Comments on: Forty Three Thousand untagged posts DONE.

Forty Three Thousand untagged posts DONE.

mathowie — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 23:54:13 -0800

Holy crap, the back tagging project (recent update) is complete! 43,000 old posts have been keyworded by a team of hundreds of volunteers here. A huge thanks to all, I never thought we'd finish up all those old MeFi posts. It's funny, I put a "keyword" table in the database around 2001 and was thinking of optionally letting people assign keywords to their posts but I didn't implement it here until January of 2005 (after seeing it take off so well with del.icio.us and flickr). After a couple years of using them, we realized having 33,000+ posts on mefi and 9,000+ early ask mefi questions without tags would be a huge undertaking down the road to catch up and tag those old posts. interrobang floated the idea in late 2006 and in May of 2007 Jessamyn launched the distributed project of back tagging. pb built a cool ajaxy screen that would display ten posts at a time and let you drop in a string of keywords that all became tags, with a refresh button to give you ten more. Ten at a time, page after page, for almost a year until today when it was finally complete. A big thanks to everyone that helped out (there's a small message on your userpage) because it was a real slog. I would do a dozen here and there but after a few months I still only had a few hundred complete. An extra special thanks goes out to our top super taggers -- here's the top ten and how many posts they tagged:

CKmtl (7,825)
nkknkk (4,999)
mumkin (2,923)
donnagirl (1,997)
dilettante (1,545)
scratch (1,520)
blue_beetle (1,456)
jessamyn (1,419)
ThePinkSuperhero (1,004)
Rumple (995)

We'll expose the tagging info in the infodump soon and the next project will be tag normalization and grouping and all sorts of stuff we couldn't do until we had everything tagged. So thanks again!

By: carsonb

carsonb — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 23:59:38 -0800

Amazing! Great work, super heroic back-taggers! I'm sorry I petered out...

By: Rhaomi

Rhaomi — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:02:03 -0800

Great job, guys. Good team effort. Nice work. But now that that's out of the way, could you guys tag all the comments too?

That would be just super.

By: carsonb

carsonb — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:03:27 -0800

Question for you troopers, did you use the initial tagging screen more, or the one with the smart suggestions?

By: mathowie

mathowie — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:09:41 -0800

I forgot to mention that I was trying to buy CKmtl a gift to thank him for the hard work, but he's in Canada and Amazon refuses to let me send him a xbox360 as a gift, and apparently amazon.ca doesn't even sell xboxes. WTF Microsoft/Amazon?!

If anyone knows of an easy way to get a xbox360 sent to someone up north without it being trapped in customs or having warranty issues (that's what Amazon claimed), I'm all ears.

By: dhammond

dhammond — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:12:44 -0800

Yeah, just send the xbox to me. I'll make sure CKmtl gets it.

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:25:36 -0800

That is AWESOME. Huzzahs all around!

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:28:18 -0800

I believe you should be able to buy through the Canadian electronics store Futureshop. That would be the first place I'd call, if they can process an order with a US card.

By: hurdy gurdy girl

hurdy gurdy girl — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:35:03 -0800

WOW. Thank you back taggers! I appreciate the insane amount of effort this must have taken.

By: goshling

goshling — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:43:23 -0800

Awesome, I just went to the tagging page to pass some time and saw it's all done! Feeling vaguely disappointed, but mostly chuffed.
Yippee!

By: -t

-t — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:48:14 -0800

Wow, that is pretty amazing.

If only there were a way to harness... oh wait, there was a way.

By: mumkin

mumkin — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:55:27 -0800

carsonb: I didn't use the smart suggestion version. Forgot it existed in fact, since I'd just bookmarked the other.

By: ODiV

ODiV — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:56:01 -0800

Matt: If you're shipping over the border, make sure it's not sent UPS or Purolator. Those guys charge a customs handling fee that's a hassle. Sending USPS with insurance does not incur the same fee. There are sometimes short delays due to customs, but it's not too bad in my opinion. Maybe it's different if things don't go smoothly.

No idea about warranty though. Maybe check Best Buy or Future Shop's online stores?

By: Ambrosia Voyeur

Ambrosia Voyeur — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 01:21:03 -0800

nice badges, bitches!
/so jealous

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 01:31:52 -0800

Huzzah!

*goes to check that someone tagged #19 as theshimmeringveil*

*comes back, mildly disappointed*

But it's good that 19, 1142, and 9622 all got metafilterhistory tags, so it all evens out! Well done, folks.

