Can we tag favorites, please?

March 11, 2009 2:19 PM

With all this discussion about favorites going on lately, can I ask when, if ever, the plan to add the ability to tag your favorites will be implemented, as mentioned by #1 here.

As I noted in another recent thread about favorites, the mods have, in the past, said we should see and use favorites for whatever we think they should be used for. Until the favorite tagging option is introduced, I see favorites as being simply a quick way to assign a simple measure of indicative popularity to a post or comment and I think this is what most other people see the feature as being useful for as well.

Frankly, I think favoriting as a means to save something you'd like to look at again later is pretty much useless until the favorites tagging ability Matt mentioned back when favorites were first introduced, is implemented. Even with just over 600 comments, trying to find a specific thing I once favorited is not at all an intuitive process, even with the search ability (although it does make it somewhat easier).

I long for the day I can tag my favorites in specific categories such as 'funny', 'goodpoint', 'excellentcomment" and so on. That would add some much needed functionality to the favorites system.

So basically I just want to know if this planned feature is still on the table? If so, can we have it soon, please?

posted by Effigy2000 to Feature Requests at 2:19 PM (101 comments total)

Yeah, I've always kind of wanted tags, but I was worried about the amount of work required (single click to add a favorite vs. having to come up with your own taxonomy) and the interface (simple ajax + to add vs. having to fill in a form element that pops open).

I think we should add it because like you said it's really hard to find old favorites I wanted to see again later on.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 2:27 PM on March 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

I don't get it... I tag all my favorites '+', this feature's already working for me.
posted by qvantamon at 2:32 PM on March 11, 2009

How about: Once I add a favorite, a small text box shows up next to it where I can edit a space-separated list of tags.
posted by aubilenon at 2:35 PM on March 11, 2009

(the important part being that I can add a favorite without tagging it if I want)
posted by aubilenon at 2:36 PM on March 11, 2009

Do we need to mandate a tag? Why not, upon favouriting something, nothing pops up, but next to the little "Favorite added!", a "tag favorite" button comes up, which gives rise to the form element. Something similar can be done when browsing one's favourited comments, as well.

I would love to tag my favourites, but I don't really want to have to decide on a tag immediately.
posted by Lemurrhea at 2:41 PM on March 11, 2009 [4 favorites]

I don't think tags are quite as necessary now that we have favorites search. If I can remember a word or two from the post or comment I can find it.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:42 PM on March 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

Since you're already using AJAX, why not make the + pop-up a tiny <div>? Inside could be a predefined, clickable list, such as:

Popularity Contest
Slashdottily Insightful
Read Later
Encourage Snark and Vitriol
Chuckleworthy
Thank You For Bringing That Up
I Am Channeling Tehloki

At the top of the list: "Just Add It, Damn You."

At the bottom of the list: Other. A mouseover on "Other" could open up a space to the side for your own, user-defined tag.

I'm of course joking about the contents of predefined list; obviously we would need to have long, grinding MetaTalk threads discussing them.
posted by adipocere at 2:46 PM on March 11, 2009 [5 favorites]

I can't wait to tag mine "Ruining MetaFilter", "Encouraging Snark and Vitriol", etc.
posted by Joe Beese at 2:55 PM on March 11, 2009 [5 favorites]

Do we need to mandate a tag? Why not, upon favouriting something, nothing pops up, but next to the little "Favorite added!", a "tag favorite" button comes up, which gives rise to the form element. Something similar can be done when browsing one's favourited comments, as well.

I will happily vote for this version of the pony in the pony primaries, but really, any pony from that party will do.
posted by Drastic at 3:00 PM on March 11, 2009

How about: Once I add a favorite, a small text box shows up next to it where I can edit a space-separated list of tags.

(the important part being that I can add a favorite without tagging it if I want)

Yeah, whatever the specific implementation for the tagging would be, it'd be important to preserve the current click-and-forget functionality, I think.

