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Radical idea for TQ&A, blogs, discussions

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by Jay Garmon

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Secret confession time: Blogging at TechRepublic has not been as successful as we hoped. Essentially, blogs are hidden in a corner, not integrated into site search, and don't get surfaced enough places to generate meaningful traffic and user interaction. Compared to discussions, blogs are pretty weak.

Which makes one ask, why did we separate Blogs and Discussions in the first place? We've seen more than one user--eager to get feedback on a blog post--repost his blog entry into a discussion thread. We have huge internal debates about how best to promote certain items and authors: via blogs or discussions. These were the warning signs that led us to a radical but high-potential conclusion...

You blog is just a listing of every Discussion thread you start. Every blog entry is just a new thread, not a separate content type hidden in a corner. A post is a post is a post. From this perspective, your blog becomes a running collection of everything you felt was important enough to start a thread about--which is a pretty healthy definition of a traditional blog.

In this scenario, every TR member becomes a blogger, and every blog post gets the benefit of traditional discussion promotion and interaction.

"But wait!" you say. "I started my blog as something separate from my forum activity. It has a specific purpose. I don't want that muddled up with all my rants about evolution, divorce, or politics! MY blog is about Linux."

We couldn't agree more. Some blogs should have a discreet topic. We call those Project Blogs. For example, JMGarvin could start a Project called "Linux, Security, and Firewall Musings." Any post he makes pertaining to these topics could be assigned to this Project. Thus, if I wanted to follow JMGarvin's Linux discourse, I could simply follow this Project Blog.

This is the whole point of Projects 2.0--a narrowly focused subset of your larger TR activity and interests, where any asset you consume or create can be assigned to a Project, and every Project can filter every TR feature, including Blogs. For the more ambitious among you, you could maintain multiple Projects, allowing the main Blog to be a holistic view of your interests, while your Projects hone in on specific topics like Linux, Security, RFID, Web Design, Evolution, Divorce, or Politics.

36 replies

by stress junkie

It seems as if you, in the long run, just renaming blogs to projects. How are the projects going to get noticed?

by Jay Garmon

Every post to a Project Blog will still be visible in the forums and in your larger blog. The Project will just be an organizational filter, which--if the Project is public--should be visible on every relevant post. Readers who discover your Project Blog posts "in the wild" will be able to view the associated Project, subscribe to it, bookmark it, the whole shebang.

Project Blogs will only be invisible if you want them to be.

by charliespencer

Disclaimer: the following comments are from someone who tends to view blogs in, if not a negative light, then light that is several bulbs short of a chandelier.

I suspect by the time TR began hosting blogs, those members who were interested already had blogs on other sites. Those members who weren't interested weren't going to start a blog just because it was available here.

Is there a member-accessible list of who has a blog? Are the only blogs those listed under Featured Bloggers? What percentage of TR members (not staff) maintain blogs here? What percentage of those actually post original content here, not just links to or echoes of their non-TR blogs? If it isn't many, maybe maintaining a system for member blogs isn't worth the effort. Maybe it would be easier to put a field in a member's profile allowing a link to an external blog. That link could be replace the "Read my blog" link already displayed beneath the member's name.

If you go ahead with the "new thread is a blog entry" concept, would it be possible to include a prompt for which Project blog to add the entry to, to create a new Project blog on the fly, and to not add the thread to a blog at all? Or will the thread-Project Blog classifying be handled by a tag specified at thread creation?

I notice you mentioned Tech Q&A in the title but didn't discuss it. I've notice a lot of questions in Discussions that should be in Q&A. This could probably be policed by the members by responding "You need to ask that in Q&A." But there's nothing motivating a member to respond to a Q&A question instead of a discussion question. I've read many comments saying those who ask questions rarely rate the responses. If the answers aren't rated, why give preference to a Q&A question; just answer it in Discussions. It's easier to get a conversation going between multiple members in a discussion, easier to edit or update an answer, and easier to comment on other members' answers. As a question-asker, you don't have to rate discussions and points aren't involved. For a question answerer, the response tools in Q&A are less user-friendly than in Discussions. Admittedly, the clunkier interface means the answers are more likely to stay on topic.