By: tomcooke

tomcooke — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 02:16:46 -0800

Well done, and thanks! I'm proud to be part of community where people care enough to do things like this.

By: Corduroy

Corduroy — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 03:07:05 -0800

I like the little "I was a back tagging superstar!" in those profiles.

I can't even look at my profile anymore.

By: shelleycat

shelleycat — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 03:27:19 -0800

That metafilter history tag page is pure gold.

By: terrapin

terrapin — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 03:52:10 -0800

I miss the old Metafilter without tagging.

By: Meatbomb

Meatbomb — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 03:56:17 -0800

Does getting onboard, tagging three or four pages, and then forgetting to do it again make me a superstar? Slacking really works when we all pull together as a team, we did a great job guys!! I think Matt should buy us all a beer.

By: Dreama

Dreama — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 04:01:52 -0800

Awesome. Big round of applause.

By: cgc373

cgc373 — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 04:26:35 -0800

I'm really glad the back-tagging superstar congratulations didn't remove ThePinkSuperhero's magnificent OLD SKOOL shock color page. That page has provided an ocean of pink comfort to me in trying times, and I hope it never, ever changes.

By: TedW

TedW — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 04:34:58 -0800

So I guess this would be a good time to volunteer?

Seriously, thanks for the work, guys and gals!

By: hadjiboy

hadjiboy — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 04:39:11 -0800

Awesome! Three cheers for all the contributors... hip-hip--hooray! Hip-hip--hooray! Hip-hip--hooray!!!

Keep up the good work:)

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 05:10:22 -0800

Great job! I always meant to do more, and I always didn't. I can't believe the big numbers those folks put up.

By: Fuzzy Skinner

Fuzzy Skinner — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 05:17:09 -0800

Let the front-tagging begin!!!!!

By: Rock Steady

Rock Steady — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 05:18:25 -0800

Good job everyone. Is it possible for all of us superstars to find out how many we each did? I'm sure I'm an order of magnitude behind the leaderboard, but I'd still like to know.

By: dg

dg — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 05:24:34 -0800

Oh, well done! I wish I was as awesome as all the people that worked on this.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 05:25:27 -0800

Yay!

By: Dave Faris

Dave Faris — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 05:28:28 -0800

2. nkknkk (4,999)

The Obsessive/Compulsive Quasi-significant Number Alliance begs to know -- you couldn't force yourself to do just one more??

Great work everyone. Future generations will thank you.

By: Melismata

Melismata — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 05:43:00 -0800

Gotta drink to that! *swig*

By: nkknkk

nkknkk — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 06:04:55 -0800

Dave Faris, that was my first thought too! We had no idea what our numbers were as we went, or TRUST ME I would have done at LEAST one more.

By: orange swan

orange swan — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 06:10:05 -0800

Goodness, and I thought I'd done my share when I tagged my own FPPs. You people really put in a lot of effort.

By: cortex

cortex — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 06:30:17 -0800

Y'all did a tremendous job. We'll update the tag data in the Infodump; it wouldn't be too hard to put together a little report on the backtagging saga based on that data, probably.

By: briank

briank — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 06:36:32 -0800

Fucking taggers!

j/k

By: bru

bru — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 06:37:57 -0800

Great job, thanks.

By: cashman

cashman — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 06:38:26 -0800

Sweet!

By: yeti

yeti — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 06:50:10 -0800

69296. yeti (0)

Thanks to everyone that did this for lazy guys like myself.

By: ThePinkSuperhero

ThePinkSuperhero — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 06:55:59 -0800

Yay, good job back taggers!

By: Razzle Bathbone

Razzle Bathbone — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:00:16 -0800

It just seems so appropriate that the last tagged post was an I/P single newspaper link post that is now a brokenlink.

By: DreamerFi

DreamerFi — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:00:48 -0800

I, for one, welcome our tagging overlords!

By: grateful

grateful — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:03:14 -0800

I am eternally grateful.

By: Razzle Bathbone

Razzle Bathbone — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:03:39 -0800

TheonlyproblemisthatIforgettoputinspaceswhenIwritenowfromdoingthefinalpushlastnight.

By: yeti

yeti — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:06:16 -0800

Can I nominate this thread for the metafilterhistory tag? And what about this deleted thread? (Ok, maybe that one isn't as pretty as Sketchzilla, but it's historic, no?)

By: danb

danb — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:11:41 -0800

Let the front-tagging begin!!!!!

Actually, it's funny you should say that. This project got me thinking about whether the older posts might now have better tags than the newer ones, since the backtagging team seemed to be very diligent and professional about what tags to add. I wonder if the pre-tag era posts will be easy to find now while the newer ones will be all, you know, butts lol.

