WiserEarth Editors

Over the past months I have tried to get a good feel for where the conversations are happening. And, you all see exactly what I have been seeing! I put in my "yay" vote for removing the "extra" discussion area. It consolidates what is already happening and lightens the monitoring conversation task.

 

 

~h

I agree with the above comments, AND, I feel that something would be lost if the discussion link were to simply disappear. It is a very accessible feature, albeit underutilized and now perhaps redundant.  Before we had groups that was the primary discussion place and it was centralized, meaning all discussions could be easily accessed from there and the most recent ones were most visible.  I found it to be an easy entry point.  Multiple topics within one discussion forum is also very nice.

   I am concerned that it may be difficult for people to browse discussions or easily locate ones related to specific topics, particularly people who are new to the site, if the discussions only only reside in group spaces.  For example there may be a discussion about a proposed change to WE- is it in the Editors Group or the Suggestions Group?  What if I have not yet discovered of one of these groups? What if I am looking for any discussion pertaining to a particular principle of permaculture?  Which of the numerous regional permaculture or related groups do I look for that in?

   Of course people can always 'search' but that can be problematic too...    I just tried searching for the discussion about recent snow storm impacts in our sustainable home town group using three key words contained in the discussion title. Unforunately,  My search did not return any results.  To find that discussion it would appear that I would have to already know which group it was contained in then search from there. 

   I hope that there would be a way to search only discussions throughout all groups (as we can search only other types of content) and that such a feature would be made easily accessible (obvious) to users in order to assist them to locate discussions that are of particular interest or relevance to them.  Discussions are a very valuable aspect of WiserEarth where people learn from each other through interactive communication.  I would like to see this highlighted, however we modify or consolidate the feature.

I actually share Marcus'es concerns. While one can argue that the general discussion forums can be quite empty and unresponsive, the same can be said for many groups' discussion forums as well. And there really are worthwhile and active discussions in the former, e.g. What do We Need to Do to End Poverty--Pragmatically and Soon?

 

Keys are:

• How do we highlight active discussions across the site?
• How do we guide WE members to conversations that might interest them? (even if there's just one comment in each)

 

Problems:

• General discussion forums are 'separate' from groups' discussion forums while the underlying architecture looks to be the same.
• Search doesn't seem to be working quite well for discussions.Case in point is Marcus'es attempt above to search for a discussion in his 'semi-private' group.

 

Potential solutions:

• Groups that are 'semi-private' and 'public', should automatically have their discussion forums 'published' in the general discussion forums (which would bring the number of listed forums from current 137, to easily more than 500). This is to be done in a way that allows individual discussion topic listed in the Latest Topics and Most Active Topics tabs. There need's to be a clear sign that a forum is part of a group (this by the way is a general problem with group's discussion forum, where there is no easy way to immediately know that a discussion page is part of a group). And also a sign which indicates if the discussion is 'open' or requires one to join a group prior to participation.
• We may want to add ability to rate discussion topic, and then add another tab called Highest Rated Topics. This would allow less-active, yet meaningful/important discussion to be more visible. Think Digg-like structure for conversations across WiserEarth (thumbs up thumbs down, or current five-stars rating).
• We may want to add another tab called Random Topics to add serendipity element of discovery.
• Make good use of the Keywords field when starting a discussion to improve search results for discussions. Allow Keywords tagging for subsequent comments?
• Improve search for discussions. e.g. current search results display multiple comments from a single topic, but leads to same position in discussion page upon clicking search result. Solution: implement google-like highlighting of search terms on a discussion page.
• Incorporate discussion topic in upcoming content recommendation feature for users.
• Allow for adding discussion topics from other places into one's group??? (much like adding resources, organization pages, etc.). If this is possible and desirable, we can add discussion topics from across the site into the newly released Suggested Content module.
• Weed-out / remove / hide / lock individual discussion forums / topics that are relevant no more. e.g. Suggestions forum are to be 'locked' and 'replaced' by WE Suggestion group's forum. This way we still have both history and continuity. This way, older and less-relevant forums and topics will naturally wither away to the bottom of the listing, but remain searchable.

How this approach might be desirable:

• Keeping with WE's transparency principle. Older discussions in general forums will remain visible (though 'locked' or "hidden from general members" for some cases).
• Allow for a one-stop-solution to find conversations that matters across the many 'semi-private' and 'public' groups.
• If done well, can be used to showcase the level of activity and interaction across the many groups. Many groups only have one or two active discussions. Viewed from within the group, it shows signs of low-activity level, but viewed from the general discussion forums' listings, it adds to site-wide activity.
• Provide a way for groups to showcase their discussions to the wider WE community.
• Allow for cross-pollination of a discussion topic by people beyond the originating group.

How this approach might not be desirable:

• Requires some technical fixes which can be tricky and time-consuming (among other higher-priority fixes/upgrades).
• If not done well, can add another layer of un-needed complexity to the site

How editors (especially those with Moderators role) can help:

• Help with weeding-out inactive, redundant, and less-relevant forums. They can either be marked as 'locked' or 'removed'.
• Help rate high-quality discussion topics so they appear in the Highest Rated Topics tab.
• Help add relevant keywords for each discussion topic (if this feature is to be implemented).

I hope these thoughts shed some new light to this problem. Just want to make sure we've considered all possibilities.

I fully support the idea of taking the discussions link off the home page as at the moment it doesn't provide a very good entry point into the content as there is little context to the discussions. As a result, i think Heatherlynn's idea is a good one - basically to place the discussions into the context (aof or other) that they are relevant to.I think Bowo's idea to create high rated discussions is a good one, but not sure it's necessary here as if there is lots of activity in a discussion, then generally it means that the discussion is a good one. Agree that suggestion forum should be replaced by the suggestions group as it's too difficult to manage both as editors.

 

I think the solution is somewhere along the lines of adding a better search functionality (eg. google keyword search combined with advanced search - which would address Marcus's concern and could incorporate Bowo's keyword suggestion), and making the relevant discussions linked to the specific content/issue/suggestion that is being discussed (agree with Bowo on weeding out old/no longer relevant discussions) - so keep the existing discussions somewhere on the site that don't have any related content or are no longer active as 'archived discussions' for transparency reasons. Perhaps being accessible from the editors or suggestions group.

 

Overall though I agree that most discussions take place in the group context, so this is where we should focus our efforts - on this point I agree that the discussions to open groups could be accessible by everyone but not to semi-private groups as these semi-private groups may not want to have everyone involved in their group discussions. Would like to know though the technical ease of implementing these solutions. I know that there are plans to revamp the home page soon (addressing a more seemless way in for newcomers) which would probably include create revamped landing pages for each part of the site (orgs, people, groups, jobs etc). If it's too difficult to chop up the discussion forum, then at least making it accessible from some of these landing page is essential.

One more point, hopefully with the Earth Charter based Key Principle Groups - we can channel the more general discussions to these groups. There would at least be a context and a community related to them... I still think the general discussion link should go.