Which raises the real radical question: If points are only good for Q&A answers, and points aren't awarded because answers aren't rated, and I can get better answers in Discussions without points than Q&A, what value is there in either points or Q&A? Drop the points and Q&A and do everything in Discussions.

When starting a new discussion, members are required to select a topic. Consider expanding the existing Topics, making Topic selection mandatory for all entries, and use the limited list of Topics as a replacement for the wide-open tags. The problem with tags is I may use one term as a tag, but another member may search on a different word for the same material. Or I may even (horrors!) misspell the word I use as a tag, making it useless for others to search on. As many have noted, some of us ain't the bestest spelers or typests.

Thanks for asking!

by Jay Garmon

Palmetto, you just summed up about 14 months worth of passionate internal debate on this very topic, and have argued for sMoRTy71's precise position on the subject.

The rub is that Tech Q&A is extremely popular with our most active users, though these are the same people who are most dissatisfied with the Q&A system's obvious shortcomings. Undertaking some of the changes we're considering is something of a serious gamble, because we risk upsetting the very members we value and rely upon the most.

That said, we're seriously considering your suggested tactic, taken one step further. We'd allow members to flag discussion posts as Technical Questions (with an associated icon). No points. No ratings. Just a way to send off a distress signal, if you will. That way, those TR members devoted to helping others can easily find Tech Questions, and answer them.

Secondly, for those rare souls that are inclined to close and rate under the current system, we'd allow them to mark their Technical Questions as Solved, which would lock the thread from any future posting. We could then aggregate and surface those threads that have confirmed solutions, finally creating the FAQ for common tech questions that people have been begging for.

Now, this approach means an end to TechPoints, and all the associated street cred that comes with them. Some people would have a serious problem with that. I'm curious to know what the response would be from this group.

by stress junkie

I've said several times that the fact that answers don't get rated and questions don't get closed really irritates me. I rarely look at the TQ&A for this reason. Also TQ&A doesn't facilitate a dialog. It's just one shot at being helpful or else you can write several answers and gain more rejected or unrated questions on your score card. Then there's the irritation of having given a good answer, the questioner admits that it would work but rejects your answer because "we just don't feel like taking that approach". This is often due to the questioner's lack of experience. Overall the point system is a headache and a deterent to participation, and the format of counting questions discourages dialog.

by charliespencer

I rate someone's street cred by the number of people who count them as a Contact.

Points just indicate you participate, regardless of the quality of your activity. Ratings indicate you had more free time to post this week than other members had. Contacts indicate people think you have something worth reading when you open your mouth, however frequently or rarely.

by jardinier

Trivia Geek. I lost interest before I was half-way through your post. You seem determined to make everything so complicated that some people (like myself for example) will just not bother with blogs.

Everyone knows that I like to rant about religion, and politics, and religion. And I am sure some people breathe a big sigh of relief when each such discussion finally peters out.

But I deliberately start threads on as diverse a field of topics as possible, so that people will not think I am obsessed with specific topics.

While it would be nice to keep a list of all the discussions I start within my preferred areas, MOST of the threads which I start are just to stimulate conversation and have NO long term interest.

So I would like to be able to choose which discussions are kept listed with my blog, and which ones I can jettison as soon as they have served their short term purpose.

However here is a suggestion that has been on my mind for a long time.

Drop "Miscellaneous" altogether and replace it with:

"Miscellaneous Technical" and
"Miscellaneous Non Technical"

or something similar.

by Jay Garmon

I'll admit I wrote the opening post in haste. Sorry if I was unclear. Let's see if I can make this simpler.

Your blog is your posting activity, and whether you choose to be known for a single subject or a wide variety of interests is entirely up to you. As a collection of all the threads (not posts, but threads) you start, I'm betting everyone's blog would be pretty varied (at least among active members).

