Community Credit Forums

Is there anything that could be done to simplify the points category system?

At the moment it can be a bit confusing at times to decide which category a particular activity should be categorised under.

For example, what turns a simple blog entry (500 points) into a blog that contains an example with source code (3000 points), and what turns that into the "write an example" category (8000 points)?

If I write two lines of code in a blog is that enough to be called an example?

Looking through various profiles and points allocated in previous months it seems quite difficult to determine what is acceptable for each category etc.

Perhaps an optional "wizard" type page could be added to the points submission system. If you are not sure what category to select in the drop down combo boxes a user could click a "i am not sure" button. This wizard could then ask questions to guide the user to the correct category. The first question would probably determine which broad type of points submission this is, while additional questions would ask questions such as "did your blog entry contain an example that was more than XYZ lines of code, or took longer than XYZ minutes to prepare?" etc.

Perhaps a simplier solution would be to simply have a description of what needs to be done to qualify for a category appear beside the combo boxes when a particular category is selected in the points submission page.

Thanks,

Christopher Fairbairn

Hey Christopher,

      I think that there is definitely "room for improvement" regarding the point categories.  I really think that the idea of a wizard is one of the best ideas suggested so far!  I love it and it may really help to simplify this part which I agree is a bit confusing at times.   I had actually bounced around some thoughts in my head, but never really came up with a good solution aside from just making the descriptions a bit clearer.

      I am actually going to remove the BlogExample category all together.  Back in the day, before blogs were as popular as they are now, an example was pretty easy to identify on a website.  There was a section called examples and in it you would find different examples with a full explanation and a downloadable zip file.  It was hard to mistake anything else as an example.  Today, people's blogs are, in a sense, their websites.  They write articles and examples as blog posts, which blurs the line a bit.  It raises the question, is an example any less of an example because it is posted in a blog?  Of course, that leads to another question on what is an "example"?  There might be a blog post that has a few lines of code and a 1 sentence paragraph leading into it.  e.g. "this is how to change the color of a label".  Technically, it is an example, but it is still much different than a very detailed description that includes source code,  walks the user through the code and also has a downloadable sample.  Naturally, they can't be worth the same value.  The line is blurred even more when it comes to articles, but that is a whole other discussion.

Hey Christopher,

     Your idea about the description next to the category in the drop down also makes a world of sense.  I wll basically be implementing both suggestions.  Although the idea of a wizard is a great one, I think that "NEEDING" a wizard means that I missed the boat a bit in making the categories choices clear.  It seems as though I need to clarify it a bit more so that even without the wizard, it will be easy to know the correct category to choose.

IMHO not only is there a need to simplify the points categorization there is a need to simplify the entire process. For example when I logged in to post this comment, I was in the discussion board, pressed the log in button entered my email and pwd and it brought me to somebody else’s points list. So I proceeded to navigate back to the discussion board to find that I was no longer logged in, so I logged in a second time and it actually took.

When you select tags for a discussion post it hides the choices below the banner for the entire website.

Navigation is confusing, when you are in the discussion board there are two menus, and only one had breadcrumbs.

Thanks, Shawn,

    Regarding logging in and seeing somebody elses points list, all I can say is "YIKES".   Let's just say.... That is not by design.  It looks like a bug in the site.  In fact, thinking back, that behavior did exist a long time ago and I thought that I had fixed that, but apparently not.  For now, let's take this issue through email/chat and if you have a few minutes, I would like to see how you are coming across this bug.  Thanks for mentioning it.

How did I never notice this?  I usually type in the tags and see them via intellisense.  That is definitely something that needs to be fixed.  However, I am about to update to Community Server 2007, even before the site redesign and will address it then.  Thanks!

Regarding the navigation, I completely agree that the two menus is confusing. That may have been the point at which the navigation started becoming problematic and when it became clear that a better navigation is really needed.  Unfortunately, quite some time has passed since I began talking about the need for a redesign and now, when it is actually being implemented.  I am going to check out other sites that use Community Server to see how they handle this type of situation.  Off of the top of my head, the simple solution seems to be to just get rid of the CS menu altogether and implement the CS navigation functions in a single, main site menu.