A while back ChinesePod started tagging every podcast lesson with three types of tags: topic tags, function tags, and grammar tags. These are all very useful ways of classifying the information in each podcast, and we intend to continue to develop the system.
When you go into the Lesson Archive, you immediately see a tag cloud of the topic tags:
If you click on the function tab, you see a tag cloud of the function tags:
If you click on the grammar tab, you get a tag cloud of the grammar tags:
(I think most of us would agree that the grammar tag cloud in particular is an unusable mess.)
These tag clouds appear on many of the archive pages. You see the tag clouds when you go directly to the Lesson Archive page, but you also see them at the top of the page any time you conduct a search or click on any tag.
The Big Question is: are the tag clouds useful?
More specifically: do you actually use them?
We have been thinking of removing or at least de-emphasizing the tag clouds. Some of us even suspect that tag clouds are just over-hyped Web 2.0 eye candy. But we don’t want to make any drastic changes before hearing from you, our users.
So what do you think? Do you use the tag clouds to navigate? Would you be sorry to see them go? Where would you like to see them?
Don’t worry; the tags themselves are here to stay, and we will continue to improve them. But you can help us decide the fate of the tag clouds. Give us those comments.
Yeah, I find them useful including the grammar one.
I certainly agree: the grammar tags are a total mess. And that fits perfectly with my learning style. Although I am not that big of a Web-2.0 type of guy I just love to explore that mess…just stumbling from one useful information nugget to the next. Pure gold.
I haven’t used any of the clouds except the grammar one. What would be the alternative though? I wouldn’t want to have to go thru each lesson to get at each tag, a simple alpha-listing would work just as well though, if not better. Are there alternative presentations?
I’m new to this, subscribed on Monday, committed on Tuesday though I already went through a dozen lessons across levels.
This said, I certainly think the tagging principle is useful but I wouldn’t use any of the tags as they are. I understand the difference between topic and function though I think they may overlap, and anyway the list is way too long to be displayed that way (not to mention an odd mix of bold and font size on my screen). I feel a simpler presentation such as drop-down menus would work a lot better, less distracting from the listings below.
Regarding grammar, I think as suggested in a previous post that you should consider alternative presentations. One option would be a fixed-size tables to arrange the … to display those structures in a more visually appealing fashion.
I made the mistake of using html tage delimiters (< and >) at the end of my previous post, the end of which should have read “{keyword}…{keyword}”
Honestly, I’ve only clicked on the tag cloud once. It just looks like a annoying jumble of words. Although, my eye has grown accustomed to ignoring it now.
I don’t use them, either.
Ken Carroll
Glad you mentioned this because I had no idea why that jumble of words was there. I guess I never moused over them.
I think it’s a pretty cool way to get a lot of link/tags into a small space, but perhaps you should add a “what’s this” to give people some clues. Although I like it, I think the cloud might become unmanagable as you increase the number of grammars, topics, etc.
The grammar tags are really fun, but maybe not comprehensive. It seems like you are missing some. For example, why do you have 没办法 but not 怎么办？
And what about vocabulary tags? I would love to have a chance to increase my exposure to a word, once it has been brought to my attention. But I can see that might be complicated because there are so many, and which language would you display them in? English, Chinese, or pinyin?
Lantian and Yv,
There are alternate forms of displaying and organizing the grammar info in the works, i.e. indexes of grammatical info. The grammar tags were meant to be the first step along the way. Step two is coming, albeit slowly.
Yv,
Also, the reason for the different sizes is that the more lessons that get tagged with a certain tag, the larger that tag becomes in the cloud. It’s not just random. So the smallest tags are the ones that only correspond to one lesson.
I’ve clicked on them a couple times. If they disappeared today I’m probably recognize something is different on the page, but couldn’t say what.
Speaking of site design stuff, is the blog page going to stay with this theme?
I think they look a bit cheap and ugly, but I’ve used them a few times and found them a very good way to find related podcasts. The relative sizes of the words is handy, giving a quick visual indication of their relative contents. I’d welcome the same functionality in another format.
I agree with Yv, Pandagator, James Theron, and AuntySue. I think that a different format such as a tabled index would be better.
yeah, I’m not a fan. A more organized system is more up my alley.
I use them. I like them. Am I’m no Web 2.0 fan (quite the opposite)
I use the tag clouds. The topic and function ones are fine, but I have problem to tell apart the grammar tags. It’s more like a well-mixed tag soup - it’s hard to tell what belongs to this tag and what is already another tag.
I edited what he said (quite) a bit, but Pandagator said “…annoying… Although, my eye has grown accustomed to ignoring (her) now.”
Is this kinda like marriage? 开玩笑呀！
I don’t use them at all after a few frustrating attempts when I first started. I was looking for a simple lesson with all the words for family and got stuck in these overly broad topics, so I ended up googling what I was looking for. (And she never looked at the tag clouds again…)
Use them, both here are on other sites. Can’t see why you would drop them - they make the ChinesePod experience richer, and allow you a higher level view on frequency and/or importance. They act as a defacto benchmark for what the community at large deems as relevant, and that’s one of the best selling points of web 2.0 technologies.
I use them and I like the perspective they give me on frequency, like Ma Ding said. I won’t be gutted if they go away, but I find them useful.
../iliana
我最近忙不过来跟C-Pod者讨论但今天逃课所以有时间参加。
Wǒ zuìjìn mángbuguòlai gēn C-Podzhě tǎolùn dàn jīntiān táokè suǒyǐ yǒu shíjiān cānjiā.
I’ve recently been too busy to chat with my fellow ChinesePodders but today I’m playing hooky so I can participate.
I use them these tags…especially the topic and function tags. I agree with Auntie Sue that the relatively sized words are a nifty construct. The grammar tags, though, are a jumbled mess and could benefit from some ordering, maybe an index. And from what I can tell, they are more sentence patterns than grammar, per se.
That said, this might be the time for ChinesePod to establish a corpora of sentence patterns, lexical chunks, and ready phrases…a glossary of plug and play Chinese above the vocabulary level.
Waddya think, Ken?
戴仁迪
“塞翁失马“
Another thing about those tags is, irrespective of layout and presentation issues, it would help to group them in chunks as such long lists are rather ineffective (basically the “Magical number 7 +/- 2″ principle at work).
One book I have organizes usage patterns into 1) Phrases Indicating Mood, and 2) Phrases Considered as Part of Speech. The latter may be a little too formal (Noun phrases, verb ∼, adjectival ∼, adverbial ∼, time ∼, parenthesis).
But the formal is an interesting mix of your function and grammar tags, grouped into a few simple categories : Dissatisfaction & Complaint, Affirmation & Negation, Showing Possibility, Agreement & Disagreement, Expressing Rejection, Expressing Compliment, Making a Decision, Giving Advice, Being Indifferent, Having No Alternatives, Polite Remarks). OK, that’s a little more than 7+2 but that’s the same idea.
Dai,
Good to hear from you again. I think your suggestions are good, but I’m leaving these decisions to John at the moment.
Ken Carroll
I like them too…but perhaps my learning style is a lot like Henning’s too…I like to explore different pathways. However -as already said -the tags font size does indicate amount of content, which is useful.
I don’t use them - and generally find them messy (on all sites that use them - not just here). The frequency of a tag has little relevance for me: I don’t change what I’m looking for on the basis of how much you have; rather I just want all you have for the tag I’m already interested in.
Carl