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:22:54 -0800

Woohoo!

By: Plutor

Plutor — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:25:03 -0800

The back-tagging project is not done. It is only done as far as it is currently possible. I can point at 15,992 untagged threads.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:26:04 -0800

Yay. We were talking about giving everyone some little userpage notification about this but we never thought we'd finish so quickly so last night I was a little "er.. thanks for all your hard work everyone" and tossed in a few animated GIFs. CKmtl has been really doing great things with helping ferret out badly typoed tags so we can fix them and we'll be building something to help us clean up the set of tags we are working with. I think it's going to be neat to see them all in the infodump.

By: Razzle Bathbone

Razzle Bathbone — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:27:55 -0800

Not to second guess anyones choice of tags, but after these tags are cleaned up maybe somesort of front-tagging project may be a good idea.

Maybe a script that pulls 10 posts that have only 1 or 2 tags and then MefiMails a tagging posse member. They could then go in and add more tags if necessary or tick a box saying the tags are fine.

By: cashman

cashman — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:29:36 -0800

The back-tagging project is not done. It is only done as far as it is currently possible. I can point at 15,992 untagged threads.

Zoinks!

Whoever tagged that last post, don't ask for that Wii just yet!

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:39:36 -0800

Plutor - if you can send the details of those threads to mathowie/pb we can build them in to a clean-up brigade. Not knowing the mechanism of how the tagging machine chose untagged posts [and we skip untagged music, project, meta and jobs posts] it's possible that there are some hiding there. But almost 16,000? Really?

By: cortex

cortex — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:39:45 -0800

The back-tagging project is not done. It is only done as far as it is currently possible. I can point at 15,992 untagged threads.

Well, let's not overstate the case; a few thousand of those 15,992 are in fact shockingly green and well-tagged, owing to the strange hybridine nature of late 2003, early 2004.

By: cortex

cortex — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:40:15 -0800

(In otherwords: metatalk has no tagging capacity.)

By: Razzle Bathbone

Razzle Bathbone — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:42:31 -0800

Well at least tagging metatalk threads would be simple: lamecallout flameout whinging

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:43:30 -0800

I'm curious how many threads I tagged. Is there a way to find out?

By: CKmtl

CKmtl — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:47:38 -0800

Ha! Cute profile bug/thinggie. Superstar! [poses triumphantly, promptly falls over backwards]

carsonb: I just used the plain tagging screen. I saw the tag suggester mentioned once, but forgot about it since I was already in the habit of using the plain one.

By: quin

quin — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:49:07 -0800

(In otherwords: metatalk has no tagging capacity.)

Which, if you think about it, is probably a good thing. I mean, the heat that some of the callouts here begin with could lead to real interesting ugliness:

Tags:

callout
douchebag
jackassery
threadshitting
hitlerlike
babyeater
selflinker

...actually, could we get tags in MeTa? This would be like jet fuel for flameouts.

By: jouke

jouke — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:53:33 -0800

I miss the image threads...

By: quin

quin — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:54:33 -0800

And I'm thrilled that the project is finally (more or less) completed! And I'm amazed at the numbers the top 10 put in; you guys must have ocean-like depths of patience.

By: donnagirl

donnagirl — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:00:20 -0800

you guys must have ocean-like depths of patience

Well, at least 3 of us are librarians - that may explain a thing or two.

By: cortex

cortex — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:01:31 -0800

It explains the bizarre proliferation of "LOCrulesDEWEYdrools" tags, at least.

By: Razzle Bathbone

Razzle Bathbone — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:06:26 -0800

Watch it cortex, you are getting dangerously close to a big library kerfufle between the pro-subject heading people and the pro-tagging people. Believe you me you do not want to get caught in that.

By: Artw

Artw — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:09:25 -0800

Good stuff!

By: loiseau

loiseau — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:11:35 -0800

Those 30 or so threads I tagged must've really put us over the top. Hooray for me!

By: interrobang

interrobang — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:13:19 -0800

Jessamyn came up with the idea of a distributed project of back tagging,

Hooray to Jessamyn for having this fantastic idea!

