EDIT: Now on on suggest.scratch.mit.edu!
FaveTags: Tag voting = more relevant tags, a 'front page' with comments for every tag.
...with yet another re-written explanation that may be easier to follow.
ScratchR 2.0?" Tagged Favorites" to replace Tags, Galleries, Favorites, Love Its, and much of the front page. Also a way for "company"/group collaboration.
EDIT: I realize what I have written is not easy to follow. I'm slowly getting better at explaining it: Here's my latest attempt. I think it will make the most sense when I'm done with the mockup. (A picture is worth thousand words. Or hopefully, a few dozen pictures, animation, and spoken words will be better than the many words I used to try to explain this! )
This idea keeps bothering me... I will likely use it on a social-user-content site. Hopefully it will be useful to Scratch!
EDIT: I added a shorter explanation and example below.
EDIT: I rewrote/expanded why I think this would be an improvement below.
EDIT: I wrote more about favorites pages and how tags effect suggested projects below.
EDIT: on scmb1's language suggestion, I wrote that language tags could be added to uploaded projects depending on site/scratch language setting. so projects could be filtered by language, and promoted the same as regular favorite tags. (extra language tags can be added later, for multi-language projects.) more
EDIT: I added a mockup preview project. Not done yet, but shows how parts of this could work.
Current Scratch categorizing and promoting systems:
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Tags, Galleries, Love Its, and Favorites are great tools designed to allow the organic categorization and featuring of content by individuals, groups and the community. But these overlap in purpose- so they could work together better. Lets combine the strong points of each of these into a powerful "Tagged Favorites" system:
- Tags are for the community categorizing of content.
However, There is no benefit or consequence for project visitors to tag with useful keywords. Often tags become an opportunity for the project owner to spam tag their project with as many popular tags as possible to get more exposure. Also, the individual tag pages is a single list sorted by views (by default) so projects with the most views get more views and the tag page remains mostly static.
- Galleries are also great for categorizing content, with the added bonus as a place for discussion/comments. Content can be publicly added or controlled by a few, so they can be a central place for collaboration for special interests and companies. (Some scratchers also use private galleries to categorize personal favorites.) However, public controlled galleries suffer from the same problem as public tags. People add to them to get exposure to their project. There is not a consequence to adding to many galleries, so it also becomes an opportunity for spamming and dilutes categorizing purpose.
- Love It's allow project visitors to reward appreciated projects with more attention (top loved) and a warm fuzzy feeling. But there is no direct consequence or benefit for the person that presses it; so people mostly press it when they're reminded by the project owner. So the savvy scratchers know to beg for love it's. So the "love it" system is less helpful to users that don't beg.
- Favorites also enables individual scratchers to show appreciation for a project and give attention, by adding it to their personal gallery. It's like love it's but provides a direct benefit (consequence) to the person that presses it. Individuals are building a personal gallery for reference and sharing. However, favorites lists are only ordered by most recently tagged and are not categorized or prioritized so they are not as useful as they could be.
- The front page and community is a consequence of these systems. By combining their strong points, I believe we will have a more useful front page, as well as a stronger community and project collections.
Scratch Team's "featured projects", "curated projects", "scratch design studio", "top loved" are also very similar to galleries. and could also be replaced by "Tagged Favorites".
How "Tagged Favorites" would work and replace the above:
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On project pages, this would replace "Love it", "Favorite" and "Tags":
Tagged Favorites: Public tags: Game (by 156 and you) [-] Simulation (by 50) [+] Awesome (by 5) [+] Group tags: [?] UltraGamesInc. (by 5 and you) [-] (+ or - controls are only shown if you belong to that private group.) ScratchTeamFeatured* (by 1) (this is an admin group, so it has an "*".) Add to your favorites with another tag: [ enter tag here... ][\/] (Text box with drop down selector: suggesting common tags of the user and site wide, and lists groups or companies the user belongs to.)
([?] group tags help text: Group tags are private groups of scratchers for companies to work together and featuring work. Start your own company or group. (link to request name, scratch team moderated.) )
By clicking the [+] or adding another tag, Scratchers are adding to their favorites with categories useful to them. This is like "Love its", but with a clear purpose and consequence for the user.
