🏷️ Tagging - Possible new option for Competitions Time

MSE_Stephen

Hi Compers

With our move to our new theme, we can now look adding new features.

We’re starting to investigate adding tagging ability to Competitions Time.

We need your help! If we are able to bring tagging to the forum, what tags should we use?
We'd like it to be organised in the way that helps Compers find what they want easily.

A few thoughts to start:

• If we want to start with more tags rather than less, we can always merge some later. But we can't un-merge

• But we have to consider too many tags may mean you can’t find the correct one easily when tagging. That’s very important to consider because…

• If members posting the competition find them too hard to use, tagging won’t work.

The screenshot below shows how it might look if we added a menu box to navigate to Comps tags. 

It shows what it would look like if we added lots of tags, but we could limit it to a small number. For example, our Deals Team use:

Popular Retailers
Fashion & Beauty
Food & Drink
Home, Garden & Pets
Days Out & Travel
Kids & Toys
Media & Technology
Sports & Outdoors
Motoring & Transport

Please let us know what you think

One-Eye

As a comp poster (a prolific one), I am not happy with the idea. Anything that makes posting a competition harder/more complex/slower is not progress. As a forum user, I would not use tags so they would be irrelevant - I look at every comp that is posted anyway so my default option would be "display all"

Perhaps more important than "which tags we use" and how the poster "adds a tag" is how they appear to a user and how they can be used by that user.

If it is just a filter to be used in the normal search process, then I totally believe that the whole thing is not worth doing. Too many people already find search too cumbersome to use. It would work if it was a single button from normal forum view (say on the right hand side menu) that displayed the relevant competitions in standard forum view eg. Click on "search by tag" then click on "cash" from the options shown.

Also, where are the tags going to be displayed in forum view (we might need a third line of text per competition) and in thread view.

Multiple tags per competition MUST be allowed. Some comps have multiple part prizes eg, a trip + cash + alcohol

Regarding your mock-up screenshot:

1.  "Ending" is ONLY relevant if it replaces the "Closing Date" on the current New Thread page. If it does replace the "Closing Date" then it must be mandatory for a poster and it should allow "Today", "Tomorrow" or "Enter Date dd/mm/yyyy"
2. "Entry Method" is the next most useful and MUST allow multiple selections. Options needed include "webform", "email", "facebook" "instagram", "twitter X", "other social media", "gleam/rafflecopter/similar" and if extended beyond the main comps forum "post","text" "phone", "paid webform".
3. A new category not shown, but needed would contain "Daily entry","Enter Early" and "Advent" - all optional.

If you wanted to introduce this feature then you could trial it with just the three categories above leaving the prize options until a later date.

It goes without saying that the OP must be able to edit the tags selected for a comp, but you should also consider allowing users who are not the OP the ability to edit tags.

mjm3346

Before adding anything extra remove the right sidebar with quick links etc so the posts can fill the screen or remove the dropdown links which are a flipping nuisance or probably easiest move them over to the right so they don't keep flipping appearing  when they are not wanted.

janE1956

what about when you click the entered button and cannot remove it so have to bookmark the comp

MSE_Stephen

Thanks for your comments one-eye.

I want absolutely say at the outset, we’re floating this as an option to see if it is something our Compers would want. Not to force the use of tags. It would only work if our comp posters wanted them and were on-board.

We may use tags more throughout the forum in the future, so I thought giving the Compers a head-start - and extra abilities to see tags that just effect Compers - might be an idea. 

To answer some of the points raised -

Tagging when Posting

When tagging is activated, a box appears. Much like @ mentions it will try to auto-complete as you type. Additionally, the most used 50 tags from the whole forum can appear on-click below. In MSE’s case, those would almost certainly end up being mostly Comping tags (Especially with the head-start mentioned above)

Upto 5 tags can be chosen. The OP can edit the tags later.

How Would they be displayed?

Tags are shown at the bottom of the post under the signature. I might be able to format a little better than the default:

Tags can show in thread view, but this can be turned off. Given the feedback about the cluttered look in thread view before we tweaked it, I think that's likely.

Special Compers Tools

The mockup in the opening posts shows one possible version. An ‘accordion’ section at the side of Comps Time, where you could click on a tag to see all posts that have been tagged with it. 

There are 2 types of pages these links could go to when clicked (or we could even link to both using an extra icon at the side). 

