Thoughts on the product milestone.

Thanks to the invitation from Isaac i have the chance to experience the platform and enjoy all kind of discussions here. As a product point of view, i can imagine The Matters evolves gradually to fit the needs and fulfill the dream. But i'm wondering the path it will go through, and is making some notes as below trying to break down the target, SystemI, into feasible approaches and milestones. And also record some questions and bugs i encountered, wish someone could help. (thinking of @Andy and @Isaac, and @Ruby Tang)

System I ("Butterfly", 2017-2018): 基本產品架構與核心內容協議，中文知識分子社羣網絡

As a content platform, there are many users in different perspectives and needs, including content maker to publish new articles and make comments, general readers to view the content, platform operators to examine and track the usage, etc. Based on the idea of System I, I’m thinking to focus on the content maker perspective first and remain the rest simple.

＊Milestones of System I

Target User: Content Maker

1. Strengthen the information flow, make it efficient and effective.

• Upstream: from my point of view, the upstream leads/inspires to the creation of the downstream articles, which is the foundation of the information flow. Hence it’s better to insure all articles connect to at least 1 upstream (of course excluding the new and independent articles), not only for editors to manually input the upstream, but maybe the platform could make suggestions via tags or key words.
• Downstream: this is to see the extending ideas from the upstream, which could be enriched along with the connection to upstream.
• Comment: Agree with the original design, comment is better to record some short, quick responses and notes. For detailed content (i.e. over 200 words or with attachment), it’s better to have the platform auto-suggest the editor to publish as a downstream article, while quoting a short paragraph in the comment column of the upstream articles for a quick view.
• Quote: Agree with Ruby, quoting is frequently used as we often starts to think after witnessing an incident or reading a line/ paragraph. While quote could lead to a short comment or an intensive article, suggesting to take it as “Comment”: if with detailed content, suggest the editor to publish as a downstream.

2. Strengthen the track of related articles and comments.

It’s important to stand in the shoes of our target users when considering below items. As a content maker, what’s their need?

• To track the updates from notification center. Simplify the logic of items to track, remain only the related updates.
• To track the updates from main page. To display and organize all the updates with catogaries, like “update related to articles i make”, “update related to comments i make”, “updates related to topic i have interested”, “new articles”, “frequently discussed articles”, etc.

3. Strengthen the article editing function.

To enable the content maker generates clear and decent layout, making articles in an easier and pleasant way.

＊Current Bug

The selfie from iPhone gets rotated when uploading as a profile photo, refer to my profile.

＊Other Question

1. What’s the definition of “爭議最大” on the main page?

2. What’s the function of highlighting with Star?

3. Has the “Tag” function released? What would the function be like?

4. What’s the idea to display the last online time of active users?