Remembering Retrotagging

May 22, 2007 10:46 AM

What ever became of the idea to retrotag older posts? There seemed to be a consensus in this thread, but it aged out before any decision was made.
posted by grateful to Feature Requests at 10:46 AM (91 comments total)

quonsar
posted by Krrrlson at 10:49 AM on May 22, 2007

IIRC, the quonsar tag fiasco happened before the linked thread.
posted by grateful at 10:55 AM on May 22, 2007

I formally volunteer [an amount to be determined by the usual bun-fight] of my time towards this cause.
posted by Jofus at 10:59 AM on May 22, 2007

pb has been doing a little work on the tagging stuff—we've got a couple more admin tools for locating untagged posts and such—but I'm not sure what if any additional current or planned tag stuff is on the docket right now.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:00 AM on May 22, 2007

What exactly is "the quonsar tag fiasco," other than a fantastic name for a band?
posted by Doofus Magoo at 11:01 AM on May 22, 2007 [2 favorites]

I'd love to find a way to get a small posse of trusted tag volunteers to go back and, using the admin tool we have, tag old posts. I'm not sure how the permissions would need work on that, but I'd lead the project.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:07 AM on May 22, 2007

Quonsar tag fiasco
posted by smackfu at 11:11 AM on May 22, 2007

I'd volunteer for the posse.
posted by tristeza at 11:17 AM on May 22, 2007

TAG! UR IT!
posted by blue_beetle at 11:25 AM on May 22, 2007

free quonsar
posted by Stynxno at 11:35 AM on May 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

What about a somewhat formalized volunteer process? Just something annoying enough to eliminate all but the serious archivist?
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 11:40 AM on May 22, 2007

I reiterate my dissatisfaction with restricted tagging. It's only a half-assed folksonomy if I can't add a "redux" tag to every thread with the same topic is brought up a second time. There should be a tag cloud for every thread. If you like, tagging-semi-admins and the poster can be given triple-weight, and the poster's contacts double-weight. That might keep the heaviest tags more trustworthy. Or the tag cloud I see could only include those applied by my contacts and the semi-admins and the poster. (That would mess up discussions about searching and such, though.)
posted by Plutor at 11:44 AM on May 22, 2007

Well, does that mean we're going to have an established protocol and taxonomy, Jess? I mean, I think I tend toward overtagging, but I'd volunteer.

Does this mean MARC subject heading tags?
posted by klangklangston at 11:46 AM on May 22, 2007

Re-reading this thread only underlined to me how civil and tolerant we've become over the past couple of years. How nice.
posted by Jofus at 11:51 AM on May 22, 2007

I think there are quite enough obsessives in this community to have every post tagged in short order, but is it going to happen if you have to manually vet members for trustworthiness?

The industrial-strength scalable solution is community tagging: a separate list of tags below the tags entered by the original poster. Proposed rules:

1. Anyone can tag any post with any tag.

2. Only tags entered more than once are displayed.

3. The complete list of tags, along with tagger, is viewable elsewhere.

#2 is an attempt to stop the community tag list being polluted by spurious noise taggers.

#3 is an attempt to spot troublemakers anyway.
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 11:55 AM on May 22, 2007

When people can have multiple accounts, forcing two people to tag something isn't quite the safeguard you would hope for.
posted by smackfu at 11:58 AM on May 22, 2007

I went kinda nuts about this before, back before I embraced the term "tag" and insisted on using "keyword."

Authority Control, away!
posted by robocop is bleeding at 11:59 AM on May 22, 2007

Re-reading this thread only underlined to me how civil and tolerant we've become over the past couple of years. How nice.

oh man. i remember that. good times.
posted by Stynxno at 12:04 PM on May 22, 2007

Abusing multiple accounts to get your pet tag listed would be pretty obvious if it ever got out of hand. Either the tags in question are reasonable, in which case there's no problem, or the tags are unreasonable, and it's always the same pair(s) of users.
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 12:04 PM on May 22, 2007

Yay for retroactive tagging! It would also be a step in solving my pet issue with askme, which, incidentally, I think could benefit by being organized along the lines of this site.
posted by serazin at 1:24 PM on May 22, 2007

I agree with Plutor. Let everybody tag but then only show the N most popular tags for that thread.

