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The tag wiki feature is starting to gain some traction:

google-maps, php, c#, c, c++, vb.net, vb6, asmx, javascript, wcf, cocoa, visual-studio, latex, clojure, c++0x, delphi, subjective, r, python, java, .net, protobuf-net, objective-c, regex, ruby-on-rails, mercurial, iphone, homework, xml, pythonic, jquery, belongs-on-superuser, not-programming-related, android, sql-server, flex, swing, entity-framework

I find this great, we are already looking at adding more features like history / flagging and so on.

But somebody smart once said that if a product has 100 features and you can only find 10, it really only has 10 features.

I think, that for this feature to be successful it needs to be discoverable. Clicking on a tag and then on an info tab is not discoverable.

Further more, we really want users to read some of these wikis before posting questions.

How do you think we can improve usability and discoverability of this feature?

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  • I agree 100%. I think it was after a month of active daily participation when I discovered the stats page of the tags. New users certainly won't venture in there.
    – Daniel Vassallo
    Commented Jul 24, 2010 at 0:31
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    I was actually ecstatic to just have a tag FAQ to which to link. I'd love to see it have more visibility.
    – user50049
    Commented Jul 29, 2010 at 14:33

4 Answers 4

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Pull off the first paragraph (probably set a maximum length, as is done for the title tips for questions on the front page) and display it on the various "tagged question" tabs:

Blame whoever neglected to put hand-drawn circles into the first paragraph of the JavaScript info page http://shog9.com/so_meta_58317_wikisnip_mockup.png

Hard to miss, and gives info-page editors an incentive to put something short and catchy right at the top.

To clarify: the "More about..." link should take the user to the info page.

What should be displayed when the tag is "sponsored": I modeled this after the link block displayed for such tags, with the idea that (for the sake of consistency) the space currently used for those blocks would be used for the wiki excerpt in cases where the tag is not sponsored. When it is sponsored, the sponsored links should be displayed instead - displaying both would chew up entirely too much space. I would like to see the "More about ... questions on SO" link at the bottom of the sponsored links block, both for consistency and to continue making that page more discoverable.

What should be displayed for multi-tag search results: Nothing. There's no "tag combo" wiki to pull excerpts from, nor have I seen any requests for one. Note that for multi-tag searches where multiple tags are "sponsored", the sponsor for the most popular tag "wins" - this is confusing enough that I don't think we should throw anything else into the mix.

To address concerns that this would be unacceptably irritating: The top tag on the site (C#) already gives up the same amount of space for a "sponsored links" block. If a wiki excerpt would be "uber-irritating", then a huge number of SO users are already uber-irritated. Apparently, it has already been decided that this is acceptable... Now we're just haggling over price.

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  • This is a great idea, but how will it work in combination with sponsored tags?
    – Charles
    Commented Jul 24, 2010 at 1:24
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    Put the sponsors 1st. They paid for the privilege after all.
    – John Saunders
    Commented Jul 24, 2010 at 1:27
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    This is prime real-estate. I don't want to see that over and over again. A filter option is necessary.
    – Uphill Luge
    Commented Jul 24, 2010 at 3:08
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    yeah, this would be uber-irritating after the first 5 times seeing it -- like those "new user" alerts we do, except a million times more complicated. They'd have to be individually tracked and aged for every user on every tag .. bleh.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jul 24, 2010 at 3:57
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    also, how exactly do we handle questions tagged python+django ? Do we show the wiki for both tags, pushing the page down another 100+ pixels? double bleh
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jul 24, 2010 at 4:02
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    @jeff: you already use the exact amount of space for sponsored tags - is that so irritating? I don't see why you'd show anything for tag combo searches, those don't even have an info tab...
    – Shog9
    Commented Jul 24, 2010 at 4:24
  • @Shog9 No - the sponsored tags are even more irritating than this would be
    – MarkJ
    Commented Jul 25, 2010 at 6:34
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Well this seems to resolve this issue :) alt text

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Was just about to come here and suggest this heh.

It's not the prettiest, but I think this would atleast make more users who would be interested in this feature know that it is there.

I <3 Chrome developer tools http://file-pasta.com/file/0/howabout.PNG

Thats the change I propose. Not completely sure what should be done to handle things that have multiple tags though.

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  • It may have some negative implications for advertising. But really the first sentence should be all that's necessary.
    – Jesse Dorsey
    Commented Jul 29, 2010 at 14:20
  • I guess putting it below ads (and above the related tags list) would be just as good.
    – badp
    Commented Jul 29, 2010 at 15:08
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I like the presentation in Shog9's answer. I'd add a link directly to the tag wiki from the brief version.

I've mentioned before that I'd like to see some sort of "do you want help choosing tags" UI in the question editor. Such a UI should have either a pop-up, or a pop-next-to UI that would display that same first paragraph.

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    the odds of the users who need to read this, reading it? zero percent.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jul 24, 2010 at 4:01

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