By: Toekneesan

Toekneesan — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:14:18 -0800

**Does happy little bee dance, now much more accurately wiggling his butt, thus communicating the precise location of the juicy posts and their nectar filled links**

By: carsonb

carsonb — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:16:34 -0800

Well at least tagging metatalk threads would be simple: bugs, feature requests,
etiquette/policy, uptime, MetaFilter-related, general weblog-related, ticketstub project, MetaFilter gatherings, MetaFilter Music, Ask Metafilter, Podcast

By: nkknkk

nkknkk — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:16:36 -0800

I'd be all for front-tagging or tag-review (mostly because now I'm selfishly desperate for another huge mind-numbing but strangely fascinating project to do while I watch Tivo) although it does have some implications - ie overwriting FPPs tags for "better" ones is different than adding tags to an untagged post.

That said, there are some crappy recent tags out there... it's like an itch... must... scratch...

btw, yay CMKmtl! I thought I was giving you a run for your money there, but you left me in the dust!

By: Plutor

Plutor — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:18:12 -0800

cortex: "(In otherwords: metatalk has no tagging capacity.)"

Sorry for being so oblique. Yes, the lack of tagging in MetaTalk is shocking, especially considering how useful metafilterhistory could be.

quin: "Which, if you think about it, is probably a good thing. I mean, the heat that some of the callouts here begin with could lead to real interesting ugliness"

How is this a bad thing? People can use those "ugly" words in their comments or their posts. Are tags somehow stronger? Admins can edit them just as easily.

The only dangers I can see are that tags are unflaggable, and even non-oligarchists can tag threads by mutual-contacts no matter how old they are. Do admins have an easy "latest tags added" view?

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:23:22 -0800

Yeah, but how many posts were tagged in a prescriptive manner, and how many descriptively?

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:31:32 -0800

Not everyone can be a soopastah.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:32:20 -0800

Great, now I can go back and check to see how my old posts have been handled, and to remove tags where necessary.

(Kidding! Thanks, volunteers.)

By: peacay

peacay — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:34:59 -0800

I was a back tagging superstar!

Was, was?! AM!!

Well done all and sundry. I AM sundry.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:36:03 -0800

*hands peacay some tomatoes*

Get to work on these, then.

By: cashman

cashman — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:38:23 -0800

Okay, so the Wii then. Who won?! Or was that a jokey thing.

By: peacay

peacay — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:43:38 -0800

*splats cashman*
RTFP.

By: peacay

peacay — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:47:31 -0800

..or this.

By: slogger

slogger — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:49:02 -0800

A real slog?!?

*Flagged as sloggerist*

By: dawson

dawson — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 09:55:00 -0800

the more you know, CKmtl inadvertently helped me fix my disastrous taggage, it may still be ugly, but at least I no longer have 30 character tags that look as if they'd sound like quaint Nordic towns.

By: dawson

dawson — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 09:56:57 -0800

or rather, the names of said towns

By: rtha

rtha — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:06:14 -0800

Amazing. Thanks, taggers!

By: Miko

Miko — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:11:38 -0800

That's outstanding. Thanks to the community-service-minded folks who helped with tagging. It's just as awesome as people cleaning up the vacant lots and planting gardens in town. It makes the place better, and it's really cool that people were willing to volunteer. I hereby offer you the Thousand Pixels of Light award.

By: Malor

Malor — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:13:27 -0800

That's just staggering. CKMtl tagged almost eight thousand posts, nkknkk did 5, and mumkin did 3. Almost a third of the entire backlog was done by just those three people, and Ck did damn near 20% alone.

What a gigantic time investment. Thanks so much!

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:16:12 -0800

Wow! That's awesome!

By: Plutor

Plutor — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:19:13 -0800

Malor: "Almost a third of the entire backlog was done by just those three people, and Ck did damn near 20% alone."

If by "almost a third" you mean 36%.

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:24:08 -0800

Oh, leave him alone. He's an economist, not a mathematician.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:25:48 -0800

If by "almost a third" you mean 36%.

The pedantic nature of MeFites generally assured this project's success.

I don't mean that in a BAD way, but as someone who was driven to tag over a thousand of these myself, there is really something compelling about missing metadata.

By: flatluigi

flatluigi — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:26:27 -0800

Aw, I wanted to help out with this. Too bad it's over, I still would love to help.

By: cortex

cortex — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:26:57 -0800

He was saying it was almost a third coming from the other direction.

By: spiderskull

spiderskull — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:34:22 -0800

EPIC WIN.

By: cashman

cashman — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:40:25 -0800

Pecay, I thought there was a Wii for the person who tagged the last post. Which would be Bazzle Rathbone. Or Razzle Bathbone.

So kindly unsplat me.

By: jeblis

jeblis — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:53:56 -0800

Tomorrows Post "Whoops I accidentally deleted them."

