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A better method of suggesting tribes for submissions?

Hey guys, I don't mean to complain, but has anyone noticed that when you submit a snap, the suggested tribes seem a little... off?

For instance, I'm about to publish "9 Horrifying Books That Aren’t Shelved as Horror". You'd think that /t/Books would be a sure bet for the suggested tribes list, what with "Books" being right here in the title, and the fact that this is a Tor.com article. Same with my own /t/Horror: "horror" and "horrifying" are right there in the headline, the word "horror" turns up twice in the opening paragraph, and, well, the whole article is about horror books, is what I'm saying.

But the suggested tribes are:

I have nothing against any of these tribes, and "reading" and "fiction" are actually good bets. But /t/Cyberpunk, or /t/Calligraphy? And /t/ComicCovers, when the word "comic" doesn't appear once?

Let's not forget /t/Funerals, with its 0 active members and no founder!

It just seems like maybe the suggested tribes could use a little work. Right now, it all seems kind of random.

Like I said, I don't mean to complain. I'm not trying to spoil anyone's Halloween. It's just been bothering me for a while and I finally remembered to mention it. :)

7 years ago by Zeus with 3 comments

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  • AdelleChattre (edited 7 years ago)
    +5

    When you're posting a snap and deciding what tribes to publish it into, you're helped along by wee folk that live in the cracks and narrows between all the snaps that've gone before. They're not cruel, so much as they carry grudges and have learned a lot of lessons that we would consider baffling, or at least weird. They're not wrong, though, necessarily. They happen to have a way of knowing that's not of our world, is all. So when they recommend tribes, it can get a little abstract for us to understand.

    There are ways we can help them learn to do a better job helping us. Tribe mods can better indicate what key terms relate to their subjects. You, as a submitter, can make sure to take a moment and touch the 'Tags' button on the snap creation page and put in as many as ten keyword tags. Those tags were once brought over for you from the source, whatever it was, but very often those were worthless or otherwise a handful of warm crap. They were driving the wee folk insane over time. Those dark days are behind us now, thankfully, but everyone's mental maps are still recovering from the garbage-in-garbage-out of it all.

    The point is that if you give better tags, the recommendations you get will be better and the system will improve over time as the right associations are strengthened. Plus, you get significant XP for dialing in those tags before publishing, and more over time as well. Like 'Sources,' they're commonly underused.

    It's best, even when they're wildly out of left field, to be appreciative of the suggestions they give. Even, yes, when they imply a connection between horror and the grave. Otherwise they can become cross. Nobody wants that. It can lead to terrible messes. Ain't no faeries got time for that.

    • Zeus (edited 7 years ago)
      +3

      The point is that if you give better tags, the recommendations you get will be better and the system will improve over time as the right associations are strengthened.

      I had no idea. Thanks for the advice!

      Edit: I just re-read this part: "Tribe mods can better indicate what key terms relate to their subjects." How would one go about doing that? I'm all for putting in a little extra work to help the search faeries. :D

  • drunkenninja
    +5

    Hi Zeus, first off /u/AdelleChattre did bring up a good point in regards to the current way the recommendation engine works, and those tags do indeed help our algorithm make proper associations between the content within each tribe and what tags are taken into consideration when listing the highest association tag links. Having said that, we are indeed looking to overhaul the whole recommendation approach as we move towards creating better community management tools, so expect things to shake up in the coming months when it comes to tribe related functionality.

    I won't reveal more at this time, as we are still in the process of laying out the ground work for the update.