Users can only add a few tags (4?) per project to place in their personal gallery, so this will help the community use just the most helpful tag names. For example, the user may want to add to their personal "Game" list, and they may also add the word "Awesome" for just a few games that are awesome.
(Clicking a tag will take the user the tag's page.)
Tag page example:
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Scratch Projects with the public tag:
"Game"
[flag as rude or inappropriate?]
Here are games made with scratch!
(editable description of the tag. Perhaps only editable by the scratch team on public tags.)
"Game" projects you may like:
( List of "game" projects that also have other tags the user tags with. So if the user tends to tag "3D", "3D" "games" will appear. (Implementation: perhaps use a faceted search system like Solr.) )
Most "Game" favorite tags all time:
[thumbnail picture]
"Ultra soccer game" by UserName.
(1434 "Game" tags. Also tagged: AI, Cool!, Soccer...)
[thumbnail picture]
"Space Game" by Someone.
(1358 "Game" tags. Also tagged: Space Invaders, Simulation, Long Games...)
[thumbnail picture]
"Garden Simulator" by RandomUser.
(1302 "Game" tags. Also tagged: Pretty Art, Simulation, Challenging...)
(ajax "more" link, to show more results, inline.)
Projects recently favorite tagged "Game":
... (similar to above, but recently tagged projects with fewer tags than the above.)
Comments:
(Users can discuss "Games" like a project or forum, this feature would be even more useful on rare tags like "1s1s1c" or "3d Math" this would also allow for collaboration on 'request membership only' group tags like "ScratchGames Inc".)
Company/group collaboration tags pages
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Group tags pages are similar to public tag pages.
Company Names are moderated before adding to prevent overlap with regular public tags. or official sounding group names. (Like ScratchTeamFeatured.
Non-members can request membership to a group.
Group members can add projects to the group and use the place for discussion.
Group admins could perhaps change the layout/logo of their group page.
New User pages:
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Users will now easily catalog their projects and favorites by tag. Here's what that might look like:
AddZero's Projects
[thumbnail picture]
"Lion- Stereogram editor"
added 5 days ago.
(Taged: Simulation(14), Sterograms(10), ScratchDesignStudio-Patterns*(1)...)
[thumbnail picture]
"AI Tank"
added 2 weeks ago.
(Taged: Game(43), AI(10), Tanks(5)...)
[thumbnail picture]
"Klondike Solitaire"
added 2 weeks ago.
(Taged: Game(43), AI(10), Tanks(5)...)
(By default they will be order by newest first, but also allow the user to drag and drop (or press arrow icons) to change order, promote/demote.)
(ajax "more" link, to show more results, inline.)
AddZero's Favorites
(Perhaps this will work similar to the tag page view above, perhaps have a faceted search and/or grouped by most tagged categories.)
Well, I wrote a ton in hopes of being understood, but I believe the idea is actually pretty simple... hopefully it condenses current concepts into a single, simpler, more useful system. ...I hope... What do you think? Thanks!
Last edited by AddZero (2010-07-29 17:19:02)
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FUND THIS!
We need this... BADLY.
Last edited by illusionist (2010-04-05 19:57:37)
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This is a great novel . I like the idea, though I think it could take some getting used to. Like you pointed out, few users use the tag feature, including me.
There is one question I have about this system. You mentioned that Top Loved projects tend to be so because someone says "Please love-it!" How will your system change this? Can't someone still say "Please Game-Favorite Tag this!"?
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Thanks!
shadow_7283 wrote:
There is one question I have about this system. You mentioned that Top Loved projects tend to be so because someone says "Please love-it!" How will your system change this? Can't someone still say "Please Game-Favorite Tag this!"?
I don't think that will happen as often because people will be adding tags with the purpose of organizing their favorites page- projects they want to see again and promote to others with keywords that make sense to them.
(Me going blah, blah, blah: If it's an issue, perhaps add a 'call to action' with the "Tagged Favorites" picker?:
"If you like this project, choose keywords that describe it, so you can find it easier later and promote it to others!" ...so that all projects are treated equal in this regard?
Perhaps the "Love it" purpose is that sometimes people want to show appreciation, without putting it in front of all their favorites.
By being able using additional tags like "awesome" and perhaps the ability to rearrange favorites, you can remember and promote the good, notable and awesome accordingly.)
