Topic: BP Content Tags Project – Call For Ideas

BP Content Tags Project – Call For Ideas

@burtadsit

Participant

15 years, 10 months ago

Howdy all. I just finished a project for bp and find myself needing another one. I was going to start a ‘group blogs’ plugin but after talking with Andy I have a different project in mind.

Me: “Andy I’m starting Group Blogs today. You haven’t already started something like this have you? Got any ideas?”

Paraphrasing Andy: “If you want to do something truly useful. Group content tagging would be nice. Make Groups 10X more useful and 100X more powerful.”

Me: “Tags?”

Andy: “Tagging content for Groups. Blog posts. Wire posts. Any content. It would be the same as having Group Blogs”

Me: “Tags?”

Andy being patient: “Maybe groups can have a specific tag associated with them. Users can use that tag to direct content to the group. Perhaps with admin or mod approval.”

Me: “Tags? (Andy flips the light on in the dim recesses of my dark room) Tags?! Oh, ya content tags! We could organize group content that way. Make it all available and discoverable. Group content is what the group decides is group content. Whoa. TAGS!”

So giving the ability to associate content with a tag, tag management and a tag widget in bp is my next little project. Nothing new right? WP has tagging and categories for blog posts. bbpress has tagging for forum topics. Well, what we’re talking about here is the ability to link *all* site content to a tag. Not just blogs and forum content.

First of all, I’m thinking that anything with an URL should be taggable. Also any content that is in a site table should be taggable. A site has:

Blogs that we can get blog id/post id

Forums that we can get forum id/topic id/post id

Wires that we can get component id/post id

Interesting and useful content doesn’t exist only on the current site. Anything that can be resolved to an URL should be taggable.

I’m just talking out loud here. Any ideas people? I already know that Nicola Greco is off and running with this. Nicola was there when Andy and I were chatting about this in IRC. Nicola is in on this project. He’s probably off and running, cutting code and has it half done by now. (Where did I put that leash and whip?)

I already see further uses for bp content tagging. See this: http://buddypress.org/forums/topic.php?id=909

Anybody got any thoughts on this before I go off on some tangent of my own?

Viewing 25 replies - 1 through 25 (of 27 total)

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@slaffik

Moderator

15 years, 10 months ago

great idea. no, GREAT IDEA!!! really.

Tagging all the content would make life easier, like wiki’s self-tagging.

Then maybe some categories could be added? I mean:

– Groups:

Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags …

– Blogs:

Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags …

– Forums (group ones):

Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags …

– Wires: is this really useful – should something like “Hi, how are you?” be accessable through tags? Wire is not very informative, as for me.

I think categories will show what topics are important/famous.

@martinnr5

Participant

15 years, 10 months ago

Great idea.

Agree with slaffik about wire posts though. To me the wire isn’t meant to be anything but a “tweet” of sorts where information is short lived an mostly irrelevant.

Otherwise very interesting indeed!

@nicolagreco

Participant

15 years, 10 months ago

wires tag is useful ? YES! i think twitter should have tags too,

as i agree with this project and as i said i’ll be very active, and given that i made a plugin that does a thing like that for groups,

i’m here

@johnjamesjacoby

Keymaster

15 years, 10 months ago

I think this makes perfect sense, but I think the word “tag” needs to be used carefully, because WordPress has sort of defined the use of “tags and a “tag cloud” as a specific function, and this does not sound like that.

This just sounds like a collective list of links that the group can add things to, more like relative content than tags in my mind. Similar to the “blog this” part of WordPress that lets you be on any web page and via a bookmark, create a blog about it, this would allow members of a group to be on either 1.) a page/post/attachment within your site, or 2.) any site on the web, and add it as a relative link for your specific group.

Am I making sense, or going off in the wrong direction maybe?

@nicolagreco

Participant

15 years, 10 months ago

we called as TAGS not as the default tags one, but with a new type of taxonomy, group-tags that could be integrated with tags

@burtadsit

Participant

15 years, 10 months ago

Howdy again. I’m thinking along the lines of johnjamesjacoby. Tags as containers for content as well as the traditional ‘keywords’. It’s possible to have both. Depends on the perspective you have.

I agree that not all content of interest to group members or site members can or will be generated within the group.

@apeatling

Keymaster

15 years, 10 months ago

I just want to make sure we have the right idea here:

I belong to the group “Transformers is awesome”.

I’m browsing a BuddyPress site and come across a blog post on Transformers, that has some interesting facts. I think to myself, this is cool, I’d love other members of the group “Transformers is awesome” to be notified of this. I’ll “tag” this content to that group, perhaps by entering a unique group tag for “Transformers is awesome” or selecting the group from a menu.

I continue browsing and come across some photos of the new Transformers II movie, I think, that would be cool to show in the group too. I decide to “tag” those photos to the group as well.

I also find a cool quote on someone’s wire that says “Transformers release date is April 3rd 2009”. I “tag” that content to the group too.