By: Rumple

Rumple — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:56:45 -0800

you guys must have ocean-like depths of patience.

When the alternative is combing through buckets of gravel looking for vole teeth....

By: Malor

Malor — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 11:56:18 -0800

Sheesh, I was just eyeballing it, not running a calculator. :)

By: Alvy Ampersand

Alvy Ampersand — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:01:05 -0800

I feel like I didn't do enough to deserve my badge. Good job, everyone!

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:11:49 -0800

vole teeth, you say...?

By: found missing

found missing — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:27:04 -0800

Is that what the kids are calling it nowadays? Back tagging?

[NOT TAGGIST]

By: schroedinger

schroedinger — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:34:39 -0800

My God, I did like, ten before I got distracted. The idea that people did over 1,000--at CKmtl did almost 8,000 just blows my mind. Dude, that was an eighth of the workload! Congratulations all, and thank you!

By: purephase

purephase — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:37:22 -0800

Congrats people. Not sure why Plutor seems to have a hate on. This is truly impressive.

By: dobbs

dobbs — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:42:48 -0800

I forgot to mention that I was trying to buy CKmtl a gift to thank him for the hard work, but he's in Canada and Amazon refuses to let me send him a xbox360 as a gift, and apparently amazon.ca doesn't even sell xboxes. WTF Microsoft/Amazon?!

Yeah, Amazon doesn't ship any electronics to Canada and amazon.ca doesn't sell any electronics. It sucks.

Futureshop.ca or bestbuy.ca should do it.

By: cortex

cortex — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:46:17 -0800

I don't think Plutor has a hate on; I think he has a welling-desire-for-related-but-metatalk-specific love on.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:47:28 -0800

purephase: "Not sure why Plutor seems to have a hate on."

No, screw you!

I'm sorry. I'll take the weekend off from the Internets, now.

By: ThePinkSuperhero

ThePinkSuperhero — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:59:36 -0800

According to the tagging page, there's 1 untagged Mefi post:

MeFi: 1 untagged posts. | 33,562 tagged so far.
AskMeFi: 0 untagged posts. | 9,426 tagged so far

I wonder which one?

By: Miko

Miko — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 13:01:05 -0800

I wonder which one?

Is that like in historic preservation, where they intentionally leave a tiny strip of wall unpainted so we can see what an original surface was like?

By: donnagirl

donnagirl — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 13:24:20 -0800

Yes, it's our very own truth window.

By: Ambrosia Voyeur

Ambrosia Voyeur — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 13:31:38 -0800

Aw, Plutor. *hug* You shoulda taken me up on the cookies. You'd be tasting MeTa win right now. Oh well, I'd give you a greasemonkey merit badge if I could.

By: UbuRoivas

UbuRoivas — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:14:13 -0800

Well done, everyone!

And for those who complain that MeFi is too America-centric, we now have tagible proof to the contrary: only 1,091 of 43,000 posts were related to the US.

By: SteveInMaine

SteveInMaine — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:18:15 -0800

It was amazing to me how many broken links I came across when I was tagging. Speaks to the temporary nature of the net, I guess. Most of the dead ends I found were links to news sites. On the other hand, I found some gems like this that hadn't been updated for quite some time, yet remained live.

A tip of my hat to the folks who did the bulk of the work. Wish I could have done more.

By: nkknkk

nkknkk — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:35:55 -0800

UbuRoivas, only 1,091 posts were TAGGED "usa." "America" "unitedstates" were also probably used, and lots of American-centric politics posts weren't tagged with any country identifier, but instead with "recount" "georgebush" etc. It's still better than nothing, but don't draw too many definitive conclusions yet.

FWIW, in my (limited, random, "give me 10 more") experience, ancient MeFi history was VERY America-centric.

By: CKmtl

CKmtl — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:47:51 -0800

only 1,091 of 43,000

Out of ~33,500 actually. ~9,500 of that total number were untagged AskMe questions.

But yeah, there was a lot of US stuff in there. Which led to a new talent: being able to type "USA politics election 2000 (or 2004) GeorgeBush GWB Bush AlGore Gore (or JohnKerry Kerry) brokenlink" with my eyes closed and without a keyboard in front of me.

By: loiseau

loiseau — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:51:11 -0800

One thing about broken links, which I almost made a MeTa post about when I started tagging, is that a lot of posts with broken links were news stories on Yahoo News or Google News or other aggregator sites. Those links expire more quickly than most proper news sites do these days. So, my recommendation is that if you are posting newsfilter, it is best to link straight to the Globe & Mail or the Washington Post or whatever, because those links will last longer, as lots of newspaper sites are archiving things decently.

