Forum:Improving Site Navigation: Adding Definitions To Tags

Question

[Medhat]

1. I have an idea I do not know if it will fits well with BioStars or Not why we do not but a little definition if a visitor or a user clicks a Recent Tags or Important Tags for example: If he clicked ChIP-seq at the first of the page there will be a definition of a single paragraph like, ChIP-sequencing, also known as ChIP-seq, is used to analyze protein interactions with DNA. ChIP-seq combines chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) with massively parallel DNA sequencing to identify the binding sites of DNA-associated proteins. It can be used to map global binding sites precisely for any protein of interest. Previously, ChIP-on-chip was the most common technique utilized to study these protein–DNA relations. followed by the posts related to this tag as usual. So if a user does not know what is a ChIP-seq he will see a simple intro to it instead of googling it.

2. Another idea in the question or the answer if you see that will help your friends on Facebook or / and Google+. why do not we add the ability to share it?

Answer 1

[Michael]

I really like the idea to add a definition to tags and thereby turn them into something closer to a controlled vocabulary. It is a lot of work though, somebody will have to write these definitions and there needs to be some sort of consensus. I have two ideas about reusing existing work. This approach will shift the workload to Istvan most likely (so I hope he likes the idea.;)

1. Link to Wikipedia articles on a subject, this could be achievable in an automatic fashion. This might also give rise to a fancy mouse over teaser from the article
2. Use existing ontologies. The EDAM ontology as an example contains a large number of terms with definitions for methods and file formats.

I had brought up use of the EDAM ontology Using Edam Ontology With Biostar Tag System?, but without much feedback. SEQanswers has taken a similar approach for inclusion of ontologies.

[Medhat]

it also may be a text file contains a key and value of the terms and you query it.

[Martin Fitzpatrick]

It might work to use snippets from Wikipedia in the first instance (the license allows use of the text as long as appropriately credited) which can be edited if needed later. Using medhat.helmy77's example of chip-seq doing a Wiki search against that returns this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip-Seq ..which is pretty informative. Unfortunately bowtie isn't quite so successful!

Answer 2

[Istvan Albert]

This is a good point. We need some sort of map that helps visitors find their way. At the same time explaining every tag is a little difficult as the definitions are simple only for a few of them.

Perhaps a page or a post on the site that lists major topics of bioinformatics and contains lists of clickable links with the tags that would take the user to those types of posts.

[Medhat]

why do not we but a simple paragraph followed by More... which links to Wikipedia for example or other relevant site?

[Istvan Albert]

as Michael said this first needs to be a controlled vocabulary - the vast majority of tags would not lead to meaningful wikipedia pages, but how would one even know that beforehand

[Martin Fitzpatrick]

It could be set up on a subset of tags to begin with (not every tag would need this information just the major ones)?