As to long-term value, blogs are chronological, so posts would drop off your list into an archive pretty regularly. Given your posting level, nothing would stay near the top of your list for very long.

Project Blogs are a separate concept, and they would be a subset of your larger blog. You aren't obligated to have a Project Blog, and most people probably won't. However, if there is a recurring subject you'd like to aggregate some posts around, that is what the Project Blog is for. Totally optional, but available if you want it.

In your case, you could have a Project Blog on a preferred technical topic, where you could funnel--at will and only when specified--those posts that you would consider to have lasting value. The Project Blog would be a filter, a way to sort your posts in any manner you see fit. In the case you describe, that filter could be "Serious Posts Worth Saving," which would skim off your on-topic stuff from the larger collection of "mere conversation" threads.

If you were so inclined, you could have multiple Project Blogs, each addressing a separate subject. Someone like Jaqui, for example, could have a Project Blog about Web Design and a separate Project Blog about Linux. Oz could have one about Music and a second one about Novell.

Workspace and Projects are about letting you collect and organize everything you create or consume at TechRepublic. The ball is entirely in your court.

The approach we're considering is to strip away all the divisions between blogs and discussions and Tech Q&A. Instead of deciding which forum you want to post in and what form-factor you must comply with, we're just going to let you post, and give you the option of categorizing and saving the stuff as you see fit. We're going to stop parsing and segregating this stuff for you, and put you guys in the driver's seat. Save nothing or save everything. Apply no organizational filters or apply dozens. It's all up to you. That's what we're getting at.

Hope that clears things up a little.

by stress junkie

OK so your concept of projects is exactly what I wanted when you started blogs. I'm happy with that. Now that I've spent thousands of hours creating my blog how do I migrate that into a project? Also, if a post is referenced in a project will it remain available or will it disappear into an inaccessible archive some day?

Thank you.

by jardinier

I was just horrified at the thought of having an infinite archive of irrelevant threads/posts.

I am DEFINITELY interested in the facility to save threads/posts that are relevant to me. With the input from peers with a great variety of special areas of knowledge, there are countless gems that surface in the discussions.

Incidentally, I think Oz will agree that you have gotten his priorities wrong.

Probably something more like:

Beer, Yuk, ale, sh*t-stirring, lager ... well I'm sure you get my drift.

by Jay Garmon

Think of a Project as just another tag. Everything you've flagged as part of a Project will be visible, there will just be a Project View that pulls all the flagged assets together. When you get right down to it, a Project is in many ways just a database sort.

As for migration, if we do make this switchover to "all posts are equal" we'd convert your existing blog to a Project, and let you modify or divide the posts from there.

by stress junkie

Yes I have a blog so I wasn't kidding about that. The size of the blog was humorously overstated a bit. I'm gifted that way you know.

by hal 9000

As someone who has been working hard to get a site rating of 666 out of the top 100 what do I find I'm listed as number 1! Now I do understand that it's Autumn in your neck of the woods and everyone is attempting to get the last of summer in before they git snowed in but I really can not believe that I'm the most prominent poster here on TR. :p

But when it comes to Tech points and the answer ratings I really fail to see any advantage. I think Maxwell said it best about Tech points their only real use is that you can ask a question and award it several hundred thousand points so you get an immediate answer. Otherwise they are fairly useless and I haven't bothered with them at all. ;)

And when it comes to answering questions that is next to useless as well recently I submitted 5 answers to one person which all said exactly the same thing and he rejected them and then accepted the 6th as a acceptable answer, but it said exactly the same thing again admittedly in different words but the outcome was exactly the same as any of the previous answers that I'd given. I've just had a look see at my Q&A rating and I find that 17% of my answers are accepted 17% rejected and 65% not rated mainly because the questions remain open. :)