Even though we haven’t fully activated tags, some are used in our Ask an Expert System so you can view right now:

Option 1
The “/tagged” page looks like this. It shows every post ever made that was given the tag. Obviously, this is less than ideal as you probably want to be able to see only Open Comps

Option 2
The Search link looks like this. It automatically searches for the clicked tag*. 
This enables you to add in extra filters available on the Search page. We can make It so that it only shows open comps.

*There is currently a small bug in Option 2, meaning you can’t navigate to the 2nd page or filter fully. This should be fixed soon.

Extra Links

In the screenshot, where I showed "Ending", this isn’t actually tags. It’s an experimental custom search link I threw in just as an extra idea. These would automatically put search for the correct day (A simple"E:DD/MM" title search). So for today (22 Aug) it would show Today Tomorrow Next Day (though without the current closed comps being shown)

Finally, and MOST importantly, The point about what the tags used be - that would be for this community to decide. Ideas in screenshot were only added to illustrate. 

MSE_Stephen

mjm3346 said:

Before adding anything extra remove the right sidebar with quick links etc so the posts can fill the screen or remove the dropdown links which are a flipping nuisance or probably easiest move them over to the right so they don't keep flipping appearing  when they are not wanted.

Please see this post. Hopefully that can help you with the drop-menu

mjm3346

MSE_Stephen said:

mjm3346 said:

Before adding anything extra remove the right sidebar with quick links etc so the posts can fill the screen or remove the dropdown links which are a flipping nuisance or probably easiest move them over to the right so they don't keep flipping appearing  when they are not wanted.

Please see this post. Hopefully that can help you with the drop-menu

Thanks that works

One-Eye

@MSE_Stephen - Thanks for the reply.

Thread View - This is absolutely fine


Forum View - This is also fine, but the fact that up to 5 tags can be used definitely means they should go on a third line for each thread - it would be much better if the other information ("Started by" etc) was in a fixed position at the left of the second line.


The "/tagged" page display is also fine as it is the same as Forum View. The "search" page display is OK but like any search results page it suffers from only showing 10 posts per page. 

Am I correct in assuming that these only work with a single tag? - we really need multiple tags - especially if we have "type" tags as well as "prize" tags (eg. display "facebook" "tech" competitions). If only one tag is selectable and we can't really have both "type" and "prize", and then my preference would be for "type" only.

The bug you mentioned for page 2 also applies to "/tagged" - the following shows 7 pages but only the first is accessible  https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussions/tagged/Ask An Expert: Question

Tagging When Posting
The location and display on the New Thread page is OK.

I like the "selection from list below" method but I am a little worried by the "top 50 across the whole forum" comment. Surely only comping tags should be on the comp forum(s) and it also suggests the order they appear is prone to change - this is very bad. It also makes me wonder how categories of tags would appear (ie. the three categories mentioned in my earlier post). Surely the tags should be in a fixed and logical order - especially if some are mandatory.

Many comps are posted by copying and pasting a previous comp - consideration should be given as to whether tags would also be copied - I don't know which I would prefer.

MSE_Stephen

I think the /tagged page not showing past the first page(s) is actually bad pagination buttons rather than not showing results. 

I haven’t checked if it’s possible to combine more than 1 tag because combining tags doesn’t exclude results. 
e.g. “Facebook” and “Tech” would show all Facebook results and all Tech results rather than just Facebook results for Tech.

Tags are site-wide. There’s no way to only show Comp Tag suggestions on the Comp forum. 

Tags can’t be sorted. They show in order of popularity

Tags can’t be made mandatory

I think I’d summarise that tags may only be of limited use for power users of the Comps board. They may be much more helpful to more casual users, but they’d be dependent on comp posters tagging.

The original post only showed how tagging could be used if campers wanted to really organise and classify comps, But compares might only want to use a handful for specific reasons,
e.g. just Entry Methods
and/or another handful that would be helpful.

Again, We’ve suggested tagging as an option available, rather than something we’ll definitely introduce - and won’t introduce comp-specific tools if there’s a clear demand for the feature.  

redfox5

I'm with @One-Eye on this. Seems like it would just be something extra when posting comps. And to me personally not beneficial as I like to look at all the competitions posted. 

Please look at removing the automatic drop down though, as this is always getting in my way when trying to post. Thank you.

mjm3346

redfox5 said:

I'm with @One-Eye on this. Seems like it would just be something extra when posting comps. And to me personally not beneficial as I like to look at all the competitions posted. 

Please look at removing the automatic drop down though, as this is always getting in my way when trying to post. Thank you.

The post earlier in this thread shows how to stop the drop downs (and works)