I tend to be with pb on not having a lot of need for tagging what with the search field on that page, but then I don't assign a lot of favorites and mostly go back through them by casually skimming as much as anything. If it's something Matt thinks is worth putting in the effort to accomplish, I don't have a problem with it and I can comfort myself by seeing labeling habits as being an exciting new source of data for analysis, so hey!
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:00 PM on March 11, 2009

Every comment on the site has a permalink. If you really must organize the posts and comments you like, why not use a site whose main functionality is to store, with tags, links to things you like on the internet.
If I had to deal with a dialogue box every time I tried to favorite something, I would probably stop favoriting things.
posted by The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew at 3:04 PM on March 11, 2009

Here's what I'm thinking: favorite tagging just on posts/questions at first, with this kind of interface.

You add a favorite, now you have a new option to add tags.

You click that, and you'll see a box allowing tag input

You enter a couple tags, hit save

Then on the output side, we could display the top three most popularly applied tags on threads and the popular favorites page, plus let you see what tags you've used on your own favorites page.

I think this would enhance the whole bookmarking special threads aspect and give us more interesting data to share. It would of course open up an alternate communication avenue of tagging everything with "thissucks" or something similar for stuff you hate, but I guess that goes with the territory.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:08 PM on March 11, 2009 [18 favorites]

on-not-previewing, cortex's & Lemurrhia's comments seem pretty right on the money - if I wasn't forced to see the box every time I favorited something, I would have very little (read:no) problem with people who are not me doing the work for this and people who are not me using it.
posted by The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew at 3:08 PM on March 11, 2009

Okay I give up. I like your plan, matt.
posted by The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew at 3:09 PM on March 11, 2009

why not use a site whose main functionality is to store, with tags, links to things you like on the internet.

Personally, because I don't want to use one website to organize the content I enjoy on another website. To me, that's like using my amazon.com wishlist to organize my netflix queue.
posted by dersins at 3:11 PM on March 11, 2009

Will the fave tags be visible only to the the one tagging them?
posted by Burhanistan at 3:24 PM on March 11, 2009

Will the fave tags be visible only to the the one tagging them?

I hope that's the case.
posted by dersins at 3:28 PM on March 11, 2009

Would it be a good middling compromise to have tags only for favourited posts, and then for those favourites you just pull the tags from that post? This way, if you want to browse through your favourites for, say, reading material, you hit all your favourites tagged with "books" or something like that.
posted by Phire at 3:28 PM on March 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

Would it be a good middling compromise to have tags only for favourited posts, and then for those favourites you just pull the tags from that post? This way, if you want to browse through your favourites for, say, reading material, you hit all your favourites tagged with "books" or something like that.

A couple of things about that. First, not every comment has content that is related to the tags in the post. Using this method would miss off-topic comments or tangentially related comments.

Second, there's no "u" in "favorite". Or "color"
posted by eyeballkid at 3:35 PM on March 11, 2009

I don't think tags are quite as necessary now that we have favorites search. If I can remember a word or two from the post or comment I can find it.

That's sort of missing the point, and frankly a bit transparent in motive, pb. (Advice from the master: The key to effective laziness is to be affirmative yet noncommittal. Eventually the request will be forgotten, abandoned, or fulfilled by someone else. Flat-out refusals tend to cause conflict, which requires effort, which is bad.)

The point: Tags would transform the favorites system from "HERE'S THAT UNWIELDY PILE OF ESSENTIALLY RANDOM COMMENTS YOU ORDERED" into something that might be kind of almost useful to people.
posted by Sys Rq at 3:42 PM on March 11, 2009 [2 favorites]

So, based on my experience using gmail, tagging seems neat but I rarely use it. If you can full-test search faves, then that will work for almost any situation. This seems like extra work without any real upside.
posted by GuyZero at 3:44 PM on March 11, 2009

Second, there's no "u" in "favorite". Or "color"

True, and there's only one 's' in arsehole.
posted by Sova at 3:45 PM on March 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

eyeballkid: "A couple of things about that. First, not every comment has content that is related to the tags in the post. Using this method would miss off-topic comments or tangentially related comments.

