[DISCUSSION] How do we change "notes" to "questions" and vice versa?

[ebarry]

@jywarren says: "i think we could choose between the following two ideas; it's true that the first one would be pretty easy and the second would be pretty complex:"

1. Possible new issue: make a button or other easier way to “convert something between a question and a note”

Discussion here? https://publiclab.slack.com/archives/C0J6K6S01/p1572629306001000
"Disambiguating tags from power tags"
#6593

2. Possible new issue—but not one that first-timers can do, that's kind of the longer version of the point above ^^: have the tag “question” be what changes a note into a question; removing the tag “question” would change a question back to a note. (stevie idea, as this would also affect “project”). Jeff says this would be a giant project (edited)

• if people are fine with the first, we can do it pretty quick i believe.
• if people aren't sure, need more time to think on this, we can make an issue and mark it for discussion

i'm personally kind of waiting for @steviepubliclab and also @publiclab-mimi to weigh in on @jywarren recommendation here. i'm fine with the button, but both M and S requested the new function for the tag question so i am looking for their OK to park that request for now

[ebarry]

stevie
i think i need to understand how the system is currently managing tags on the questions pages

Mimi:school_satchel:
What currently changes a note into a question? Is it not the tag question?

stevie
yeah i'm wondering this as well. did we get rid of the need for the multiple power tags? like does tagging it question do it, then how does it treat the other tags on there?

Jeff
it's the power tag question:______

Jeff
so, changing this to be a non-power-tag would mean a) adding a new system to extend power tagging features to regular tags, b) making an exception in various places for non-powertag question to be treated like a powertag, c) modifying design/explanatory text to make it clear to users that this question tag is an exception to how powertags normally work, and probably more -- that's just why I said it'd be a big project

Jeff
and I also thought that even if we did make a new special tag question instead of question:______, we'd want to add a button to make it so you can switch it back and forth without having to use tags directly at all, which means that plan 2 would essentially include plan 1 as a step anyways, so we might as well do plan 1 (button) first and then think more about whether we want to do plan 2 (new question tag)

Jeff
to stevie's question, I think what you're thinking of is how when you add the tag question:water-quality, it auto-adds the extra tag water-quality so that it shows up under that topic too. is that right?

Jeff
i hope this helps, thanks!

[ebarry]

stevie
no, i've started just tagging questions with topic areas. like not question:water but just water. does that mean it shows up as a research note instead of a question on that page? this is what I was trying to do

Jeff
@stevie yes, if you don't add a tag starting with question:____ then it doesn't become a question

stevie
ug. ok that's what i was hoping we were getting away from

Jeff
but if you add question:water then it will add water too so you get both

Jeff
i think there are a few reasons why a power tag has both

stevie
yeah. i was hoping we differentiated these

Jeff
a) so that we know it's a question /about/ water

Jeff
and so it shows up only on question grids for water

Jeff
b) so that you don't have to add a second tag

stevie
but personally, i don't want the questions showing up in the research note grids.

stevie
also, it's the UI issue where I dont think ppl know to do powertags on questions. so we end up with questions labeled as research notes

Jeff
I think the idea of making a button would be nice because it'd make it so that people don't have to know anything about tags at all

Jeff
on the questions showing up in the research note grids, yeah, i think we added the auto-tagging based on input for other reasons. So, i can dig this conversation back up and we can revisit the decision, but it can be a distinct project from the button idea if folks are interested in that?
#3868 here it is!

Modify "notify_tag_added" mailer to include tag variants like "questions:____" · Issue #3868 · publiclab/plots2
This section triggers email notifications for tags, like wetlands, if you follow that tag (https://publiclab.org/tags) plots2/app/mailers/subscription_mailer.rb Lines 29 to 55 in ec0b0f9 def notify...

Jeff
the reasoning in that issue still seems sound; maybe the solution is to break out a separate discussion about whether notes grids can automatically exclude questions in general?

Mimi:school_satchel:
I think that maybe a checkbox in the editor could be helpful here. There’s already some prompts of “is this a question” that can help people if we make it a checkbox that auto-adds.
I don’t think that the power tags are terribly easy to navigate for first time or casual user. I also don’t know that if there was a button to convert in the drop down editor that anyone would ever see it.

Jeff
ah, so i think that may be a different track, mimi, sorry

Jeff
so the button would solve the problem of when experienced site users want to change an existing post from a question or back. So if we want this to be about newcomers and folks writing a new post, then i think you're right that there could be a checkbox, but we may also want to bump up this project to have a "post type selector" whenever you want to post (#6861)

Jeff

[ebarry]

emilyashley
👀 still catching up on this, I hear a lot of solution suggestions but still don't think I've quite grasped the problem this is trying to solve or the purpose. I'd probably have more to offer if I understood those. But I'm here and following!

Jeff
my bad for assuming this was about moderators and experienced site users wanting to toggle a post/question back and forth

Jeff
agree w emily - lets figure out the goal and it'll help us untangle the possible solutions

stevie
hm maybe there are a couple problems floating around. I'll try to articulate one I was thinking of: a lot of people dont understand how to use powertags, currently, questions are curated by powertags, so people have to know to add the powertag to the question (for example "question:water-quality") for it to be organized as a question. While new users can understand tagging something with the topic
"water-quality," most don't understand the powertag. When they only tag questions to the topic, the question shows up as a research note instead of a question. does that make sense?

:aplus: :thank_you:

Mimi:school_satchel:
that reflects my interests as well

Jeff
yes, that's great

Jeff
I think if we might want to just set aside the "which powertags do what" question, and just focus on making sure people can a) easily post a question (focus on where they begin authoring at all) and b) making sure that if they end up having posted a non-question by mistake, they can fix it easily. I don't think either needs to make the user aware of the concept of powertags at all, does that make sense?

Mimi:school_satchel:
so are you proposing buttons or checkboxes that would add the appropriate powertags to posts?

Jeff
yes, in addition to this "choose a type" menu that would appear when you first open the editor

Jeff
but more broadly, looking at where on the site people may begin to write a post, and how the design helps them begin writing the right type

Jeff
or alternatively where they may change their mind or realize they want to switch /after/ writing a post

[jywarren]

Thanks! Sum-up of problem statement from @steviepubliclab :

a lot of people dont understand how to use powertags, currently, questions are curated by powertags, so people have to know to add the powertag to the question (for example question:water-quality) for it to be organized as a question. While new users can understand tagging something with the topic water-quality most don't understand the powertag. When they only tag questions to the topic, the question shows up as a research note instead of a question. does that make sense?

Noting especially that this is focused on new users -- thanks!

And my suggestion:

I think if we might want to just set aside the "which powertags do what" question, and just focus on making sure people can a) easily post a question (focus on where they begin authoring at all) and b) making sure that if they end up having posted a non-question by mistake, they can fix it easily. I don't think either needs to make the user aware of the concept of powertags at all, does that make sense?

broadly, looking at 1) where on the site people may begin to write a post, and how the design helps them begin writing the right type, or alternatively 2) where they may change their mind or realize they want to switch /after/ writing a post

[ebarry]

Update that this mockup has been created by @jywarren to help address this: https://publiclab.org/post/choose