Community Enhancement

General Discussion
1

In the chat today we discussed wiki-blog-flag-tag enhancements to the community (it goes beyond just the fourms). A quick summary of the ideas mentioned:

  • Wiki access - Be able to have users create new pages, modify existing pages, etc. The points from fourms could tie into it, restricting modification access to users who have demonstrated knoledge in a given area.

  • blogs - Give the user profile a boost by allowing users to blog about something.

  • flag posts - Let a user flag a post. This is sort of like a favorites list. A user could tag a bunch of posts that were interesting, but didnt have time to read right then. The user could then come back later and look at the flagged posts.

  • tag posts - A concept gaining in popularity now. Let (any) user tag posts with keywords that relate to that post. A given post might have tags for “ldap” “activeDirectory” “installing” while another might have “activeDirectory” “MSSQL” “upgrade”. Could make searching and browsing easier.

  • Graduated feature sets - Let users have more features in a fourm based on the points they have. After X points you can upload files, after Y you can add a blog to your profile, etc.

  • “Submit as X” - Let a user indicate that their post is a feature requst, bug report. This could get tired in with tagging too.

I think I got them all in there. Honestly, I think all these features would be useful. Other thoughts?

2

Much better integration, make this a community software and not three standalone products, Single-Sign-On, Wifi should know the forum points etc.

Let users have more features in a fourm based on the points they have.[/i]

@js.com one is allowed to post KB articles having 400 points afaik

options based on points:

use special command in chat “/aq” -> “Foo is asking a question: …” or “/p” to post a small picture within the chat while normal users may only post emotions.

use special commands in forum: post pictures, attach files,

Ability to become a (chat/forum) moderator (kick users / lock threads, move threads)

Other things which may be enabled (independant of the reached points)

a guest book for public messages

a mini user home page

3

Based on this http://jivesoftware.com/blog/2006/04/10/how-to-know-what-people-know/ article and *tag posts feature.

Every user can put some tags in own profile, about interests and knowledges. So…

User: Ken has tag “ldap” in his profile. And post “I have prooobs, please help!!” has tag “ldap” put by some user who have read this post. So, there could be some button or like for every user to look at suggested posts, list would be generated by tags in profile and in posts. What i mean, that this tags should be public and not just for personal use.

Also, every user can give some points to a thread which was interesting or useful. Then you can sort posts by points, or maybe search can sort results starting from posts with bigger amount of points.

4

Hi Oleg,

Matt didn’'t want you to discover this forum

User Ken[/i]: The forum could display a percentage value of how much the posted question is matching one’‘s profile. So for me an LDAP/AD thread would be displayed with 6%, if you look at the same thread you’'d see for example a match of 22%.

So one could keep the tags private if one does not want to publish this information.

publish … didn’‘t I ask already about much better integration[/i], instead of forum watches or RSS one should be able to use Spark and subscribe (using Wifi’'s pubsub) to threads based on the tags mentioned above.

LG

5

The forum could display a percentage

value of how much the posted question is matching

one’'s profile.

Yes, this sounds better. But how this percentage would be calculated? If i have “ldap” and “sql” tags and post has “ldap” tag? 50%? 100%?

So one could keep the tags private if one does not

want to publish this information.

Saying public i meant that everyone will have a use of tags and not that user’'s tags would be available for all.

6

The forum could display a percentage

value of how much the posted question is matching

one’'s profile.

Yes, this sounds better. But how this percentage

would be calculated? If i have “ldap” and “sql” tags

and post has “ldap” tag? 50%? 100%?

I think the calculations would be sepereate. So if a user posts a question that was tagged “ldap” and “sql”, when I post next to my info would put points for each tag like: ldap: 30 sql: 5. Since no one cares about no points, it shouldnt display any tag next to my info if I have no points for that given tag.

The tricky part comes in awards- if my reply to that ldap/sql post was only helpful because I know ldap, and provided nothing to the sql part of the discussion, how does the original poster indicate that? You dont want it to become a complext system to use, or no one will use it. The default case I guess would be to just award the points for each tag. So maybe my info would show:

Total: 40

ldap: 30

sql: 5

install: 10

Because more than one tag can (and will) be on a given message, the individual tags will rarely total up right, but I think thats ok.

One way to clean this up might be to allow tagging to indivdual posts, not just a thread. So if my reply was only on ldap, it could be tagged as such.

So one could keep the tags private if one does not

want to publish this information.

Saying public i meant that everyone will have a use

of tags and not that user’'s tags would be available

for all.

I think having tags be a visable part of the community would help. Keeping them private will mean they only get used by a select number of people.

Also, if the tags are public, they could be self-regulating in a way. For example, if I tag my question as ldap when it really has to do with installation, other could correct it by “voting” on the tags. I see this happening in a few ways. If each reply also was tagged, tagging it the same way would “strengthen” the the tag for the thread, while posting with different tags “weakens” it. (making the thread tags a dynamic average of the tags from the posts in the thread). You could also do semi-public tags, where a post dosnt show its tags until 5 people tag it the same way (or something like it). Or even by putting +/- links next to each tag. If you disagree with the tagging, you click on the -, if you agree you click on the + (this is like how bash.org does voting)

7

sounds too complex

i was thinking about percentage based tagging.

if i have tags “ldap”, “sql” and “linux” in my profile and there is three topics with tags:

  1. ldap, windows, domain

  2. ldap, sql, windows

  3. ldap, sql, linux, windows

so in thread list it will look for me with such percentages:

  1. 33%

  2. 66%

  3. 100%

Giving tags and points for every post is too complex and noone will do that.

UPD:

or while specifying tags in profile one can specify the level of knowledge:

ldap - expert

sql - good

linux - novice

so this will affect total percentages

Wel, i think points are better than percents in that case. You can assign some points to every tag in your profile and then you get appropriate sums of tag points near every thread. It’'s easier than generate percentage value bounded with 100% and which should show a result close to real knowledges of user. I mean maybe summarizing is easier than comparing here.