Second, there's no "u" in "favorite". Or "color""

Only for the posts, eyeballkid. Comments that are favourited are totally out of context anyway, and it'd be better to click through to the post to see it in its natural environment.

Centre! Behaviour! Calibre! Clamour! Endeavour! Do you bow yet before my superior Canadian spelling or shall I prolong the torture?
posted by Phire at 3:47 PM on March 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

Phire: Do you bow yet before my superior Canadian spelling or shall I prolong the torture?

Shouldn't that be "prolongue the torture?"
posted by Kattullus at 3:52 PM on March 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

Just implement some AJAX calls to de.licio.us, and get out of the favorite business for good.
posted by blue_beetle at 3:54 PM on March 11, 2009

a predefined, clickable list

I am in favour of this but only if the options are
[ ] BERRY GOOD!
[ ] YOU'RE THE TOP BANANA!
[ ] ORANGE YOU SPECIAL!
[ ] GRAPE JOB!

Thanks to Spatch (and yhbc), I have this image in my head every time I add a favourite now.
posted by Acheman at 3:55 PM on March 11, 2009 [6 favorites]

See, if I were to favorite this comment by Sys Rq, I'd be tagging it both 'funny' for the first paragraph and 'agreed' for the second paragraph.

I like your plan, Matt, but would also suggest that if you don't add a tag to your new favorite straight away, you should also be able to add tags (and sort tags, for that matter) from your favorites page.

Thanks for deciding to do this, by the way. Are those images just mock ups or the system in trial-action? Is this far away from going live?

And will there be back-tagging teams set up to help tehloki? Kidding!
posted by Effigy2000 at 3:56 PM on March 11, 2009 [2 favorites]

Kattullus: "Phire: Do you bow yet before my superior Canadian spelling or shall I prolong the torture?

Shouldn't that be "prolongue the torture?""

I considered it, but "prolongued" looked wrong, so I went with the other version. Google seems to indicate it was the right call.
posted by Phire at 4:00 PM on March 11, 2009

Are those images just mock ups or the system in trial-action? Is this far away from going live?

They're just mockups I made in an image editor to show pb how I wanted it to work.

I think we could add this in the next week or so and play around with how to use/sort your own favorites, and slowly surface the tag data in different ways.

The goal isn't to replicate delicious, but to add a bit of enhanced recall/search/categorizing to your own stash of favorites.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:00 PM on March 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

Do you bow yet before my superior Canadian spelling or shall I prolong the torture?

You misspelled "tourtoure." Hope this helps.
posted by dersins at 4:09 PM on March 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

GRAPE JOB, DERSINS

scratches, sniffs
posted by scrump at 4:12 PM on March 11, 2009

In the US, we spell it "potine".
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:14 PM on March 11, 2009 [2 favorites]

Awesome! Thanks Matt. Really looking forward to this.
posted by Effigy2000 at 4:33 PM on March 11, 2009

There's no U in America!
posted by aubilenon at 4:42 PM on March 11, 2009

If this does get implemented, can I be a favorites backtagging superstar?
posted by 7segment at 4:47 PM on March 11, 2009

Do you bow yet before my superior Canadian spelling or shall I prolong the torture?

Oh crap. You're Canadian. I humbly apologize my brother to the north. I thought you were one of those other douchebags.

True, and there's only one 's' in arsehole.

There's one of 'em now! And he's wrong! There's two s's in "asshole!"
posted by eyeballkid at 4:49 PM on March 11, 2009

I don't see why the favorites search that pb mentioned is such a dodge. Seems to me like if you had a specific comment in mind, it would be pretty easy to recall at least one word from it and plug that into the search box. And it's not like the sitewide search where common terms generate thousands of results -- the heaviest users only have a few thousand favorites, so theoretically even a generic word should turn up only a few dozen hits.

