Re: [delicious-discuss] Navigation continued...
On Feb 4, 2006, at 8:20 PM, Chris Lott wrote: I'm really curious why no one who asks for alphabetical sorting posits a SPECIFIC use-case scenario. I mean, on the surface I understand why people ask for this, but then as I think about it I begin to wonder what the point really is. In the context of this specific request, you talk about podcast links/links referred to in the podcast. I'm not sure I understand how alpha-sorting applies. Do you tell people to go and look at the posts beginning with P? I would expect that, were I to go to your del.cio.us links, I would find links tagged for your podcast and with additional subject tags. I would expect to see newer links first. What SPECIFIC need does alpha sort provide? Or maybe I'm listening and I know there was a link mentioned that had the word wikicities in it-- would I go and browse alphabetically for www.wickicities.com? or the title where the word is probably not the first word in the title anyway? People think alphabetically. If they go to a list which they aren't familiar with, they want to assign some kind of order to it. Right now, it's not clear to someone who isn't entering links on delicious what that order is. If I mention MemoryMiner in my podcast, they'll probably look for a link title starting with M. If they can't find it, they might then go and look for the tags on the right, assuming they know how delicious works or they are fairly with it and don't know but grasp the tag concept. Then they have to guess, did I do a good job of tagging it and give it tags for mac software photography, etc, etc, which would be what they might choose, or did I just tag it with photography so they have to find that tag and click it? Don't get me wrong, I love the tagging idea. I just think the alphanumeric is going to be handier for someone probably 85 - 90% of the time if they come to my delicious links page, know that I talked about Logitech AV remotes, and (rightly) guess the link will start with Logitech. If I have 10 pages of links as more episodes of podcasts take place, it just gives them the option to say, okay, I need to go another couple pages to where the L's probably are or I can use the tags if I want. Whichever makes the most sense to them. Basically, it's NOT that hard to do. Your response is along the lines of it doesn't have it now so it should always be that way. You can't really justify your approach either except that you don't understand it. If no one in the world had done any of the things I don't understand, we'd still be in caves. I don't accept that response. I'm NOT Being hostile, I'm honestly curious. When I direct people to del.icio.us links I tend to do it in these ways: to a specific link to a tag I'm trying to imagine the scenario in which your users will want to browse alphabetically rather than contextually. I've never once wanted to sort my links alphabetically, so maybe it's just foreign to me. I'd either be directing my users to a specific link X, to all links about Y, or to links associated with the podcast Z-- In fact that's what I wound up doing, is just putting in Episode numbers. But that's stupid - because now my numeric tags become part of delicious and dilute the usefulness of the tags. Or at the very least, they don't contribute anything to anyone else. At any rate, some specific examples might help make your case. So far it is pretty abstract and I'm still not seeing the utility. I never really saw the utility in social apps until I saw things like flickr and delicious and other similar apps. Looking at things like myspace, tagworld, and others of that ilk sure wouldn't convince me. Again, and for the final time, I don't accept the argument that because you don't like it, it doesn't make sense for anyone. And that's basically the only reason not to do this any of you can come up with. If I told my clients that, they wouldn't even bother saying goodbye, they'd just be gone. Bottom line, it's easy to implement, I really don't understand the technical reasons an alphabetical ordering of the same list would be slower (granted, I don't know anything about mySql but I guarantee in SQL Server this is a non-issue), and I have to say, why not? If my page of bookmarks was ranked in some way by meaning usefulness, that would be one thing, but it's not. It's ordered chronologically, in reverse order. Why? Is the last thing I entered more meaningful to me than the first? Who made that decision? Not I. ___ discuss mailing list discuss@del.icio.us http://lists.del.icio.us/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [delicious-discuss] Navigation continued...
On Feb 5, 2006, at 12:22 PM, sheila miguez wrote: * btw, I'm sure someone must have considered list recency and primacy effects with respect to recall? anything interesting from that which informs this discussion? e.g. Someone haves a vague feeling that they saved something, and will possibly remember that it was close in time or far in time. at least they could partition their data based on this to do a sort or search, no? Yeah, but the list really forces the partition to recently and everything else I doubt users can recall i did that a month ago vs i did that three months ago unfortunately. Joshua -- joshua schachter [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ discuss mailing list discuss@del.icio.us http://lists.del.icio.us/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [delicious-discuss] Navigation continued...
