Our initial demo of the Corrections button included 4 options for type of error: spelling, grammar, factual, broken link:
In all my communications with bloggers, I continually cited 3 or 4 of these categories to explain the corrective purpose of Edit Huddle. Last week, we sat down and gave some serious thought to our 4 categories—and by extension, seriously considered the purpose of Edit Huddle.
Our first step was to combine the spelling and grammar categories into a single option on the bottom. Some people might flag a their/they're/there error as spelling, and some as grammar. Figuring out what to classify such an error as requires extra thought on the part of the blog reader, and it's better to have less ambiguity in the data provided to the blogger—e.g. 20 submissions of one spelling/grammar error versus 10 marked as spelling and 10 marked as grammar. We're in the business of making it as easy and nonintrusive as possible for blog readers to submit corrections: that's why, for instance, we decided not to go with a floating design where the Corrections button follows you down the page as you read the post. So spelling and grammar got paired as one error type, which should make the error submission process easier.
Next, we re-examined the broken link category. We decided that the option wasn't extremely useful, and would probably get marked the least often. There's also a difference between a broken link, an incorrect link, and an outdated link. Because there are already tools to detect broken links, we decided to scrap the category altogether.
With spelling/grammar and factual remaining, that left us with 2 open slots on the button. Imran declared the start of a brainstorming session. Anything was fair game, and criticism of ideas was strictly disallowed. Every suggestion went up on the whiteboard, meaning “racist,” “sexist,” and “offensive” all ended up on our list as separate items. We also had variations of “like/dislike,” “confusing,” “please clarify,” and a whole host of others. We then had a sustained discussion on the implications of making the button corrections-focused versus allowing users to submit general feedback on specific blocks of text, as opposed to just flagging errors. Adding a “like” or “good point”-type option on the button (and changing the name from Corrections, of course) would expand the reach of the Edit Huddle tool. It would also expand our potential market and our pool of competitors. While we all agreed on the potential of, say, in-line commenting a la SoundCloud, we ultimately decided to keep this iteration focused on the errors. We ended up selecting “Please clarify” as our third option because ambiguity and confusing phrases in blogs are even more common than misspellings.
Another idea that came up during the brainstorm session was a modified version of Facebook and Twitter sharing. Currently, if you use the share button that most blogs have embedded, you’ll end up with a Facebook post or a Tweet that gives the title of the article. That’s fine, but what if there’s a particularly punchy quote you’d like to pull out? For instance, a few weeks ago, I tweeted about an Economist article on Wikipedia. There was a quote in the article that was particularly relevant to Edit Huddle: “Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, says she wants to break down the “psychological barrier” between reading and editing, so that improving an article feels like a natural extension of reading it.” I ended up with this tweet: “See the line on breaking down the psychological barrier between reading and editing--the 2 are naturally intertwined http://t.co/oXLYL1NY.” That tweet’s alright, but “see the line” is not ideal language—people don’t want to hunt for a particular line that you referred to. We debated adding the functionality to highlight a selected flashy quote and click share. This would be beneficial to the blogger as well because it drives more traffic to their site. We all really liked the sharing idea but are currently focused on our core editing functionality. We want to keep the button clean, clear, and simple for the user, which means keeping the focus on error submission and correction.
We still only had 3 options on the button: spelling/grammar, factual misstatement, and please clarify. The next week—just yesterday, in fact—we tentatively decided on putting an optional comment field at the bottom of the button. The comment field is a supplement to the other 3 options, for users who wish to suggest a specific correction. This would be especially useful for the “Please clarify” option, letting blog readers specify their exact point of confusion. Users might also put a general comment in the box, but for now we’re regarding it as an adjunct to the other 3 corrective options, in keeping with our editing focus. If a particular part of a blog post isn’t clear, bloggers might want to know exactly what would be more comprehensible to readers, and the comment field fosters specific suggestions.
An implication of adding a comment field to the tool is that we’d also have to add a submit button. We went back and forth over this decision. I mentioned before that we want to make it as easy and non-intrusive for blog readers to use the button, and requiring them to click “submit” is a significant additional step. Having a comment field and submit button might make users feel obligated to suggest a specific correction, and the extra effort could turn them away from using the tool.
What do you guys think? Is the submit button a big enough extra step to keep people from using the Edit Huddle tool? Or is it a natural part of the editing workflow? I would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions, either in a comment here, or by email at [email protected].
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