It also feels a little overkill. Does every user really need a custom taxonomy to sort through a list of what is almost universally less than 3000 items? Especially when that list is already searchable?

Not that I'd dislike this new pony. It just seems like a lot of work to add a layer of complexity to a simple system to solve a problem that is already pretty well solved.
posted by Rhaomi at 4:57 PM on March 11, 2009

Rhaomi: "the heaviest users only have a few thousand favorites"

Um, certain favorites-factories notwithstanding.
posted by Rhaomi at 5:11 PM on March 11, 2009

I like Matt's mockups, it's pretty much exactly what I'd been thinking.

Second, there's no "u" in "favorite". Or "color".

Of corse there is!
posted by Lemurrhea at 5:18 PM on March 11, 2009

English is just one example of something which was developed by others, and the Americans have vastly improved.
posted by gman at 5:21 PM on March 11, 2009

Does anybody actually use favorites as a bookmark?
posted by empath at 5:29 PM on March 11, 2009

For posts, yes. For comments, no.
posted by gman at 5:30 PM on March 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

I use them as bookmarks for posts and comments (like this one)
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:33 PM on March 11, 2009

Yeah, that's all I use them for.
posted by Upton O'Good at 5:35 PM on March 11, 2009

I use them for bookmarks, then clear them away when I've revisited at my leisure.
posted by reflecked at 5:37 PM on March 11, 2009

I just like pushing buttons. Like a squirrel, I forget what I've done in the past, but I keep on doing it. Maybe it'll end up being useful sometime in the future. Maybe that little favorite I planted will grow in to a journalist or a writer.
posted by filthy light thief at 6:03 PM on March 11, 2009

Great so now favorites can be another thing in my life that I feel bad about not having properly tagged, filed, and organized.
posted by Bango Skank at 6:44 PM on March 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

I use them primarily as bookmarks and would love the ability to sort them into "funny comments" and "recipes" and "books to buy" and so on.
posted by CunningLinguist at 6:48 PM on March 11, 2009

Bookmarks, yes.
posted by ersatzkat at 6:58 PM on March 11, 2009

Awesome [+][+][+].

Imagine if we could favorite-comment on a MeFi comment and then someone else could favorite-comment that favorite-comment—you'd be able to create ad-hoc MetaMetafilters.



mathowie's idea is cool, too.
posted by defenestration at 7:08 PM on March 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

This is excellent. I'd like to put my vote in for eventually expanding this to comments as well. But yeah, even just for posts/questions it would be awesome.
posted by middleclasstool at 7:15 PM on March 11, 2009

posts yes, comments no is what I'd like.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:41 PM on March 11, 2009

An American guy at work today told me that Australian accents sound halfway between English and British. I looked at him for a sec, wondering if he meant Scottish, or Irish, or even Welsh, by British, and said 'English and British?'

He said 'oh! Um, I meant between American and British. But we think of it as us speaking English and everyone else speaking variations' and I cracked up.
posted by jacalata at 8:32 PM on March 11, 2009

Why not comments? Infact, I'd say if anything the system as proposed is far more useful for organising your favorite comments than it is for organising posts. Posts and questions you can easily bookmark, either in your browser or in delicious. But comments are far more finicky to bookmark, especially with delicious.

Imagine one lazy Sunday afternoon you feel like a laugh. You go to your favorites and sort them by comments you've tagged as 'hilarious'. Then you read them all, one by one, chuckling or laughing all the way along.

Or you might want to spend that lazy Sunday afternoon reading all your favorite comments that you've tagged as 'insightful' or 'inspirational.'

Imagine you want to find that great piece of advice given in the answer to a cooking question that you once tagged as 'recipies.' You could do that by sorting your 'greatadvice' tags + 'cooking'. Financial woes? Look up advice you've tagged as 'money' or 'investing.'