But in the real world, titles just don't often start with their subjects and the likelihood of an alphabetical search yielding results is always less than a simple search for the same. If I feel that a user can't search, I can always provide links that do the search for them. As for your podcasts, I wasn't even thinking of having the episode number, just something to say that this was a podcast link regardless of episode number. More recent links are at the top for a reason. Basically, it's NOT that hard to do. Your response is along the lines of it doesn't have it now so it should always be that way. I'm not arguing how hard it is to do, I'm saying it is more complex than just adding an SQL query because there are many other places to consider the effects of that sorting. That's all, nothing more and nothing less. You can't really justify your approach either except that you don't understand it. If no one in the world had done any of the things I don't understand, we'd still be in caves. I don't accept that response. No, I UNDERSTAND it, I just think that it would be useful for almost no one almost none of the time. Unfortunately, the truth is that users often think they want things that turn out not to be so useful (thus date-based blog archives, for instance). That's why I asked for specific examples. Those examples have so for not been compelling (to me anyway). What YOU don't seem to get is that there might be people who understand your request but simply don't agree with your position regarding its usefulness :) Again, and for the final time, I don't accept the argument that because you don't like it, it doesn't make sense for anyone. And that's basically the only reason not to do this any of you can come up with. If I told my clients that, they wouldn't even bother saying goodbye, they'd just be gone. I'm not making that argument-- I'm waiting for a convincing scenario in which alphabetic listing trumps search or where it even seems remotely useful. As a user, I am one of the group you are theorizing about, and I'm not seeing it. The converse of the I don't like it, so it must not be useful for anyone is your I like it, so it must be useful for anyone-- neither are necessarily true. They have no validity in and of themselves. It's ordered chronologically, in reverse order. Why? Is the last thing I entered more meaningful to me than the first? Who made that decision? Not I. Like a LOT of decisions, this was made by the software designer. Not every aspect of every interface can be customized. That's just life. If del.icio.us is so vexing to you, and Joshua doesn't decide to see it your way, I'm sure you will find some happy alternative. That's the beauty-- no tool has to be everything to everyone, right? I do sympathize, though, having been on the opposite side of this kind of argument (in my case, after much work to get what I wanted it turned out I was wrong-- we should all be so lucky :), but I'm not sure that your hostility is helping you AT ALL. c ___ discuss mailing list discuss@del.icio.us http://lists.del.icio.us/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [delicious-discuss] Navigation continued...
On 2/5/06, sheila miguez [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * btw, I'm sure someone must have considered list recency and primacy effects with respect to recall? anything interesting from that which informs this discussion? e.g. Someone haves a vague feeling that they saved something, and will possibly remember that it was close in time or far in time. at least they could partition their data based on this to do a sort or search, no? I was thinking about this last night while using another product that does the familiar today, yesterday, last week, last month kind of sorting. I find that a somewhat useful view on a regular basis-- .looking for something I vaguely remember linking a week or so ago. But beyond that it's all just past-- only once in a great while do I have a query where the further date-based aggregation would be useful like I know I linked this IP location tool at etech in March of last year. Hardly enough to warrant it being a useful feature. Oh, and the link was Plazes.com :) c ___ discuss mailing list discuss@del.icio.us http://lists.del.icio.us/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [delicious-discuss] Navigation continued...
On Feb 4, 2006, at 2:43 PM, joshua schachter wrote: I'd just like to reiterate my own personal desire for options of navigating bookmarks. 1. Allow sorting by alpha or chronological, both ascending and descending. CLEARLY the guys at del.icio.us recognize that alpha sorting is important for some things as they allow tag sorting alphabetically. I'd like to use del.icio.us to throw up links to items/topics I discuss in my podcast and forcing the people who come to my delicious page to click earlier repeatedly until they find the link they are looking for means that unless navigation improves, I'll probably just scrap the idea and put the links on my blog instead. the alpha stuff is much complicated than one might imagine; i'm thinking about ways to actually make it go fast. and i am still convinced it is some thing that people think would make life better but would not actually be used much or be particularly useful. if you have a list of items that go with a specific podcast, perhaps you should tag them in some way that identifies that podcast? I could tag them by episode, but that requires more effort on their part. I'd like whatever option is easiest for them to be available. Remember, not everyone thinks alike and not everyone finds information easily in the same manner as you do. I think tags are great and work very well in the greater social context of delicious but people coming to it from my podcast might not have the same understanding of how it works initially. All I'm saying is that it gives them just one more option that might help them. That's all. Re: sorting by alpha being more complicated, I don't get it. In the db, you have bookmark title, and you're telling me that the query SELECT title, description, tags, etc, FROM bookmarks WHERE owner = 'ownername' ORDER BY title is more difficult than the same with ORDER BY DatePosted DESC ? I have to admit I don't see how as you are only talking about one person's bookmarks. Even for searches where you are retrieving hundreds or thousands or search results, I don't see the problem. I'm used to using SQL Server, and I'd assume you are using mySql or something, but I can't imagine the performance difference on searching by a DateTime vs a Text field would be that great (assuming the title field is indexed) would it? I'm thinking of all the web apps and sql queries I've seen which order based on a text field and don't seem to have a problem. Obviously there's something I am not privy to regarding your db structure that makes a difference. Thanks for the response and for considering the ideas. I realize my tone my come across as hostile, if so I apologize. Obviously if I didn't like delicious I wouldn't use it. I think you guys are doing a great job. I just don't understand comments like not particularly useful when clearly people would use a capability. Technical reasons are one thing, I don't think that way and neither should you is another. One more thing, I don't know if it's mac mail or this mailing list but typically in mailing lists when you reply it goes to the list, not the author of the message you are replying to. I keep winding up replying to the person and not the list on this mailing list... Thanks. Scott ___ discuss mailing list discuss@del.icio.us http://lists.del.icio.us/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