I'm usually a fan of Jessamyn but the "batshitinsane tag fiasco" sort of convinced me that librarians don't really understand folksonomies and their underlying principle. Its a taxonomy that embraces error in return for results that are not exact but rather "good enough."

That is, if I want to find X and only X then I need to go with an exact taxonomy ("I dont want any book about whales, I want Moby Dick!") but if I just want many threads on Boston without any guarantee I'm going to get every single one or that some might be about the rock band, then I go with folskonomy, because all I want is "good enough."
posted by vacapinta at 1:27 PM on May 22, 2007

Tagging by commitee? Yeah, commitees usually produce the greatest works of art, the most inspired commentary, and the best quality work possible.
posted by blue_beetle at 1:43 PM on May 22, 2007

I'm usually a fan of Jessamyn but the "batshitinsane tag fiasco" sort of convinced me that librarians don't really understand folksonomies and their underlying principle.

Don't overgeneralize. Many librarians understand folksonomies and so do I. That whole so-called "fiasco" was a learning process while we figured out how we wanted tags to work on MetaFilter. I made a mistake, we corrected it, and to the best of my knowledge we haven't had a problem since.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 1:57 PM on May 22, 2007

There was a project quite some time ago to retrotag all AskMe threads - I think y6³ was behind it, but may be misremembering. I did volunteer and got a batch of threads allocated, then other parts of my life fell to pieces and I never completed it. I'm not sure how far it got in the end.
posted by dg at 1:59 PM on May 22, 2007

I think we're going to try it again with a tagging tool that will make it easier to at least get basic tags on the 30,000 or so threads that still need them. I'd like to open it up to anyone tagging anything, but we're going to move forward slowly with this while mathowie and pb are building things and cortex and I are pretty busy doing adminnish stuff. I have the old thread bookmarked, so I can im/email folks when we have a prototype of something up and running.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 2:02 PM on May 22, 2007

Good idea!
posted by interrobang at 2:22 PM on May 22, 2007

I made a mistake, we corrected it, and to the best of my knowledge we haven't had a problem since.

Good thing no one holds grudges on this thar internet.
posted by smackfu at 3:04 PM on May 22, 2007

I have a list of people who have volunteered to help in the past and I'll probably drop a note to the librarians that I know on MeFi. Anyone else who didn't offer in the previous thread or already in this thread, please drop a comment here or send me an email.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 3:06 PM on May 22, 2007

I'd like to help.
posted by initapplette at 3:44 PM on May 22, 2007

commitees usually produce the greatest works of art, the most inspired commentary, and the best quality work possible.

Point taken, but they do seem to be fairly good at organizing things.
posted by whir at 4:00 PM on May 22, 2007

OK, I sent out an email to about 20 people to start with to get at least started. If you want to help, drop me an email (or IM, better yet) and I'll get you set up.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 4:40 PM on May 22, 2007

O god. Dare I tag a MiguelCardoso post?
posted by carsonb at 5:14 PM on May 22, 2007

This is an interesting opportunity to do something about old posts with broken links. (What we'd do, I have no clue.) Would it be appropriate to ad a BrokenLink tag to them? anastasiav is with me, I see.
posted by carsonb at 5:29 PM on May 22, 2007

Unles you're really hurting for something to do, I'd say just skim the posts and try to tag appropriately. I know that I haven't been following any links unless I really truly can't figure out what a post is about.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 5:41 PM on May 22, 2007

We've done 1% of the 42,000 post tagging backlog in just a few hours. This will wendell.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:24 PM on May 22, 2007

I've found a couple that I couldn't figure out, and the sites are now gone. So I've been hitting the wayback machine. It's a funny kind of exercise, tagging to make the content accessible, when the links are broken. :)
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:24 PM on May 22, 2007

Go us - souvenir propeller beanies all around!
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:25 PM on May 22, 2007

Are you using a "deadlink" tag?
posted by smackfu at 7:31 PM on May 22, 2007

I think people are using brokenlink, either way we can change them all to one or the other at the end of it.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:32 PM on May 22, 2007