By: Razzle Bathbone

Razzle Bathbone — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:53:01 -0800

It was funny, I think probably atleast half of the last 50-60 that I did were broken links - single link posts. I know I counted on one of the last batches of 10 that 7 posts were broken.

When it came to those 2000 or 2004 election posts, thank god for auto-complete. I would just start typing algore or johnkerry and hit enter.

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 20:02:21 -0800

*goes back through own posts, changes all tags to "quonsar"*

By: dhartung

dhartung — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 22:50:33 -0800

OK, now, you're it!

By: owhydididoit

owhydididoit — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 23:03:55 -0800

Very cool, thanks!

I regret missing this. It sounds like fun.

By: taz

taz — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 07:50:49 -0800

What meatbomb said. I'm embarrassed to get the profile page shout, even though I didn't stick with it for long. I should have made that login a page that opened on booting FF, but I was always, like, "oh, I need to go find that url for tagging," ... but mostly didn't, after the first few days. :(

You other guys are the best, though, and I agree that this project is a concrete example of metafilter as an involved community. Extra-sparkly kudos to Jess for the idea.

By: CKmtl

CKmtl — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 07:52:05 -0800

I suppose stats could be run on which news sites are the least likely to expire, that'd be an interesting piece of data nerdery.

From what I recall, the Washington Post was sort of mid-range in terms of brokenness. The Globe&Mail was too. CNN, The Guardian, The NYTimes, and BBC were almost always still viable links.

By: cortex

cortex — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 08:18:32 -0800

Huh. Such stats could be run. Just grab every post that has a brokenlink tag, strip out the links, and hash 'em up by domain, I guess.

By: CKmtl

CKmtl — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 08:52:49 -0800

Hmm, that'd give a rough look at it. But there are cases where brokenlink (or deadlink, or whatever other variants were used) were used for a non-news link in a post containing a news item. So there'd be false positives for brokenness.

Since there's also the posts' dates as data, it might be possible to even rank news sites in terms of how long they last too. "X% of Washington Post links die after 3 years, Y% of BBC ones after 7 years" etc.

Yay, stats!

By: cortex

cortex — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 09:00:18 -0800

Yeah, it'd be rough, but it wouldn't require human intervention.

The dates thing is a good idea, yeah.

By: mumkin

mumkin — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 13:45:24 -0800

Brokenlink is a weird tag, in that it's never going to be assigned by the OP at the time of posting. The most recent brokenlink is from Feb 10, 2007, and I assume it's the result of backtagging, since I backtagged this one from Jan 29, 2007. When did tags become mandatory instead of optional, anyway? Has there been any discussion about automated link-checking, with a MeFiBot that appends a brokenlink tag to posts that it gets an error from?

I tried to reliably tag news organization names, as did others, so perhaps the intersection of name with the brokenlink tag is somewhat meaningful. For example, the organ's tag (# brokenlinks), with the date of the most recent broken link that appears to be the org's fault (as opposed to the poster's):

[ WashingtonPost (95), WaPo (79) ] April 3, 2004
Yahoo (67) Oct 13, 2005
CNN (48) Jan 2, 2005
BBC (30) Nov 20, 2003
[ NYTimes (28), NewYorkTimes (12), NYT (6) ] ???
[ LATimes (18), LosAngelesTimes (1) ] Feb 16, 2005
[ Guardian (18), TheGuardian (3)] July 16, 2004
Reuters (8) Dec 8, 2004
GlobeAndMail (5) Nov 8, 2002
TimesOfIndia (3) Feb 16, 2002

The New York Times is a bit unusual, in that its dead links all appear to be related to feed partnerships. So, stuff with a /reuters or /aponline path may be dead, just like at Yahoo, but otherwise the NY Times is quite healthy. There are some old urls for which the domain is partners.nytimes.com or the 14 posts linking to channel.nytimes.com that 404, but if a mod would care to edit them to be at www.nytimes.com, the rest of the path is valid and resolves to the intended article. (Oh, and there's one that uses www.nyt.com that breaks.) Matt was automatically rewriting NYTimes urls at one time, but only for a few weeks.

Are there any plans to allow more complicated tag searching, by the way? Being limited to finding the intersection of two tags is...well, somewhat limiting.

By: quin

quin — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 13:51:50 -0800

Brokenlink is a weird tag, in that it's never going to be assigned by the OP at the time of posting.