Last edited by AddZero (2010-04-05 23:13:29)
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Thanks for the explanation! I think this is a really great and well thought out system! But if the Scratch Team plans on doing this, it would be a huge change, and I think that is worth thinking over it carefully.
Which brings me to my next point. In your system, would you keep the Top Viewed and Top Remixed sections? Newest Projects? And how would you organize the front page so that it included the collaboration system you talked about?
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shadow_7283 wrote:
Thanks for the explanation! I think this is a really great and well thought out system! But if the Scratch Team plans on doing this, it would be a huge change, and I think that is worth thinking over it carefully.
Yeah, it would be a huge change. Tags normally don't work like votes as they would here.
Tags would also have their own page with comments. So it would be a new system. That's why I'm suggesting this for scratch 2.0
(I'm trying to figure out how I'd build this in Drupal. Usually Drupal modules are flexible enough to be pieced together to make new systems, but I think this would have to be custom. it's like a mix of voting and taxonomy... or these tags are like views/content that can be linked to like a vote from projects...)
shadow_7283 wrote:
Which brings me to my next point. In your system, would you keep the Top Viewed and Top Remixed sections? Newest Projects? And how would you organize the front page so that it included the collaboration system you talked about?
Those could still exist with this system, I need to think more. I don't know how the front page would best be organized yet. What do you think?
But I think this system would take pressure off the front page by helping people find content they're interested in. (Personally, I would probably hang out in the "3d", "Math", "1s1s", "Complicated", "Card game" tags.)
I'm not sure exactly how the collaboration system would work. I think it should be more flexible than I have figure out above, (which is not much different than galleries are now.)
(Me thinking out loud: perhaps have sub tags (for sub projects/teams) for groups? perhaps have voting, ticket/bug tracking system? Would that make it too complicated? Drupal has a system called Organic Groups... hmmm...)
Last edited by AddZero (2010-04-06 19:08:10)
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Personally, (and this is just me) I think the Top Viewed has some of the same issues that the Top Loved category has. An interesting thumbnail is all that takes it to the front page, and viewing it has no direct consequence on the user viewing it.
I think that it should be replaced by "Top Taged" in general. No specifics, just Top Taged. I also think that there should be seperate Top Taged spaces for each commen tag category. So Project Top Tagged "Art" (or something like that) and Project Top Tagged "Game". That way, all these wars about there being too much art on the front page might be settled.
As for collaborations, I think I really just want a modified gallery system. Nothing too fancy, just a couple minor changes.
For one, I'd like the message system to be modified so that all users recieve a message when a collaboration page is commented on IF THEY CHOOSE. I'd also like the projects to be organizable (I think that's a word ) so that you could put what you'd like most at the front.
Lastly, I think themes would be a really cool thing to have, for collaboration pages and user pages. A theme would add a little color to the current bland pages, and would create room for a little personilization (I'm not talking about anything major like HTML though). But I realize that this isn't directly related to this topic and is only one of my personal wants.
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Support, but a bit confusing.
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shadow_7283, good ideas for collaboration! agreed.
BWOG, It's alright. I would have a hard time getting through a wall of text like that.
I do better with pictures, so I'll make some... It might be a few days, so someone else is welcome to.
GirWaffles64 wrote:
Support, but a bit confusing.
What part is confusing? I'll try to explain it better.
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AddZero wrote:
GirWaffles64 wrote:
Support, but a bit confusing.
What part is confusing? I'll try to explain it better.
Maybe make it a bit less longer lol?
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BWOG wrote:
I like the idea, but you kind of lost me half way through.
GirWaffles64 wrote:
Support, but a bit confusing.
Lucario621 wrote:
Maybe make it a bit less longer lol?
ok, I'll try:
"Tagged Favorites" replaces Tags, Galleries, Love Its, and Favorites.
Let's say you're on a new cool racing game project. on the side you see:
Tagged Favorites: Add to your favorites with a tag by pressing "[+]"
Public tags:
Game (by 1) [+]
Group tags:
FrozenGames Inc. (by 1)
Add to your favorites with another tag:
[ type or choose a tag here... ][\/]
it's already tagged as "Game" by the author. (the author also added it to "FrozenGames Inc." that he belongs to.)
By clicking on a [+] next to the "game" tag in the project.