Also, it would be fabulous if "MetaMetaData Phase 2" was to add titles to the roughly 15246 questions on Ask that were asked before titles were added. Would really improve the search results.
posted by smackfu at 7:35 PM on May 22, 2007

oops- i haven't been using any tag for dead links. Any way to get back the ones I've just done?
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:40 PM on May 22, 2007

i'll do it.
posted by quonsar at 7:41 PM on May 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

I will volunteer, but I think the best method is to have one tag per volunteer. Mine: dermabrasion.
posted by The Deej at 8:50 PM on May 22, 2007

I feel sort of weird tagging a mathowie MetaFilter post too. I know he has a lot, but, um—aw, what the heck. Golly, if only ah knew the burden associated with this task beforehand...
posted by carsonb at 9:18 PM on May 22, 2007

Isn't that a famous saying? "When all you have is one tag, everything seems like it could be tagged with that."
posted by smackfu at 9:18 PM on May 22, 2007

So this secret longtagboat cabal has been formed and the calibration of the secret decoder rings has begun? Yay! More tags is good for everyone.
posted by Rhomboid at 9:35 PM on May 22, 2007

2%! pb also made up this super keen word-grabber predictamo thing that will make it even easier tomorrow. Stay tuned.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:50 PM on May 22, 2007

I suck at tagging the computer-tech AskMes. If I just leave them blank, will they go back in the pool? Or shall I just press on, tag them with whatever I can get from the question, and call it good enough?
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:43 PM on May 22, 2007

they'll go back into the pool, you're fine.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:45 PM on May 22, 2007

Ugh. A committee of people with largely all of the same training and professional experience?
posted by Plutor at 5:55 AM on May 23, 2007

Dude, it's just adding tags.
posted by smackfu at 5:57 AM on May 23, 2007

Oh. Sure. "Just adding tags." And you-know-who was "just" a slightly unstable, mustached dictator!
posted by The Deej at 6:23 AM on May 23, 2007

Ugh. A committee of people with largely all of the same training and professional experience?

Actually they're mostly not librarians, the people who are helping.

MeFi: 32,814 untagged posts. | 749 tagged so far.
AskMeFi: 9,054 untagged posts. | 372 tagged so far.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:34 AM on May 23, 2007

I can confirm that I can't even spell liberian.
posted by Jofus at 6:39 AM on May 23, 2007

"The retrotagging committee is a bad closed system. I still don't see anything tagged with oppressiveinternetregime"
"Dude, it's just adding tags."

"I didn't want mayo on that."
"Dude, it's just a sandwich."

"Please don't spit on me."
"Dude, it's just saliva."

I'm not allowed to voice my opinion on things that are less important than life-or-death?
posted by Plutor at 7:07 AM on May 23, 2007

My position is more like:

"You didn't bake this bread yourself?"
"Dude, it's just a sandwich."
posted by smackfu at 7:55 AM on May 23, 2007

I'm not allowed to voice my opinion on things that are less important than life-or-death?

Nope. Which is why we've deleted all your comments on the subject from this thread, instead of totally leaving them alone while people responded conversationally to them. ?
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:27 AM on May 23, 2007

I don't like that the tags I've used on my posts/questions show on my profile page. I just don't. It bugs. I had all my AskMeFi questions tagged but untagged them when that "feature" turned up so nothing would show. If people are going to go back and tag them again (and I agree it helps a lot with searching AskMeFi, don't get me wrong, this is just my personal picky-pick), could we get a way to turn off or override that "Top 10 Tags Used" thing on our profiles?
posted by Melinika at 12:37 PM on May 23, 2007

Melinika - that top 10 tag list has always bothered me, too -- it's almost like a big-brotherish drive-by profile. It is hard to argue that the picture the tags paint is unfair when you've tagged your own posts. But when somebody else choses the tags, I can understand your discomfort. Nonetheless, I strongly prefer the benefits of having all the posts tagged.
posted by grateful at 12:56 PM on May 23, 2007