What I think the main problem with the Q&A site is, is that most of those asking questions don't actually know how to ask a question properly so they get a correct answer and this leads to a lot of problems as they get what is a correct answer to their incorrectly worded question which doesn't apply to them or their problem. I've lost count of the number of times that I've had to ask questions to something like "I need help" and the body of the question is "my computer doesn't work how do I fix it?" well that's a lot to work from isn't it? So you ask questions which are not answered for days at a time and then try to supply answers as you see fit from the answers provided it's not the easiest thing to do. Now if I ever get my hands on Chas he's in for it as he somehow sucked me back into the Q&A section which I had previously abandoned as a waste of time as most of the questions where never closed off so that what could be a great resource doesn't exist. :(

Now Jay aren't you sorry that you mentioned the Q&A section in your listing? :^O

Col ]:)

by Jay Garmon

FYI, Q&A posts rate higher in the member rankings than discussion posts. SO it's Chas's fault you're not rated 666.

by jaqui

the top 10 get the emails asking for help.
if you are over 10 then it's not as common to get them ( not for me at least)

I just love the obvious they don't pay any attention to the site, or profile data questions..

like getting a question emailed to me about setting up and configuring exchange server.
huh?
what part of my profile says I know ms exchange?
lets see.. linux, webserver ( apache ), ftp servers, email ahh there it is, they think email is only exchange..

dumb sh!ts.
sendmail is the best email server.

Jay, the peer contact, could it be switched to a sitemail, rather than directly to an email address?

by Jay Garmon

I can't promise this will be a priority, but we're working on an on-site Updates system as an addition to/successor for our discussions update e-mail alerts (with a lot of project and workspace-related extras thrown in).

On the surface it would seem pretty reasonable to simply integrate peer messaging into this system. That way, you'd have the option to receive these as on-site only, RSS feeds, and/or e-mail alerts. We haven't even written the spec for that yet, so we're a ways away, but that also means you got the request out there in time.

by hal 9000

Spreading Anthrax around so they are far better known. :p

In case your wondering they are one of his favourite groups after Judas Priest. :^O

Col ]:)

by hal 9000

A few weeks ago I had a forced removal from TR for 4 days and when I returned I found that I had moved from Number 2 of the Top 100 to number 1. :(

I see this as a form of punishment as everyone and their dog send e-mails asking how to do such & such. Last week I had someone ask me for help in designing some Web Pages and they wanted me to visit them in LA or New York or somewhere similar I can't remember now and I'm even less inclined to look it up. These people see a high site rating and expect you to help them which I really don't mind when I have the time but this particular person was really shocked when they found out that I was in the US. ;)

Col ]:)

by stress junkie

I hate the fact that sending another TR member a "private message" exposes my email address to that member. If private messages were contained on the TR site then this would be a big improvement in protecting the security and privacy of the message sender. Maybe TR could send an email to the real email address of the recipient saying "You have a private message on TR" when someone sent a private message to you. The recipient would not see any more information about the sender than they already see in the member profile.

by jaqui

maybe I should post this in the general suggestions forum, so that all members can post if they like this idea.

show how much support overall there would be for the change. :)

by jaqui

was one of the ideas behind the suggestion.
:)

if only tr has the email address then it kills the spamming of people's private accounts completely.

by jaqui

that I was reminded by the whole spam issue about it. :)

actually, most of the open source cms / portal site scripts have exactly this functionality.
where members can send a message that never leaves the site..maybe an email notification of the message from the site.

the php Nuke script is an excellent example of a good implementation of the site messaging.
[ I'm not a big fam of Nuke overall, but in some ways it is a great script ]

by hal 9000

Some one has managed to break the TR site, well at least the outgoing notifications as I only use this particular mail account for TR and there has been no activity on it for well over 24 hours now. Except for the test message that I've sent myself to make sure that, this account is still working.

