Refine Common Answers Strategy (Sept. 16-30)
Our Work / Content / Tasks / Refine Common Answers Strategy (Sept. 16-30) (RayKing, ChrisBabson, TakKendrick)
Description
Review the results of the past two work periods. Decide what types of search terms to pursue in the future. Determine a balance between cost to write an article and value added. Review tracing function on Google.
Why?
Now that we know what a Common Answer entails on AboutUs, we need to develop an overall strategy for terms to build out
The two options we've explored in the past month:
- 1) Top Search Terms (on the web and AboutUs - 'the fat front')
- 2) Categories containing 10-100 articles ('the long tail')
Done When
We have a refined strategy in place for creating and continually updating a Common Answers Queue.
Useful Links
- Common Answers
- Common Answers Queue
- Perfect 30 articles for CommonAnswers (Sept. 1-15)
- Create 25 long tail category articles for Common Answers (Sept 1-15)
Resource Estimate
- Pair Days: 2
Task Evaluation
- Evaluator: RayKing, ChrisBabson, TakKendrick
- How the task went: We didn't have the participation we would have liked on this. For now, we've moved on to the PortlandTech task to try something different and are hoping that the lessons we learned from Common Answers will provide value there.
Discussion
I've organized initial comments (thanks Fatima!) into the following sections. If you would like to add to the conversation, please try to do so in a semi-organized fashion. It will be much easier to pull everything together sensibly this way! ChrisBabson 12:26, 18 September 2007 (PDT)
General
I think we've learned a lot from the past two work periods and are where we need to be in the conceptualization process. In accord with this, I think we need to really focus on this task this week as it will provide a trajectory for us in the future. ChrisBabson 12:29, 18 September 2007 (PDT)
Balance Between Mechanical and Humanized Content - Links vs. Descriptive Content
One of the trickiest things was trying to balance a mechanical collection of links with a humanized style. The former is much faster, more comprehensive, but also mindless and not very different from what's already out there. The latter is quirkier, may never achieve 100% completion (and I'm still not entirely clear what 100% really means), and takes time as I first try to understand the topic and then see what's actually useful and interesting about each site I link to. It seems to me that finding, and explicitly defining, a balance between these two that all the Content Team can work within in their own individual ways, is key if we want to make CommonAnswers more than a substitute for Google Directory on one hand, and Wikipedia on the other. - FatimaRaja 20:46, 17 September 2007 (PDT)
- I think this is the most fundamental problem for the project to solve. Overall, I think we need to focus much more on the humanized aspect while maintaining full 'mechanical' coverage (search engine results, etc.). The human element is what makes our resource uniquely valuable, and we need to focus on this so we can learn how to do it better and thereby bring our community along with us.ChrisBabson 12:26, 18 September 2007 (PDT)
Organization
I wonder if it might be a good idea if Content team members were to organize by subject area instead of randomly picking search terms from a list. This might speed things up a little as each of us would become an expert on a topic, (say) 'pottery', create a list of search terms and pages ('Jomon', 'stoneware', 'slip', 'auction' etc), and probably work faster overall. Perhaps with a kind of pairing where one Content person can cast a fresh eye on another's list of search terms. - FatimaRaja 20:46, 17 September 2007 (PDT)
- This would also allow us to become experts in particular areas, and to unite the content effort in different communities of information instead of randomly scattered. We won't have as wide a range of coverage, but we will have a better resource for what we do cover which would in turn make us more competitive overall. Feels as if this general advice suggests not to spread ourselves too thin...ChrisBabson 12:26, 18 September 2007 (PDT)
The Look of the Page
I think we're currently overusing thumbnails on the page. My intuition here would be to illustrate the top 5 general results with thumbnails, and to have the rest of the page as descriptive and link information. Videos/photos that are in the creative commons could be added to make the page more visually pleasing. - ChrisBabson 12:26, 18 September 2007 (PDT)
- I agree. At present visually the emphasis is on the directory aspect. I think we should emphasise the content at least equally. I also wonder if we should have an elastic sort of template, or agreed-upon style, for CommonAnswers? Distinctive colours and a vaguely standard layout to afix ourselves in a surfer's mind and make navigation intuitive? - FatimaRaja 18:17, 18 September 2007 (PDT)
- I think we're speaking with Vinh soon about designing a general style template for these pages - this is a good idea! ChrisBabson