You're saying: I love this, and I want to add it to my favorites with the category "game" with the other games in my favorites.
You also notice that it's a really cool example of a "racing" game, and you want to grow your racing game collection, so you click the button next to
[ type or choose a tag here... ][\/]
and you see a drop down that you can pick from:
Your most used tags:
Racing
Bicycling
Fire
Popular tags:
Animation
Simulation
Story
Maze
Groups you belong to:
UltraGames Inc
and you pick "Racing"
Now other people that like racing can go to the "Racing" tag page by clicking on "Racing" from other racing games or other places, and also see this project in "recently "racing" tagged projects"
They see it and want to add it to their collection.
The tag page for "Racing" is like the front page, but just for projects tagged with "Racing". It shows:
- recently "racing" tagged projects.
- top tagged "racing" projects.
- suggested "racing" projects. (if you also tend to use the tag "mario", mario racing games would show here.)
Let's look at the project tags again a little later:
Tagged Favorites: Add to your favorites with a tag by pressing "[+]"
Public tags:
Game (by 18 and you) [-]
Scrolling (by 8) [+]
Racing (by 4 and you) [-]
Techno Music (by 2) [+]
Banana (by 1) [+]
Group tags:
FrozenGames Inc. (by 4)
ScratchTeamFeatured * (by 1)
Add to your favorites with another tag:
[ type or choose a tag here... ][\/]
See, more people added it to their favorites with various tags.
Silly/irrelevant tags like "Banana" might be added, but I think people will tend to choose tags that are helpful to managing their collection of projects. People looking for Bannana projects in the banana page, would see this in "recently tagged as 'Bannana' but not vote it up with the "Bannana" tag. So it won't get much attention there.
If someone tags as "Banana!!!!!!!" it would be merged with "Banana" by suggesting or by moderators.
Notice the user had added it to "FrozenGames Inc." that they belong to. Now it's also added by 3 other members. You're not a member so you can't confirm that tag. But you can click it and watch them discuss their projects, and you can request membership, but you can't discuss with them unless they confirm you as a member or allow public commenting.
Also notice that the scratch team featured it! (* to show that it's an admin group.)
Does this make sense now?
Last edited by AddZero (2010-04-07 21:20:33)
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It makes sense to me and it sounds like an interesting idea. One thing I like is that it makes users "favorite" a project for an actual reason. Now, many projects get Top Loved simply because their creators have lots of friends. Often, Loving has little to do with the content of the project.
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I don't really support. I think the current system is fine.
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Lucario621 wrote:
I don't really support. I think the current system is fine.
Thanks for the criticism Lucario621. It's making me think about this more closely.
In response, here's reasons why I think this would improve what we have:
1. The current "Tags" are easily abused, so they are not very good at helping users find relevant projects.
For example look at the tag pages for dog, guitar hero, waffles. What does rocket man have to do with dog? or any of those under waffles? if I had a real waffles project, it may never be seen there.
These Tag pages are sorted by top views, so the top viewed project get more views even if they have nothing to do with the tag. The same project will stay at the top of the pages for years because they will just get more views. Correctly tagged projects may never be seen on the tag pages.
EDIT: I noticed that "rocket man" was moderated and no longer show on "guitar hero" and "dogs", good! I think FaveTags would require less moderation because the community can vote how relevant each tag is to the project. Here's another example, animation. Many of these have "animation" in them and deserve to have this tag. But I think if the users categorized their favorites by tags most useful to them, I bet more pure "animation" projects would rise to the top of this page... and the games with animation would have higher "games" votes.
"Tagged favorites" would make tags into votes and make tag pages more relevant. by giving newly tagged projects exposure, they will have a chance to promote in that keyword... and keyword pages will have more relevant projects.
2. "Galleries" are also like tags because they group like projects together; but public galleries are also easily abused. (projects added to get views, not because it's relevant.)
Private galleries are like favorites that can be grouped and with discussions. "Tagged favorites" would give each tag page a discussion like galleries and be more useful to teams. Both types will have more relevant content because users confirm how relevant the tag is to the project.
3. "Love its" are for showing appreciation, but they are often abused. Because projects that have allot of "love its" get attention. Getting them has become something to beg for.