I support starting a trial of this system on just posts but I think it's essential that it eventually be expanded to comments and answers to ensure that, as Sys Rq put it so well up thread, all that unwieldly pile of essentially random comments you favorited become something useful, as opposed to just indicative measures of popularity.

That said, I'm interested as to why the mods, or anybody for that matter, would be opposed to extending this functionality to comments.
posted by Effigy2000 at 8:32 PM on March 11, 2009 [3 favorites]

One of the main reasons tagging works, IMHO is that it's crowd sourcing. I feel that suggestions based on each individual creating their own taxonomy with little or no interaction with each other fails to take advantage of the community.

I favor some for of automatically suggested tags based on related posts, tags on the actual post, and tags from previous people favoriting that post, with an other option for new tags.

That way good useful tags rise to the top.

I too vote for implementing tagging on posts as favorites first, though I think eventually tagging comments would be useful.
posted by gryftir at 8:32 PM on March 11, 2009

posts yes, comments no is what I'd like.
posted by jessamyn Almost an hour ago [+]

Like anyone cares.
posted by middleclasstool at 8:37 PM on March 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

these would have to be tags only visible to the tagger. Otherwise it would be a cluster. I actually think it should only be for comments if it's only going to be one out of the two. Has anybody in here favorited more posts than comments? Also, favorited needs to be added to the dictionary, then to firefox's spell checker.
posted by cashman at 8:41 PM on March 11, 2009

Like anyone cares.

I know things about you. Be polite.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:56 PM on March 11, 2009 [2 favorites]

That said, I'm interested as to why the mods, or anybody for that matter, would be opposed to extending this functionality to comments.

I'm all for it being extended to comments, personally. I thought Matt was saying "posts first", as in let's roll this out a bit at a time and get the kinks out etc. if we decide to go for it. Presumably comments would follow.

I'm of two minds on public vs. private tagging.

I like public info, and feel like this is something where there's no real need for private data—favorites themselves are already publicly browsable, anyway, so if you need to privately bookmark something you're going to be using an external system of some sort already. And the potential value of this as a sort of additional layer of collective filtering on mefi content strikes me as a big win.

On the other hand: some folks may not want their labels public, for whatever they-don't-think-like-cortex-does reasons. And public labels makes for the possibility of a degree of obnoxiousness if someone decided to use labels on their faves to create taunting/neg fave functionality.

We could think about limited-visibility labels as a middle-ground solution: make the labels publicly viewable but only in the context of certain pages (primarily I'm thinking of the labeling user's faves page in their profile). Or keep individual labels secret but reveal aggregate fave-labeling behavior when e.g. two or more users apply the same label to the same faved content. But these seem like fiddly and imperfect solutions at first consideration and I'm not convinced they'd be great ideas.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:03 PM on March 11, 2009

cortex: sometimes you just gotta let data be data, sir.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:16 PM on March 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

Yeah, you know as a personal taxonomy tool, there's no reason to keep it from comments, so I'd say we could use the same interface there.

As for popular tags used by other people being suggested to you, I think that's an eventual feature you can bug me about in a year after I've forgotten we should add it.

I think we'll be very careful about what and where we display tags used on favorites publicly to cut down on the noise and possible griefing someone might use them for, but overall I can't count the number of times I can't find an old comment I know I favorited and can't seem to get the right word to get a good search result, but I know it was about money and I would have tagged it as "finance" if I could have.

Like I said before, give us a week or two, and we'll roll out something subtle that is easily ignored and at first will only be shown to you in your own personal favorites section. As time goes on and people use the feature, if it's a useful addition we might show popular tags on the main favorites page, etc.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:37 PM on March 11, 2009

You know, if it wasn't so easy to ignore, it might cause people to do a little less frivolous favoriting :P
posted by Chuckles at 9:48 PM on March 11, 2009

I heartily approve of this as long as it does not slow my ceaseless stream of favoriting down in in any way.

