Post in Search Prototype

2007 Jul 24 23:53 UTC

Thanks for you feedback, Tim! We really appreciate it.

The user of the tags is an infrequent, or first-time, visitor to the site. The
task of such a visitor is to determine what is discussed on a site, or in a
group. The subject-line helps with this task, and the tags reinforce,
supplement, or correct the topic title. What I was aiming to increase the
"information scent" of the page, to take a term from the information foraging
model of Web browsing.

Take the Canterbury Issues Forum as an example
http://forums.e-democracy.org/s/index.html?&g=canterburyissues&t=1&p=0&f=0&r=0
The "Traffic Congestion" topic discusses what? Traffic congestion probably, but
from the tags we also know that public transport is covered, and that the
discussion is talking about congestion in a city, rather than roads being
blocked by cows being moved to a milking shed. What about the "Richard West"
topic? From the topic title we know that it contains posts by, or about,
Richard West, but from the tags we also know that it is also a traffic-related
topic.

Automatically generated tags are not perfect. Like all computing systems they
run by the principal of Garbage In, Garbage Out. The "Access" topic, in the
above example, contains few posts, and none of the tags exemplify the topic.
(It is quite fascinating to read the topic, and try and figure out why "people"
is the top tag.) However, in this example, the metadata from the user
("Access") is also not particularly good either, neither is the title of the
topic "Richard West". Overall, I have found that the tags add value as they
help find information, and give a good impression what is discussed in topics,
groups, and sites.

I do concede that the name "Tag" is misleading. I suggest that we drop the name
altogether, and format the tags in a monospace font, such as Courier. That will
give the impression that the words are from the topic-content, and remove the
source of confusion.

The reason the group name is on a line by itself is to make it easier to scan
the list of topics for groups. A common task is to go the homepage of a site
and establish what is being posted where. Placing the group name at the end of
the topic title makes it harder to scan, as all the group-names are located in
different positions both horizontally and vertically, rather than just
vertically. (It causes layout issues with the size of different parts of the
line.)

I hope this addresses your concerns, Tim :)