4. "Favorites" are basically "love its" except better because it has a consequence for the person that presses it. But they are not sortable or grouped by tag, so they are not as useful to individual users and the community as "Tagged Favorites" could be.
EDIT: Perhaps you want to set a few projects apart as being particularly notable. You can also tag with the "awesome" tag, or other positive tags. (wrote more on that here.)
5. This would also make group collaboration more useful, It would be like 'galleries' but the group (or company) votes on how relevant it is to the group, by confirming the group tag. and they can discuss their projects on the group page.
(new!) 6. "Tagged Favorites" is similar to a proven system. I realized this week that this week, that it's much like the http://delicious.com bookmarking site.
Tags are like votes for how relevant something is, people don't just "love it" things, they add tags that are useful to them in describing the item, so they can find it in their personal collection easier.... and because of this, the tags are not as spammy as many "free tag systems." like scratch is now.
So that's reasons why I think this will be an improvement to the current ways to categorize, find, and promote projects and work together as groups.
Others made some good points above, like shadow_7283 and scmb1. Thanks! Let's keep discussing this and making this idea better please!
Last edited by AddZero (2010-04-30 18:01:05)
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Something just occured to me though. Users might like one or two art projects A LOT and tag favorite it, but if they don't like all art in general, they will still be stuck with the art projects affecting them. Do you have a way you plan to work around this?
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shadow_7283 wrote:
Something just occured to me though. Users might like one or two art projects A LOT and tag favorite it, but if they don't like all art in general, they will still be stuck with the art projects affecting them. Do you have a way you plan to work around this?
Thanks for considering this.
So, tags only 'affect' users as much as they use it.
For example, this is on the side of SomeScratchers' favorites page:
SomeScratcher's favorite tags:
game 50
simulation 43
pokemon 30
racing 12
platformer 8
mario 5
art 2
(The number is how many projects are in that tag for that user's favorites.)
You can click "art" to see just the 2 "art" projects they like.
Now we're logged in as SomeScratcher.
On the front page and tag pages, there's a section for "Suggested projects"
On the front page, it may suggest "art" projects to Somescratcher occasionally, but not near as often as game, simulation, pokemon, racing...
When visiting the "pokemon" tag page, "Suggested projects" may occasionally suggest "pokemon art" projects to SomeScratcher, but it would be more likely to show "pokemon games", "pokemon simulations" "pokemon racing" pokemon platformers" ... first.
If they visited the "art" public tag, then it would suggest "game art" "simulation art" "pokemon art" "racing art" if they exist... in that priority.
Does that make sense?
Last edited by AddZero (2010-04-10 17:31:50)
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Yeah. I get it all know...
Hmm... I need another possible flaw...
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this would be great, hopefully everyone would use it properly though
i'd like this system because sometimes people like certain types of games and if i were to choose a tag for a specific kind of game such as puzzle games then i could find other games that suited my interest.
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PlayWithFire wrote:
this would be great, hopefully everyone would use it properly though
i'd like this system because sometimes people like certain types of games and if i were to choose a tag for a specific kind of game such as puzzle games then i could find other games that suited my interest.
I think this system will be easier to use properly than the current 4 systems. ...and have less room for abuse- because, the focus will be on building your favorites collection in order to show appreciation for projects, organizing them with tags that make sense to you.
Each tag will have a tag page like the front page, showing top tagged, newest tagged and suggested... If that tag makes sense to the community and belongs with the project, people will be more likely to use it to add the project to their favorites.
I think if we make using tags very easy, this will work well.
Perhaps to simplify further, it shouldn't be a sidebar, but underneath the project. and just show how many times a tag is used when hovering the mouse over it. (still sorted by most used)
350 Views, Favorited by 78 scratchers including you!
Love this project? + Add it to your favorites with words that describe it:
Current tags: (Game - ) (Simulation + ) (Racing + ) (Pineapples + )
Current groups: {NeatoGames Inc. - } {ScratchTeamFeatured* }
Add to another tag or group: [ enter tag here... ][\/]
(This person added it to their favorites by clicking the + next to Game. and added it to NeatoGames Inc. which they belong to. and it was featured by the scratch team.)
So hopefully it's easier to understand/use now. More feedback?
Last edited by AddZero (2010-04-19 18:28:09)
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BUMP! The Scratch Team NEEDS to look at this.
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