Exploring tag clouds to organically grow consensus in the place of a chart
Currently the chart shows a "zoomed out" view of a discussion. The chart visualizes consensus by showing who agrees/disagrees/abstains from a proposal that a single member has put up - the [*note content of the proposal itself has not been up for discussion]
What if Loomio could semi-automate proposal generation by showing a tag cloud that organically grows as the discussion progresses. Imagine a tag cloud where the chart is currently placed. This is the zoomed out view which allows members to see what the group is talking about. I think this offers a more multimodal view of a discussion and is more informative in informing consensus as opposed to a chart.
Apart from being a unique perspective, the tag cloud could also offer a way to navigate the discussion more interactively where tags could be red/green to show agreement/disagreement.
Id like the discussion to offer suggestions as to whether this could work / is viable.
Wow, cool idea. I guess we would have to get tags happen first, but that is going to happen some time. This could be really exiting to watch.
Very interesting suggestion. Keen to explore it. I am so keen on multimodal visualisation of consensus.
I'm wondering about this "v1.0" release coming soon, perhaps that defines the minimum feature set. Then v2.0 would be the release that has a full plugin architecture implemented so we can try out all kinds of experimental features without ruining the UX.
I have no idea of the technical challenge involved in plugining
:) Thank you for +ve feedback
I will work on mocking up some wireframes - but Im optimistic of there being some tag cloud plugins that take a chunk of text and spit out tags. The chunk of text in this case being the discussion itself. This is the bot-case.
The alternative being that the group manually creates tags themselves and reuse those tags to build consensus by themselves.In this case the more a particular tag is used, the more it gains it weight.
With colors the thought is to convey agreement/disagreement. So if I were discussing wikileaks - lets say I choose "internet freedom" as a tag and assign the color green showing that i agree with "internet freedom" - assuming internet freedom is emerging as a popular tag and based on how many people agree/disagree with internet freedom - the tag "internet freedom" could show up in the tag cloud as a particular color and size conveying its influence on the discussion.
I think this incorporates some nice elements of gamification/interaction leading to better overall engagement and works well with large groups. Over time - this could even be part of a user profile and be incorporated into some cool search features..
Here is a "loose" example of what I have in mind - ignore the content of this link - just shows a tag cloud ...
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/notes8-eclipse-comp/
I really like this idea! I've always felt that the pie chart made the whole app feel a bit like a poll (perhaps leading to the habit we've drifted into of talking about "voting" instead of "positioning").
What about replacing the nasty "like" button with a "support" button that gives the position expressed in that comment more prominence in the tag cloud? (yes, it's true, I've really got it in for the Like button ;)
On the one hand: YAY TAGS. We've thought of tag-implementations for so many features now: concurrent proposals, discussion filtering, categorisation, dynamic grouping, peer facilitation, decision protocols... on and on.
I'm hesitant though, because it's been ten years at least since we started talking about the Semantic Web and how tags would basically solve every challenge on the way to genuine AI, but we've made almost no progress on the UX challenge.
The thing is, there are very few instances of tag features living up to the hype. Twitter is an exception: the whole interface is built on who-tags (@) and what-tags (#). I'd be interested to hear of examples of other tag features that really bring something new to the table.
I'd absolutely love to see Loomio pioneering the next killer tag feature but as far as I am concerned, it is the easiest thing in the world to speculate on and the hardest to deliver.
My $0.02
Rich + Strypey - agreed. I have my misgivings with tags as well but I think they are underused and often misused. The NYTimes often uses some form of tag viz to show consensus on topics that usually elicit large participation - so perhaps tags work better after the group reaches a critical size..
The NYT viz, I believe uses IBM's Many Eyes and Im thinking some of this stuff is probably "embeddable"
A very decent example here: http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/visualizations/discussions-about-poverty
[not tag cloud but a WORDLE"] - most recently seen in Colbert tv show..
http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/visualizations/ide-651-deep-learning-discussion
Dev stuff here: http://www.wordle.net/advanced
While exploring the not-so-wide universe of loomio-related software - I found Delib which looks eerily similar to enspiral and within Delib is this app called the "Dialogue App" that employs a Tag cloud in their discussion. Check it out!
Christian and I were talking the different ways Loomio could show zoomed in/out perspectives of a particular discussion to facilitate better decision making.
Currently the chart shows a "zoomed out" view of a discussion. The chart visualizes consensus by showing who agrees/disagrees/abstains from a proposal that a single member has put up - the [*note content of the proposal itself has not been up for discussion]
What if Loomio could semi-automate proposal generation by showing a tag cloud that organically grows as the discussion progresses. Imagine a tag cloud where the chart is currently placed. This is the zoomed out view which allows members to see what the group is talking about. I think this offers a more multimodal view of a discussion and is more informative in informing consensus as opposed to a chart.
Apart from being a unique perspective, the tag cloud could also offer a way to navigate the discussion more interactively where tags could be red/green to show agreement/disagreement.
Id like the discussion to offer suggestions as to whether this could work / is viable.