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Use tags instead of posts to describe sites?
Is it better to put site proposal descriptions in tag descriptions, rather than posts?
2 answers
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I don't know the technical constraints on tags in terms of implementation, but as a matter of UX I think proposal are a better fit for tags.
The current model of using posts (which appear similar to questions, but without the answer) provides some features that proposal don't really need:
- Comments. These are normally used to debate this or that detail of the proposal. These should be asked as questions tagged with the proposal in this meta section.
- Tagging. There doesn't seem to be much use case for tagging proposals. They will only ever be tagged with their own proposal tag, which seems like redundant busywork.
- Sorting. The sort filters don't really make sense for proposals. I don't see much need for someone to keep sorting the proposals page by age or score (which is not even supported by the proposal posts themselves). Normally the volume of new proposals should be small enough that sorting them is not a big problem.
Whereas if we used tags instead, there are certain advantages:
- Instead of having to maintain a description and tag for each proposal, we only maintain a tag, so it is more DRY.
- It eliminates a section of the proposals site, which simplifies the site.
- The Incubator Q&A section can become the default landing page for proposals, which is more appropriate: For each proposal, you would expect multiple incubator questions to be posted, so users would use the incubator section more.
Some challenges for switching to tags:
- We already have a handful of proposals, someone will have to copy/paste their description into the proposal.
- Edit history is less obvious for tag descriptions.
- It is harder for new users to edit the descriptions
But admittedly, I think perfecting the site UX is less critical right now than gaining sufficient activity and getting some proposal wins (graduating some proposals into full sites with a healthy userbase). I think even the current situation is usable enough, and I don't see it as being a blocker to this. So although I say tags would be better, perhaps it doesn't matter either way for the near future.
We talked about using tag descriptions instead of the Descriptions category, but there were a few issues:
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We want the people interested in a proposal to be able to collaboratively edit the description. That's not possible with tag descriptions today. (Yes that's on our list.)
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We wanted it to be easy to see a list of current, active proposals. If that information were in tags, you'd have to sort through the tags list looking for the ones with the special formatting, and (when we get there) it would include archived proposals too.
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We wanted to allow comments. While bigger discussions about, for example, scope should be on Meta, comments are a good way to sort out questions and clarifications.
It's true that some site functionality doesn't make as much sense in the Descriptions category: each post will only have one (unique) tag, and sorting is not meaningful. The proposals community operates differently from all the others, and we didn't think these quirks would get in the way.
Another answer suggests that if we got rid of the Descriptions category, it would let the Incubator Q&A category be the main one. That's something we can change anyway; the first position in the list isn't magic. I, too, have been wondering if that would be a better default than the descriptions -- take people to the active Q&A and they can look up the proposals later. If I don't hear any strong objections, I'll plan to make that change soon.
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