Of course, now I must dedicate myself to figuring out a way to prove this wrong without creating a post that will immediately get deleted for being useless.

Hmmm.

By: mumkin

mumkin — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:16:09 -0800

It's worth noting that while there are only 263 posts tagged NewYorkTimes, for example, at least 2,222 posts link to stories there. Tags can present a somewhat distorted view of the site if you put too much trust in them, and the guidelines that OPs have had about how to tag their FPPs are less detailed than the ones the backtagging project ostensibly followed.

By: mumkin

mumkin — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:18:53 -0800

Also, weird: I just pulled up the tagging page to review its instructions and was presented with this post to tag. Did it just get deleted and re-added? Seems curiously long after the fact for it to be killed and resurrected.

By: cortex

cortex — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:35:56 -0800

Weird, mumkin; no admin action on that post recently, no. It's not impossible that someone (the poster, maybe) could have stripped the tags out of it after the fact just recently, though.

By: dejah420

dejah420 — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 15:15:57 -0800

Wow, good work guys!

By: Rock Steady

Rock Steady — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:33:31 -0800

Brokenlink is a weird tag, in that it's never going to be assigned by the OP at the time of posting.

Of course, now I must dedicate myself to figuring out a way to prove this wrong without creating a post that will immediately get deleted for being useless.

It'd have to be some really cool 404 page, right?

By: Rumple

Rumple — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 17:09:46 -0800

Cool 404 pages ready for your FPP

By: cortex

cortex — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 17:16:55 -0800

~~double~~
~~triple~~
quadruple

By: Jofus

Jofus — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 03:05:40 -0800

Yay! Well done everyone! I am proud of myself - an unusual feeling for a sunday morning.

By: Jofus

Jofus — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 03:10:14 -0800

Also, can we change our profile pages to say 'I Was A Teenage Backtagging Superstar'?

By: krautland

krautland — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 21:53:26 -0800

now if only we had a team of volunteers that hunted down no longer valid old links and replaced them with working links to archived versions or ... ok, sometimes this webbernet thing sucks.

By: Rock Steady

Rock Steady — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 04:19:38 -0800

now if only we had a team of volunteers that hunted down no longer valid old links and replaced them with working links to archived versions

Or even just replaced them with working links to other random stuff.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 07:11:28 -0800

I'm back. I'm sorry for my previous outbursts. I love you all. Tag team ftw.

By: donnagirl

donnagirl — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:11:39 -0800

aww, thanks, Plutor. If we could tag metatalk posts, we could add "apology" and "redemption" to this one.

By: tellurian

tellurian — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:23:48 -0800

I see we have numbers in our profile now.

By: mumkin

mumkin — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:42:23 -0800

Hmm. There are some discrepencies between the numbers reported by mathowie above and the numbers in our profiles. CKmtl's profile has short-changed him by 2060 posts, for example, if the top 10 list is accurate. I'm just 638 short, myself. Anyone server-side know which "score" is more accurate?

By: mumkin

mumkin — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:48:50 -0800

Not that it was a contest or anything. Just, you know, wondering at the different values.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:51:08 -0800

Yeah we noticed that too. I think because the count was basically supposed to be a pretty rough estimate, it was counted if someone tagged the same post twice. basically if you loaded tags into a post and then reloaded them, that counted as two. I'm sure pb or mathowie can come in and explain more specifically, but basically for really high-number taggers who are also tagger-reloaders, this discrepancy shows up a little more starkly

By: mumkin

mumkin — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:04:32 -0800

Gosh, in that case I'm surprised that I only reloaded tagged posts 638 times. That was definitely part of my standard workflow.

By: pb

pb — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:44:34 -0800

Yep, as jessamyn mentioned, the original backtagging counts that I put up were a quick indication of how things were going. I didn't know it would be used as an official tally. When I went to add the numbers to profile pages today, I realized that my quick stats were counting log entries instead of unique post IDs. (oops.) So if someone tagged the same post multiple times (which was easy to do with backtagging system), the post was counted multiple times.

The counts on the profile pages are more accurate because they're counting the number of unique posts tagged. Sorry about the discrepancy, I should have done it that way from the beginning.

By: CKmtl

CKmtl — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:45:49 -0800

Ah, that's what it is.

Yeah, I did that a lot. Add tags, click them to check if they were used before or what other stuff they linked to. Delete/change some dead-end ones, correct typos, add new-found related tags were appropriate, etc.

By: Malor

Malor — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:20:43 -0800

I cringe a little when I see "I was a back-tagging superstar!" with only 200 posts tagged. (I did mean to get back to it again, but lost the bookmark in a computer wipe, and never resumed.... sorry.)

