Hunch Hub

[reposted from other thread to keep it organised]
Looking forward towards the ability to filter results with tags. I'll make sure to add some over time for the results I'm familiar with. Are there any guidelines about this? It will be a herculeant task to tag all those results! Btw, do I recognise the signature of Georges Duverger?
However, I'm less sure about the current mode of presentation of tags under results.
- what's the surplus-value of presenting them in this way, imo they're convenient to narrow down/select certain results, but don't add much in terms of the result itself. But maybe that's because they're too generic at the moment and in need of more specificity?
The most interesting tags (certainly in this mode of presentation, not in terms of filtering) won't be the ones that a result shares with other results, but the ones that seperates them from each other. More precisely, those tags will be the ones that couldn't be captured in a question, as they didn't fit the decision tree format.
- even if you deem it necessary to present them like this, I would present them in a gray tone similar to "tags". In black I find them too distracting, they seem to break up the vertical stack of results too much and left my eye wandering around.

Posted at: 2:21PM on Dec. 17, 2010. [ permalink ]

I can understand the rationale behind the positioning of the tags in terms of making it easy to add them. However, doesn't the majority of users come to hunch to get recommendations, and won't they be distracted by those tags under the results? Won't they think it's too cluttery, that it's information overload?
Possible solutions would be:
- just show tags and the crayon and let people decide if they want to see/contribute tags
- as I said before, show them in a gray tone

However, now that I'm thinking about the relevance of information shown, in the long term I would get rid of the bulk of text when showing results in a list. Keep this as clear and crisp as possible. So when the time is there [enough tags], just show tags and pros/cons as those will be the most informative to the user. To summarise: relevant tags and well-written pros/cons are more information dense than the beginning of a WIkipedia-entry or Amazon description.

Posted at: 2:36PM on Dec. 17, 2010. [ permalink ]

@ictus - to your point from the other post about general vs. specific tags, I think we're currently in a state of broad, generic tags. This is mostly due to how we seeded the initial tags. They are based off how the individual results were trained to the questions in their topics. So, all cars trained as Sedans in the topic Cars are now tagged "sedan"
Overtime the universe of tags will increasingly become more and more diverse and long-tail-y. This is what will allow users to really zero-in on just what matters to them when getting back recommendations from Hunch. The more broad tags will still have their role though, as they will serve as the framework of a specific topic.
All feedback and questions are welcome.

Posted at: 2:53PM on Dec. 17, 2010. [ permalink ]

@ictus - your last comment about the tags + pro/cons being more interesting and informative than a block of text is dead-on with our thinking about the issue.

Posted at: 2:55PM on Dec. 17, 2010. [ permalink ]

Hey Ben — thanks for your feedback! You've very good points about how tags are displayed on the refiner (topic) page. There are indeed grabbing a lot of attention right now. I think, like Tom said in the other thread, we're going to focus on being able to “filter by tags” first; maybe then, they would make more sense on that page; if not, we'll re-evaluate the way they are shown (and maybe go with something more subtle like you suggested). Does that make sense to you?

Updated at: 4:08PM on Dec. 17, 2010. [ permalink ]

@georges : imo the problem qua attenton grabbing is not the location or content, but rather the color of the tags.
Btw imho I think the "add tag" button on the result page is too small. it feels cramped, why not a symbol? Those buttons work fine when they're big like the "like" "dislike" buttons, but with this size they feel cramped.

But let me ramble on. If the goal is letting people add thoughtful tags, I have the following remarks:
- I understand why the tags are too broad and generic now. However, won't people be confused by reading these, as they are expected to add more specific tags?
- On a related note, how will people know which tags are allowed, maybe dedicate a blogpost to it with some examples.
- I'm convinced people will tag results they just added themselves. However, what with all the other older results? Do you really think people will actively pursue this? I gave it a try, but have to admit that I quit after getting bored [frank but honest].
I know the chief scientist of Hunch is a bit skeptical about the gamification of everything [if I understood correctly], but I feel that this tagging problem needs to be made into a game to become successfull [or maybe with an army of interns]. I'm sure you're all familiar with the ESP game as designed by Luis von Ahn as a solution for tagging images. In this case it wouldn't be only images, but a kind of free association with all the items Hunch has to offer... This would also be a great way of getting to know other hunchers.
Of course a lot of metadata is already available, but I guess not for commercial use.

Posted at: 2:04PM on Dec. 18, 2010. [ permalink ]

I agree with ictus on his point about people not knowing what to add and knowing how specific of tags to add. I know the first time I added one I was wondering those same things. It would be helpful to have a blog post explaing how detailed the tags should be and if there is any certain pattern hunch wants us to follow.

Posted at: 8:30AM on Dec. 20, 2010. [ permalink ]

A ton of great questions here around "what makes a good Hunch tag" so that topic may be worth a blog post in the near future. Hopefully once the tag-based navigation for recommendations is in place some of these questions will answer themselves. However, we do expect that our team will be systematizing the tagging of certain results to help seed the system. How that will work is still unclear somewhat. I do like the idea of making an activity or game dedicated to tagging.
Overall, we want users who contribute recommendations to Hunch to worry less and less about things like "where should I add this?" or "am i adding this the right way?" We are happy to be the gnomes who take care of those issues for users (to some extent) so we can ensure end-users getting recommendations have a fresh and diverse selection to choose from.

Posted at: 10:36AM on Dec. 20, 2010. [ permalink ]