threads, traditional forum > thread hierarchies, or forums based on tags.arborint wrote:Seems like there are two solutions -- either have poster label their posts or analyze the posts for keywords/content and have the system label them. The second would be a pre-index for keywords. But would Google do a better job at that than you could?
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Re: New way of organizing a forum?
Would have have only one set of indexed searches, each with one or more users associated with it?
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