If you MUST put a note in there, I'd prefer something along the lines of "I helped with backtagging! (200 posts tagged)". Save the real praise for the people who really did the work. "I did a lot of backtagging!" for 250+, "I was a backtagging star!" for 500+, "I backtagged until my fingers fell off!" for 1000+.

Save the superstar tag for the top three, who so, so earned it.

By: Jofus

Jofus — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 01:50:20 -0800

Agreed. My paltry 60 posts (a good 40 more than I thought I'd done) should really only warrant a "The back-tagging project just happened to occur at the same time as i was off work with gastric flu and, against the run of probability, was able to hijack someone nearby's wireless internet connection."

By: Malor

Malor — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 02:00:20 -0800

Actually, after seeing Plutor's comment, "I was a member of the tag team!" could also work for low-count wimps like me. :)

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 07:46:50 -0800

I cringe a little when I see "I was a back-tagging superstar!" with only 200 posts tagged. (I did mean to get back to it again, but lost the bookmark in a computer wipe, and never resumed.... sorry.)

I agree with almost every word of this. "superstar" makes me feel really guilty for free-riding.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 07:49:43 -0800

Most people on MetaFilter did nothing.

Anyone who helped out in the slightest bit is a superstar in my mind and my mind was the one that put the note on the user pages [with pb and mathowie's assistance].

By: Plutor

Plutor — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 08:04:02 -0800

Jessamyn is able to modify others' profiles with the power of her mind. Don't get her angry, or her mind might change your listed gender to "yes plz lol".

By: Dave Faris

Dave Faris — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 09:33:11 -0800

Most people on MetaFilter did nothing.

Well, I made some of the posts in the first place. That has to count for something.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 09:45:03 -0800

Most people on MetaFilter did nothing. FOR THE BACKTAGGING PROJECT WHICH IS WHAT THIS THREAD IS ABOUT.

FTFM.

By: SteveInMaine

SteveInMaine — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 10:13:10 -0800

FTFM = Florida Thoroughbred Farm Managers

Now THERE's a dream job.

By: Meatbomb

Meatbomb — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 12:35:24 -0800

I love you jessamyn.

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 13:33:42 -0800

Bless you, Plutor, for making that joke so I didn't have to.

Also, if we're all superstars, do we get sparkly leotards, as I once imagined I might wear if I ever became a superstar?

By: mumkin

mumkin — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:25:41 -0800

I think I'd rather Matt bought us some sparkly new features instead of a truckload of Danskins. But you should certainly feel entitled to wear a sparkly leotard, LobsterMitten. Just print out your user profile and carry it with you, in case anyone questions your right to be shiny.

Incidentally, I notice that this unfortunate member is identified as a superstar, but without a parenthetical total. A corner case of some kind?

By: pb

pb — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:48:40 -0800

mumkin, you only get a parenthetical total if you tagged over 10 posts. If someone only tagged 1-9 posts, they're a superstar, but not a parenthetical-worthy superstar.

By: trip and a half

trip and a half — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 05:27:14 -0800

I only just now noticed that I'm a parenthetical-worthy superstar.

I rock so hard!

Thanks for the merit badge!

By: tellurian

tellurian — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 18:42:09 -0800

Hah! Just snagged another one [proof]. What is that elusive blue post?

By: pb

pb — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 07:34:07 -0800

Looks like that single MeFi post is just a glitch in the system. The query that does the counting thinks post ID 24 is untagged, but that post doesn't exist. We get some new untagged posts from time to time, which just means we need to tighten up our form validation a bit.

By: cortex

cortex — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 09:54:24 -0800

Post 24 is one of the great mysteries of the early days. Every time I go poking around in the origins of the site I trip across that sucker. It exists but it doesn't. It's missing, but it isn't. If you look at 19 and 25, the first two really real posts, you can see it referenced in the "Newer" and "Older" nav links (respectively):

"Download Abiword..."

Very strange.

By: quin

quin — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:05:47 -0800

Change it so that 24 is a real post. Make it something goofy and recursive, like a link pointing to itself with the claim of being the most meta link ever posted on the site.

Never mention it to anyone, and see how many people eventually stumble across it using the Random link.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:48:18 -0800

"Make it something goofy and recursive, like a link pointing to itself with the claim of being the most meta link ever posted on the site."

Eh, it's been done.

By: thetenthstory

thetenthstory — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:02:30 -0800

I feel bad for #11