At the moment, tags added by other users would show up on the tagging user's profile page, not on that of the person whose post was tagged, so the only people directly affected currently are the volunteer taggers themselves.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:06 PM on May 23, 2007

CORTEX YOU DORK. WHEN DID YOU CHJANGE YOUR GMAIL ADDRESS. I'VE BEEN CORRESPONDING WITH A BLACK HOLE.
posted by quonsar at 1:26 PM on May 23, 2007

NO ITS STILL THE SAME IT JUST FORWARDS TO ANOTHER ACCOUNT AND I HAVEN'T WRITTEN BACK TO YOU YET SORRY FOR THE DELAY I STILL WANT TO DO THAT MUSIC THING
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:31 PM on May 23, 2007

"I don't like that the tags I've used on my posts/questions show on my profile page. I just don't. It bugs. I had all my AskMeFi questions tagged but untagged them when that "feature" turned up so nothing would show."

I'm sorry, that's nuts. Why would you want to make things harder for other folks to find? I mean, fuck, if you're worried that folks will know that you like beach, sandles, bargain, you should get off of the internet.
posted by klangklangston at 3:18 PM on May 23, 2007

I *don't* want to make things harder for other people to find, which is one reason I commented here with my opinion - I'm fine with tagging, and have tagged all my MeFi posts. I would be happy to tag my AskMeFi questions if the tags didn't show on my profile. Someone else picking the tags is even worse. AskMeFi is personal questions, not impersonal links to stuff, you know; what if you've asked *really* personal stuff and had "buttitching" or "viagra" or "poop" up there? You can't see how that might make someone a bit uncomfortable? It's not like you can't do one more click and see what questions I've posted so I don't see how not wanting the tags I've used right up on my profile makes it harder for people to find anything, seriously. Anyway - it's moot at the moment because as cortex pointed out, there's no tags on my profile that I haven't tagged myself, so that's fine. However, that might change, and I have concerns about it, why not say so?
posted by Melinika at 4:38 PM on May 23, 2007

"AskMeFi is personal questions, not impersonal links to stuff, you know; what if you've asked *really* personal stuff and had "buttitching" or "viagra" or "poop" up there?"

Well, aside from the fact that my REALLY personal (or generally embarrassing) questions are asked anonymously, I still think that's mental. No one cares if your butt itches, and no one who knows you cares. The fundamental problem with embarrasment is it's far more often felt as part of unwarranted egocentrism.

But yeah, moot.
posted by klangklangston at 5:00 PM on May 23, 2007

"The fundamental problem with embarrasment is it's far more often felt as part of unwarranted egocentrism."

As in, no one cares about my itchy ass.
posted by klangklangston at 5:06 PM on May 23, 2007

The ironic problem with embarassment is that mentioning you suffer from it gets you more attention than if you had said nothing. How many people checked out Melinika's posts to see what the bad tags could have been?
posted by smackfu at 5:08 PM on May 23, 2007

You may not care, but other people might. Especially if you have almost no info on your profile.

I don't suffer embarrassment - I was using it as an example - and it is a valid point. Enjoy my questions about zits, makeup, and taxes.
posted by Melinika at 6:17 PM on May 23, 2007

However, that might change, and I have concerns about it, why not say so?

To clarify further, that really, really isn't likely to change. The only thing likely to change is the possibility of an exclusion for the volunteer tagging squad, that will hide tags on their profile page for posts other than their own.

That doesn't address your basic objection to your tags being displayed on your page, Melinika, but I wanted to be clear on the point.

It's possible Matt would consider adding a "hide my tag cloud" option on a per-user basis. Drop him an email, perhaps.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:39 PM on May 23, 2007

Thanks, cortex, I appreciate the clarification.
posted by Melinika at 8:15 PM on May 23, 2007

MeFi: 32,661 untagged posts. | 902 tagged so far.
AskMeFi: 8,946 untagged posts. | 480 tagged so far

Anyone still wanting to help, IM or email me with your usernumber.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:47 PM on May 23, 2007

I just got these three Asks - 1, 2, 3 in my tagging queue. I perused the comments on all three to get a better sense of the tags to apply. 1 and 2 had a comment from the originator saying 'thanks that's it'. The third was clearly answered correctly. None of them had a 'best answer tick'. I tagged them with answered. I want to ask before I refill my queue - should I stop doing that, is there any point?
posted by tellurian at 12:38 AM on May 24, 2007

I tagged them with answered....is there any point?

