Current ways of discovering content:
- search
- frontpage recommendation feed
- activity feed
- various tag feeds
- related
Feeds and related questions have a level of randomness. And search requires knowing very specifically what you’re after. There’s no way to start at a high level and work your way down.
I think there needs to be some hierarchical way of navigating the site. And I think we can leverage our existing tag system to build one by defining hierarchical clusters as a combination of tags.
Main usecase: someone who only loosely knows what he’s after.
For example, someone looking to buy headphones might not know exactly what he’s after (in-ear, over-ear, etc), but could make a decision if presented with options.
So the user would see something like this. For example, somewhere in the sidebar:
Programming
- ► BPEL
- ► C
- ► C–
- ▼ C++
- ▼ Learning resources
“Question about beginner resources”
“Question about intermediate resources”
“Question about advanced resources”
“Question about style references” - ▼ Tools
“What are the best C++ compilers?”
In this case “Question about beginner resources” would be #Programming + #C + #Learning Resources.
This would need:
- ability to combine tags (i.e. slant.co/topics?tag=development+learning-resources)
- mods to be able to add new tags (could even allow anyone to add tags)
- mods the ability to edit that hierachical nav
- display nav somewhere on the site
Random notes:
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Allows loosely defining clusters since questions can be in multiple clusters and subclusters can be in multiple clusters.
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Could be used to improve what the related questions are showing by showing question within the same clusters.
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Could be used to customize the frontpage by the user selecting which clusters to follow and which one’s to exclude. For example, everything about c++ programming, except learning resources.
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Would remove the need for creating broad questions.
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Doubles as a breadcrumb.
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Makes more sense to link to a cluster than a tag. I.e. “Here, check out these resources on C++”
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Shows the amount of content and possibilities on the site. I would expect the site to be more often mentally noted as a resource.