When I return to the “Transformers is awesome” group home page, I see that the content I have “tagged” appears on the home page (perhaps in a “latest tagged” box) for all the group members to see. There may (and probably should be) an approval process in between a piece of content being “tagged” and it showing on the group page.

Thoughts?

Actual content tagging would be cool too, so you tag anything on the site, and those tags then become content groups. However, that is a MUCH bigger job, and would probably render group creation irrelevant down the line (all in good time).

@burtadsit

Participant

15 years, 10 months ago

“and would probably render group creation irrelevant down the line (all in good time).”

Dynamic groups Andy? I think you’d still want and need the groups as containers for members and apps like the wire and forums.

What John was suggesting was a “Press This” type of mini app for tagging content to a bp site. It would be useful both on the site and just browsing around the net. “Tag This” instead. That type of tagging would only be useful for things that have urls. An image in a slide show or album may not have an url. Wire posts don’t. Content that would be on a bp site that don’t resolve down to an url would need a little “Tag This” link so that the link would transfer component/item_id information to the popup “Tag This” window.

I think we are talking about the same thing.

@johnjamesjacoby

Keymaster

15 years, 10 months ago

Shouldn’t you belong to the group “Transformers ARE awesome?”

Which I mean, they are… The new movie left something to be desired, and Voltron was always better than Transformers, but that’s a little off topic for this convo…

I think, from what I gather, that what you’re really talking about are categorized group links, probably with similar relative content like the blogroll style links functionality already has, that can be approved or denied by a group moderator or administrator. Maybe call them Glinks? A new functionality for generating a link from a website to yours, via a mini app or from the group control panel, for content relative to the topic.

This could be further extended by allowing Glinks for tags, or blogs, or forum posts also… “The people viewing this *blog/tag/post* also thought these links were interesting…” kind of thing…

Make sense?

I hope that group creation isn’t rendered obsolete, quite the opposite actually. I am used to using groups for permission based structure, to allow one group of users to perform a task that others cannot, and vice versa. I hope that the groups functionality is expanded in further versions of *Press to allow for certain groups to moderate other groups, blogs, forums, etc… In a real life community, groups, users, and content naturally exist within some kind of hierarchy, otherwise it tends to become a mish-mash of conflicting content. This is basically why blogs allow for multiple categories and sub categories, for without that structure, it’s just a page full of random jibber jabber.

This holds true in the virtual world, where certain groups of individuals are held as a more credible source than others, some groups have rankings and attributes that allow some group members to be more valuable than others, etc…

Am I rambling now?

@burtadsit

Participant

15 years, 10 months ago

The external tagging has to refer to an url. All I can record is the author of the tag says it fits in the context ‘Awesome’, it’s a piece of content of the type ‘Blog Post’ from site ‘Transformers-R-Us’.

It’s impossible not to have external content not be Glinks.

The internal tagging would be component/item. The internal tagging would afford lots more flexibility in display, search, browsing. I can discover alot more about a chunk of content if I have access to blog id/post id -> (get me that record) -> author, date, content etc.

@burtadsit

Participant

15 years, 10 months ago

I like this “Tag This” concept more and more.

– The tagging window could display a list of the user’s groups. Select a group and the existing tags for the group are displayed.

– Select one or more tags or create one or more.

– Enter an excerpt of the content by copy and paste, type something in or an excerpt gets inserted for editing if it’s an internal tag.

– A list of content types is available for selection: ‘blog’, ‘blog post’, ‘site’, ‘forum’, ‘forum topic’, ‘feed’, ‘uncategorized’.

– Item gets sent to the group’s tagged content moderation queue for approval. Possible reassignment to a different tag(s) within the group and check for content type match.

– Approval posts to the item’s tags and posted in some default tags such as ‘recent’ (cache), ‘author name’.

– Activity streams are updated.

– Subscribers to group tags are notified by email, notification in admin bar, inbox notification(?).

(Yes I know Andy, start small)

@johnjamesjacoby

Keymaster

15 years, 10 months ago

That seems like the natural flow yo.

@nicolagreco

Participant

15 years, 10 months ago

What i think of that

The user:

Yuhu, i’m an user

I read a post,

i say that’s amazing it talks about ‘Mammalucco group’!

I’ve to tag this content for the group ‘Mammalucco group’!

(after the post there is a blank field where there is written, SHOW THIS ON A GROUP)

The user:

Ok, i type in the fields ‘Mammalu’

A funny ajax box says me: Autocompletation : Mammalucco Group, Mammaluna Group

I click on Mammalucco Group and i click <Tag it!>

After loading appear a message that says tagged!

I say Yuhu!

I go to groups page and in the “Tagged Items area” appears my item!

( Sorry for the stupid and funny workflow but this is my idea )

@burtadsit

Participant

15 years, 10 months ago

What I was talking about on irc nicola was when a user visits the group and wants to find group content what do they see? How do they find group content?

@burtadsit

Participant

15 years, 10 months ago

Is it a cloud? A list that the user can drill down into? Will tags be ‘and’ and ‘or’? Will the interface be like delicious?