When I have a question for AskMe and go searching for previous similar questions, all that matters to me is finding relevant threads. An 'answered' tag doesn't help to find topical questions. Reading the thread should remain the best way to decide a question answered or not, from a reference perspective, and adding a tag to that effect is redundant. Remember, 'best answer tick' dnne best answer.

Anyway, it could be considered editorializing.
posted by carsonb at 2:35 AM on May 24, 2007

should I stop doing that, is there any point?

You should stop doing that. No one else is doing that. In fact, I'd say if you are going and reading the threads, you may be overthinking this. The tags are going on the question itself [or the post, in MeFi] and not generally in the entire thread experience.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 5:41 AM on May 24, 2007

In fact, I'd say if you are going and reading the threads, you may be overthinking this. The tags are going on the question itself...

I disagree. Here's an example where the tag is correctly derived from the answer - not the question.
posted by grateful at 6:31 AM on May 24, 2007

I disagree. Here's an example where the tag is correctly derived from the answer - not the question.

Once in a while that's a great solution, and more tags on something is rarely a bad idea, but generally for this project we don't want people to have to read the whole thread. When people post a question, they don't know the answer already. Really conscientious people may go back and add the answer to a question in the tags if it's relevant, but I'd still say it's more than we'd expect for this round of the tagging project.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:44 AM on May 24, 2007

Okay, will do. No more answered.
posted by tellurian at 3:42 PM on May 24, 2007

We're at 6% or so right now. If we keep going more or less like this we can finish up within the month. Again anyone who would like to help out, please let me know.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:44 AM on May 25, 2007

Hey I'll join up, its not like I've got any good ideas for FPPs. :)
posted by fallenposters at 9:59 AM on May 25, 2007

I wonder if there's a good single tag for those AskMe questions about "you know that song/movie/book that goes lalala"? I'm getting a ton of those.
posted by gwint at 10:38 AM on May 25, 2007

namethatsong + namethissong
namethatbook + namethisbook

etc.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 1:35 PM on May 25, 2007

AskMeFi is personal questions, not impersonal links to stuff, you know; what if you've asked *really* personal stuff and had "buttitching" or "viagra" or "poop" up there? You can't see how that might make someone a bit uncomfortable?

Speaking as someone whose top tags once included "artificial_vagina", "electroejaculation" and "rectal_leech" all at the same time...you get used to it.

Plus you get invited to some really wild parties
posted by hindmost at 3:10 PM on May 25, 2007

Tagging without snarking is harder than it sounds. I so wanted to add 'crassexploitation' in one case.... :)
posted by Malor at 3:39 PM on May 25, 2007

'Blatantlies' was one that tempted me. Best not to add it....
posted by Tuwa at 9:24 PM on May 25, 2007

For anyone who is still following this post, we're over the 10% mark for the 43000 untagged posts that we started with. Thanks so much to everyone for helping out.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:17 AM on May 28, 2007

I'll help but only if everyone can go back to my wittier and more carefree comments of the 2002-2004 era and start favoriting them.
posted by psmealey at 10:44 AM on May 28, 2007

I would just like to mention that I'm getting a real Mormon vibe off of this retrotagging stuff.
posted by redteam at 3:14 AM on May 31, 2007

Mefi: 25,939 untagged posts. (7,624 so far.)
Ask: 5,409 untagged posts. (4,017 so far.)

27%!
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 4:19 AM on May 31, 2007

30%! you guys totally fucking rock!
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:57 PM on June 1, 2007

Made a mistake? Click on the line containing the tags and you can re-edit them.

Well, damnit, I did make a mistake (an omission of yon "brokenlinks" actually) and I couldn't make this go in Firefox :(
posted by Ogre Lawless at 9:58 AM on June 8, 2007

Ah crap, nevermind. Now that I've gone back to the page it works as advertised.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 9:59 AM on June 8, 2007