Hub Topics Project: Developing a Community Taxonomy
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# e-NABLE’s History of Taxonomy
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## Google+
Our current ‘taxonomy’ of Hub topics stems from our original 20 *Groups* in [e-NABLE’s Google+ Community](https://enablingthefuture.org/2015/04/15/e-nabling-growth/), active from 2014 - 2019. These Groups were exclusive and absolute. You either posted something in one or the other. They were:
1. Announcements & Admin
2. Case Studies, Stories & Prints
3. Cool and Relevant Stuff
4. Device Information
5. Education
6. e-NABLE Volunteer Jobs
7. e-NABLE Web Central
8. Feedback from Recipient and Families
9. From Affiliated Sites
10. General Discussion
11. Governance
12. Introductions
13. Legal, Documents, $$
14. Myoelectric Prosthesis
15. Organizational Support Team
16. Real World Events
17. Recorded Hangouts (HOAs)
18. Research & Development
19. Resources
20. Teams
## The Hub
When the e-NABLE Hub was set up at the end of Q3 2019, this collection of 20 group themes was brought over to the Hub forum as *Topics* which users could self-assign to their posts. Humhub allows for a multi-label classification system, meaning each post could be tagged with lots of *Topics.* Suddenly, G+ *Groups* were no longer mutually exclusive.
One challenge of this new classification system was that identifying a theme (as a group or topic) became optional. In G+ you could only share something by choosing a group to share it in. The Hub left this process open, resulting in many unclassified posts that could quickly get lost in the stream. During Q4 2019, I began curating our topic tags within the forum. They could still be added by users or admin, but model use was demonstrated and maintained to help connect themes between posts. The new posts as well as the resulting conversations through the comments guided the topic development.
Through November, tags were added to every post. A weekly summary report was shared documenting new topics and edited topics. [A post was ](https://hub.e-nable.org/content/perma?id=8039)'*[Pinned](https://hub.e-nable.org/content/perma?id=8039)'* to the top of the forum introducing all new members to the process with a clickable link to all of the current topics. By the end of Q4 2019, we have grown to 35 topics (within 2 months). The majority of the originals G+ *Groups* have been edited, combined together, or deleted if they were not being used. A ‘meta’ topic called [Topics & Themes](https://hub.e-nable.org/s/e-nable-forum/space/space/home?topicId=79) has been created to track progression. Here is the latest post covering [December’s additions](https://hub.e-nable.org/s/e-nable-forum/?contentId=12367).
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# Metrics
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Throughout the Hub Topics project, a collaboration between [Mazvydas Sverdiolas](mention:ddd9bfd7-22ab-4035-bfb7-2a71197a3ef9 "/u/mazvydas/") & [Jon Schull](mention:4d37d703-babf-407a-b5c0-582da39e22c2 "/u/jschull/") percolated to track community discussions and encourage growth. What began as a manual collection of popular topics developed, through several iterations, into an integrated admin tool embedded into the page header covering not just topics but all other major activity like commenting and user likes.
Top 4 Topics (as of December 30th 2019):
1. [Device Information](https://hub.e-nable.org/s/e-nable-forum/space/space/home?topicId=15) 37 Posts
2. [Introductions ](https://hub.e-nable.org/s/e-nable-forum/space/space/home?topicId=6) 30 Posts
3. [Research & Development](https://hub.e-nable.org/s/e-nable-forum/space/space/home?topicId=29) 27 Posts
4. [Guides, Tutorials, & Best Practices](https://hub.e-nable.org/s/e-nable-forum/space/space/home?topicId=5) 27 Posts
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# Community Campaigns & Inititives
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With insight into the themes across posts, it is possible to design inititives that promote community diversity using *Topics*. After recognizing that our growing community had a very limited amount of volunteers with limb difference, a *Topic* has been made called [Adaptive Community](https://hub.e-nable.org/s/e-nable-forum/space/space/home?topicId=19) (developed from the *Feedback from Recipients and Families*). The [Change Makers](https://hub.e-nable.org/s/e-nable-forum/space/space/home?topicId=75) *Topic* is a similar initiative to identify unique contributions from influential volunteers . For more on campaigns, visit the [wiki page](https://hub.e-nable.org/content/perma?id=9672).
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# Next
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## Google+ Archive
With the hub data tool in good shape, a next step in this puzzle piece would be finding a way to mix the G+ archive into the backlogs. We have years of activity where each post belongs to a G+ group. Our current topic system is based on these original G+ groups, so each archive post includes one topic already that neatly fits our current catalog. Once the archive is in Humhub, using your new hub metrics tool would be a wonderful way to sift through the data and show trends - across years of dialogue! We could even create posts referencing popular topics from the past to make people aware that the archive is available and searchable. Jon says he can make the archive any format you need. Adding this to the Hub would be a big accomplishment.
## Watson NLU
Of course, It's also fun to think big. During our meeting at IBM last week, they were excited about this G+ archive as something with enough data to train [Watson Natural Language Understanding](https://www.ibm.com/watson/services/natural-language-understanding/) (NLU). We currently use NLU with the Enable Web Central Help Desk bot - Bob Rieger is the one-man-band who corrects mistakes from the bot (hooray for Bob!), and a sizable portion of questions are correctly answered automatically (to general questions).
When the G+ archive is back online, NLU may be able to help us find additional topics across the posts from the past. IBM seemed interested in possibly collaborating through their Service Corp, so with luck we could get one of their folks on the project - here is to hoping!
## Topic Catalog
Currently, users add topics to posts in the Hub or I add them in. I often try to add several tags. These topics loosely cover all conversations e-NABLE, like a thematic index. We could use these topics as a starting point with NLU which then identifies related terms and relationships between topics. I'm not sure if we could automate the topic process (with an admin correcting rather than assigning topics as posts are made - like Bob on the Help Desk). The topics have been evolving as the hub has grown, and NLU could support that evolution. Jon has a collection of thousands of e-NABLE articles posted in the media. These could potentially also be catalogued by the same trained e-NABLE NLU after we are finished with the G+ archive - same tool applied to a new data set.
## Automatic Captions
I played with this technology a bit during the summer at a hack-a-thon in Mexico City and we won with the concept. I admit it has been collecting dust since the event, but I still think it has some good ideas in there. We still have a working prototype I can send using untrained NLU on the automatic captions from SPC meetings - [check our our presentation](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1347ifN3x8RUhM2ut34ojReanp5HzDTnOBRtJkCIkNE8/edit) and see what you think. Imagine if [videos of SPC meetings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fv4SLXFKhz8&list=PLvXrIlcPjuNMghyeH162K15CtqnLdRiOy) could be catalogued! They have been a regular part of the process since August 2019 with over 25 videos to date. This could be a tool we could use on all sorts of e-NABLE videos.
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# TO DO
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## Content
* Hub Initiatives: promote adaptive community growth within the Hub
* Visualization of Topics (themes)
## Hub Design & Development
* Required fields: at least one topic to be assigned by users for each forum post
* G+ Archive imported into Hub
* User Profile tags required for registration