Tag A [x] Tag B [x]

Shows all content with Tag A ‘and’ Tag B

@nicolagreco

Participant

15 years, 10 months ago

burt next time read better: “A funny ajax box says me: Autocompletation : Mammalucco Group, Mammaluna Group”

An autocompletation box where it says “type here the group name”

@burtadsit

Participant

15 years, 10 months ago

Content discovery is a filtering mechanism that narrows down the view for the user to what they want to see. Content should have top level organization of what?

Content types:

Website/Blog url

Blog post

Forum topic

Image

Wire post

Anything with an url

User interface to content. Sorting and filtering:

By date: most recent, date range, ascending, descending

By tag(s): and/or/not

By content author

By user who created the tag

By type: blog post, site url, forum topic …

Content display options:

List

Grid

Titles only

Title and excerpt

When the user browses the content should they be able to add/remove tags for each item? Like bbpress? Only group staff can maintain tags?

Questions, questions.

@burtadsit

Participant

15 years, 10 months ago

Here’s a scenario.

I belong to a group on a site. I visit the group and I go right to the ‘Tags’ screen under ‘Forum’ in the group home.

In the ‘Tags’ screen I see the following:

TYPE: [All] [Recent] [Author] [Tagger] [Site] [Blog Post] [Forum Topic] [Image] [Wire Post] [Uncategorized]

TAGS: [Tag A] [Tag B] [Tag A] [Tag B] [Tag A] [Tag B] [Tag A] [Tag B] [Tag A] [Tag B]

[Tag A] [Tag B] [Tag A] [Tag B] [Tag A] [Tag B] [Tag A] [Tag B] [Tag A] [Tag B]

[Tag A] [Tag B] [Tag A] [Tag B] [Tag A] [Tag B] [Tag A] [Tag B] [Tag A] [Tag B]

[Tag A] [Tag B] [Tag A] [Tag B] [Tag A] [Tag B] [Tag A] [Tag B]

YOU SELECTED: [Recent](x) [Tag A](x) [Tag B](x) – <CLEAR> <SUBSCRIBE TO THIS>

VIEWING: 1 of XX … Page [1] [2] .. [99] [Next >>] SHOW AS: <List> <Grid>

xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

yyy yyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyy yyy yyyyyyyy

yyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyy yyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

yyy yyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyy yyy yyyyyyyy

yyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyy yyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

yyy yyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyy yyy yyyyyyyy

yyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyy yyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

yyy yyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyy yyy yyyyyyyy

yyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyy yyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

When I select one of the ‘Type’s which are meta tags for all tags I get a list/cloud of the tags that belong in that ‘type’. ‘All’/’Recent’ are the defaults.

This is a neat user interface to a WP blog : http://www.swiss-miss.com/

It’s got the ajax category/tag selection with list/grid selection for viewing. It would be a useful interface for this type of content.

@burtadsit

Participant

15 years, 9 months ago

I’ve posted an overview of the project specs here: http://code.ourcommoninterest.org/2009/03/05/bpcontents-tags-everywhere-for-everything/

Comments are welcome either here or there.

@miguael

Participant

15 years, 9 months ago

Hi burtadsit, I read it all (exclamationmark ) English is not my “tongue”, but I hope I got the main idea. It sounds AWESOME!!!

Just to check, if I got that right: (I think I would need exactly something like that, because I am running a community for young-leaders who can submit and search for relevant resources in youth-work. )

With that project I have tagged almost everything on my whole mu-site. Posts (sure…), but also bp-events, forum-stuff, wire-stuff, groups, etc…

I can collect those tags for groups etc, but also show them in a kind of sitewide (forum, buddypress,”normal”wpmu) tagcloud? THAT WOULD BE GREAT!!! So everybody finds exactly what they are searching for… (better than eny search engine…).

Right? (if not, that would be a suggestion for a feature or something

Thanks for your work!

Michael

@burtadsit

Participant

15 years, 9 months ago

You got it right. That’s the purpose of bpContents.

@miguael

Participant

15 years, 9 months ago

I LOVE IT (and I love you therefore !!!

@burtadsit

Participant

15 years, 9 months ago

Further design stuff related to bpContents objects here:

http://code.ourcommoninterest.org/2009/03/06/bpcontents-the-object-is/

@johnjamesjacoby

Keymaster

15 years, 9 months ago

This idea is growing on me. Dammit…

@burtadsit

Participant

15 years, 9 months ago

Howdy, John. lol, ya me too. Blame Andy. It’s his fault. I kept looking at the simplicity of the solution and going “Nah. Can’t be that easy”. The only major restriction I’ve found is that the taxnonomy names such as ‘post_tag’ and ‘category’ are limited to 32 chars. It’s a varchar(32) field in the table.

<group>-<tag>-<transformers-are-truly-awesome-here-in-north-america-in-the-month-of-march>

Won’t work.

Looks like it’s going to be a ‘tiny url’ solution to that one. It just so happens that the fn md5() in php returns a 32 char hash value. I don’t think that is a coincidence.