Muti is a
social bookmarking
site inspired by
reddit and
Digg but dedicated to content
of interest to Africans or those interested in Africa.
Registered users submit links to news stories, articles or any item of interest.
Other users have the opportunity of voting
these submissions up or down. An
up vote will increase a
submission's score while a
down vote will
decrease its score.
Voting is achieved simply by clicking on the arrows
(
,
) which
appear to the left of the submitted items. Only registered
users may vote. Voting also determines the "kudus" of a user.
Kudus (a word play on both "Kudos", and also a southern
african antelope) are similar to what many other sites
refer to as "karma". Kudus are earned (or lost) by other
users voting for a submission. Thus if I submit an article and
ten people vote it up whilst three vote it down, I will earn
seven kudus for that article.
There are a number of different
views which show the
submitted items in various ways. These are explained below.
- hot - This is the default view. It lists
submissions in order of a "hotness" or "heat",
which is calculated based on the amount of voting within
recent time periods. The more up votes an item has received within
recent time periods, the higher it will appear on the list. Note that
the "score" displayed below each item is NOT the same as the "heat"
but is rather a composite score based on voting over all time AND
the number of times the item has been viewed or read.
- new - This view lists submissions in
the reverse order in which they were submitted, in other
words the newest submissions will always be at the top
of this view.
- top - The top view shows the submissions in order
of a composite score based on total votes of all time and on number
of times the item has been viewed or read.
- stats - This page is not really a "view"
in the same sense that the others listed here are. Rather the stats
view shows some basic statistics about users, submissions and kudus,
such as the number of submissions in the current week, current month
and all time.
- most liked - This view shows the items in order
of highest vote balance. In other words items receiving the most up votes (less
down votes) will appear at the top.
- most viewed - This view shows the
items in order of the most number of views or reads. It is possible
that items that do not show near the top of the most liked view,
may show near the top in this view. Just because an item is viewed
a lot does not mean it is liked by readers!
Registered users also have some additional views they have access to
once logged in. These are listed below:
- my submissions (Shows items submitted by the logged in user)
- saved (Shows any items they have chosen to save)
- liked (Shows all items the user voted up)
- disliked (Shows all items the user voted down)
The initial idea for muti was from Ian Gilfillan.
(Ian's website)
Here is his
blog entry on the idea.
Tagging
In February 2007 the ability to tag submitted items was
introduced to Muti. Tags in muti are similar to those
found in
del.icio.us
but differ in a few fundamental ways. Muti uses
co-operative tagging, meaning that any registered
user may tag any item. You do not have to be the
submitter of that item and nor do you have to save a
copy of that item to tag it. All tags by all members are shown
below each item.
Since all members are making a combined effort to
accurately tag the bookmarks, some guidelines are
outlined below, the purpose being to try and
prevent mass proliferation of tags.
Muti's tagging system also enforces a few simple
rules to help keep the number of tags from growing
exponentially. Firstly, all tags are lowercase.
You may enter tags in any case you like but they will
be converted to lowercase when recorded. This helps to
prevent for example, having both the tags
Blogging and
blogging.
Tags may consist of only alphanumrtic characters
and the full stop character. Any non alphanumeric
characters such as $ or %% entered when adding a tag
are silently stripped before being recorded.
Thus a tag entered as
World-cup! will be recorded
as
worldcup.
Tagging guidelines
If an item is in a language other than English then tag
it with the name of the language e.g.
french,
sotho or
afrikaans.
If the article is about France or French culture then tag
it as
france rather than
french. In other words
language names should be reserved for the actual language the
article was written in.
If an item is a link to the home page of a blog, rather than
a blog entry then tag it as
blog. For example the
Nata Village Blog
could be tagged as
blog and
botswana. In particular,
never tag a blog entry as
blog but rather tag it
according to the contents of the entry.
If an article is about the concept of blogging, then tag
it as
blogging and never as
blog.
Although muti is a pan African bookmarking site, and many, if
not most, articles concern Africa, there are some items which
merit the
africa tag. These are stories or articles
which are about Africa in general or cover a pan-african theme.
Articles about individual countries should be tagged with
that country name. For South Africa, since tags may not
contain spaces, use
za. For Ivory Coast, use
ivorycoast.
Try to use common tags that already exist, such as
politics,
environment,
energy etc.
Use multiple tags where
it makes sense, for example for an article about the 2010 world
cup in South Africa, tag it as
za,
sport,
2010,
soccer and possibly
football.
Use short tag names, so for example, prefer
tech to
technology and
telecoms to
telecommunications.
How to Tag
Adding a tag is extremely easy. Simply click on the 'add tag' button
below the item. This will open up a small form with a single field
in it. Type your tag and hit the enter key. That's it, you
have added a tag!
You may enter multiple tags at the same time by separating them
with a space or a comma. For example, entering 'nigeria elections,politics'
will create three tags:
nigeria,
elections, and
politics.
You may also delete any tag that you have added, but you may not delete tags
that others have added.
The tags display has an indication as to whether you may delete it or not.
Tags that are displayed with a 1 or a 2 superscript (e.g. politics
1)
were added by you and thus may be deleted by you. The 1 superscript means
that you are the only person that has tagged that item with that tag,
while the 2 superscipt means that one or more other people have also
tagged that item with the same tag. In the case of 2 above you may delete the
tag, however the item will continue to show the tag until all others
have also deleted the same tag. In general you dont need to worry about the
superscripts, if you cannot delete a tag the del tag button will not be
shown, or if it is, only those tags which you created will be available
for deletion.
back to muti
