Idea for user interaction
I hope I can explain this properly, if not I apologize for any confusion, but when I was doing something on wikipedia I had this idea for OpenFarm.org.
One thing that's going to happen when the site launches is there is going to be a need to fill the site with Data based on each members personal knowledge/experience/academic background/etc. The problem is, each member might have extensive knowledge about a particular plant but forget to submit the information because they're filling in other areas of the site. When someone, who's not a member or who is less knowledgable in gardening searches they may discover that the plant they're looking isn't yet in the database.
When a user searches for a plant and nothing is returned, we should add the option for them to add the missing plant to a list that appears in users personal accounts. Users who are active in updating information can scan the list and see what plants they have knowledge on and fill in the information.
When it's been filled in, the original person is messaged so they can come check it out.
I hope that's clear...
I also understand if this is an extra feature that might not be able to be added until later (Don't want feature creep), I just thought it would be helpful to create something like this so that if users notice a plant that they have the knowledge on is missing information they can add the information to the site.
simonv3 Thu 23 Oct 2014 9:00AM
Something like this is already in the works! We're looking into how Impressionable works to keep track of how popular guides are, and if it works properly, we'll probably roll it into crops as well, to make sure we can keep track of which crops people find most interesting. Impressionable can keep track of who viewed the page (I think, I'll have to double check. Edit: It does!).
I don't know whether auto-generating a page is a good idea, but we can definitely automatically send a user to a "create crop" page that gives them all the necessary details (very similar to how Wikipedia sends you to a "this page doesn't exist yet, create it!" page.
And what already happens in the Create Guide flow currently live is also a step towards this: "That crop doesn't exist in our database, do you want to create it?", and then the user goes through the process of creating the crop.
I agree that this can be thought out a bit more user experience wise - it was a bit hacked together. As we develop our minimum meaningful product we can put a bit more thought into this.
Streetgardener Thu 23 Oct 2014 3:46PM
Great to hear that it's in the works!
Rory Aronson · Wed 22 Oct 2014 8:54PM
Great ideas! It will definitely be important to have feedback loops so that the information that is desired can be created, and maybe even notified back to the person desiring it.
An easy way for us to do this is to auto-generate a page of Crops that were searched for but returned no results. Based on how many times they were searched for, we can figure out which Crops are highest priority to add!
It would be fun to include in a weekly newsletter: 'Crops that need some love' to direct the whole community to helping out!