Time to get the whips out to those programmers now and make them work for a living. :^O

And it wasn't me I'm no where near your servers YET! :p

But if you like I can take them over for my own use. :D

Actually that sounds like a great idea a lot more hardware at my disposal without the wife knowing about it great idea I'll get busy at doing it now. ;)

Col ]:)

by stress junkie

Take the TR server(s) over for your own use? I doubt that it/they have the horsepower to run Donkey Kong. :D

by hal 9000

A nice bunch of pictures to submit for the Dinosaur Sightings wouldn't it? ;)

All of that hardware and someone else looking after it and keeping it running and more importantly paying for it is almost worth having a big 80286 system isn't it? :^O

Col ]:)

by jaqui

take a few months, but I'm sure I could find you a couple Col. :)

FOB Vancouver.

by hal 9000

You keep them there and maintain them while they are running so my wife doesn't see them it will be fine. :D

She's Currently spitting the dummy when she overheard that I'm buying another computer a 64 Bit one so I can test some new play toys on the different OS's. She seems to think that every computer is the same. :(

But actually a 286 with DR DOS and Tetris would actually keep her happy as that's all I've ever seen her actually use a computer to do. The Nix versions of the game are no good as they are just way to fast for her so something slower like a basic 286 would fit the bill nicely. I've got quite a few spare XT Power Supplies here although the number is slowly dwindling so the different voltage shouldn't be a problem. ;)

Col ]:)

by jardinier

Your wife is not alone, Col.

About two years ago I purchased a bulk lot of old computers and parts and needed somewhere to store it.

So I asked a woman for whom I had done gardening work from time to time if I could use her lock-up brick shed. She was quite happy for me to do this and refused to accept any payment or gardening work in lieu.

I soon discovered that I had been "done" and had paid $AU 500 for a heap of mostly unusable rubbish. By and by it was gradually removed at regular council clean-ups.

But I left one computer (running Windows 95) and showed the woman how to play Windows Solitaire.

Well this kept her amused for a year or so and then she wanted something more challenging. So I installed Windows Tetris and Jezz Ball.

She found Jezz Ball too tricky, but became well and truly addicted to Tetris. When I called in recently her son (who lives with her) said she spent about 6 hours per day in the shed playing Tetris.

Incidentally Tetris is the one game I never tire of myself.

However I have been quite unable to match the scores of the son of a woman who gave me a Mac.

[Just as an aside -- I personally think that playing Tetris is about all Macs are good for.]

by hal 9000

Was Free Space with a Force Feedback Joystick and even then I only played it after breaking my wrist and I found it easier and far less painful than doing the phyiso that had been prescribed to torment me. ;)

When I first started out I could play for about 2 minutes at the lowest level of feedback from the joystick but within the month before I saw the phyiso again I was up to about an hour at a time at max feedback and enjoying it as well. When I next saw the woman who specialised in inflicting pain upon me she was very impressed and insisted that I had been taking my exercises very seriously and been such a good boy, I just replied that I found her exercises impossible to perform so I had been using a force feedback joystick and playing a game on the computer and that had worked far better than what she had insisted I do to regain the full range of movement in the wrist. I still have that game here somewhere but I haven't had it loaded for years. :)

But when I'm loading a big program in Windows I've been known to play a few hands of Solitaire while I'm waiting for the thing to finish and SHMBO still thinks that the NB is a tool. :^O

Col

by jardinier

Yes I too learnt that it is a satisfactory way to pass the time while waiting for some procedure to complete or some person to be free to talk to.

But what gets me is that it was designed for screen resolution 640 X 480 and they have NEVER adjusted it to fit the resolutions which are now used most commonly. So you either have to play it in a little box in the corner of the screen, or use long sweeps of the mouse to move the cards.

It fits best on a monitor size 14 inch or smaller which was the standard when the original version for Win 3.1 was introduced.

by hal 9000

Not getting any notifications of postings to discussions that I've subscribed to or is this affecting others?

Col

by charliespencer

I've noticed a couple of things I subscribed to did not show up on my "Subscribed Discussions" list. This discussion is one of them.

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