Add my vote to the "one button to add favorite, second button pops up to tag favorite" camp.
posted by tehloki at 10:10 PM on March 11, 2009

I don't think public tagging is a good idea; this user indicates pretty much what I expect to happen in contentious threads. Visible favorites provide mostly positive reinforcement--tagging those favorites would introduce a method of "voting things down", which I doubt would be good for conversation on the site.
posted by Upton O'Good at 10:42 PM on March 11, 2009

Yes, why not tags for comments too? And a feature for tagging tags would be nice as well. But, even better, would be a pony that lets us favorite tags. I like tags so please put tags on my favorites so I can tag tags while I favorite them.
posted by euphorb at 12:00 AM on March 12, 2009

there's no "u" in "favorite". Or "color"
I hate you for that.
posted by dg at 1:10 AM on March 12, 2009

English is just one example of something which was developed by others, and the Americans have vastly improved.

Simplified, taken all the class and culture out of, imposed as a de facto world standard, and then ignorantly assume everyone does it exactly like them.

I guess that is so sort of what "improved" means.
posted by Meatbomb at 1:34 AM on March 12, 2009

So tags on posts, favorites and comments?

Metadatafilter.
posted by eyeballkid at 1:37 AM on March 12, 2009

I would like to tag them. I would also like to be able to see a full list of who is favouriting my posts or comments; so that the definer is the user not the post as in user X favourited post a,b,c, and comment 1,2. but I imagine that might be a little difficult.
posted by adamvasco at 2:00 AM on March 12, 2009

Add my vote to the "one button to add favorite, second button pops up to tag favorite" camp.
posted by tehloki at 1:10 AM on March 12 [+] [!] No other comments.

Dude, with that added feature, you're not going to have time for anything else in your day.
posted by gman at 3:35 AM on March 12, 2009

Simplified, taken all the class and culture out of, imposed as a de facto world standard, and then ignorantly assume everyone does it exactly like them.

I guess that is so sort of what "improved" means.

And I guess that the tone of my comment may have escaped you.
posted by gman at 3:40 AM on March 12, 2009

Or yours, me.
posted by gman at 4:07 AM on March 12, 2009

Last call! Boarding the bus to snarkville, all aboard!
posted by Meatbomb at 6:51 AM on March 12, 2009

I'm taking the train. What time you gettin' in?
posted by gman at 6:55 AM on March 12, 2009

It would sort of like Delicious for Metafilter! Metafiltalicous!

I love this idea of being able to tag favorites!
posted by DWRoelands at 7:25 AM on March 12, 2009

I'm going to backtag the shit out of my favourites.
posted by Happy Dave at 7:39 AM on March 12, 2009

I expect that this will lead to comments like "Favorited: tagged as 'WTF is wrong with you?'"

Which is fine by me.
posted by quin at 7:49 AM on March 12, 2009

TAG! You're it!
posted by owtytrof at 7:59 AM on March 12, 2009

Regarding public tagging: Is it actually a good idea for people to know why someone favorited their post or comment? It seems like a pretty serious change, and the answer is not at all clear to me.
posted by parudox at 9:20 AM on March 12, 2009

I don't think anyone is advocating public tagging.
posted by Happy Dave at 9:21 AM on March 12, 2009

I'm softly advocating it, with reservations. I'm not convinced either way, so far.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:24 AM on March 12, 2009

I'm with cortex. Tagging favorites publicly on comments to me seems like a way to make metacommentary asides and is not at all what I'd like to see. That said, people who can tag their favorite posts might be a better idea.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:54 AM on March 12, 2009

favorites

Tags 'n' Flags.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:00 AM on March 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

I think most favorites make these meta-points anyway. The only difference would be favoriting something "THISSUCKS" which is kinda counterproductive since everyone else would be favoriting it for it being good and it would just add to its favorites and why wouldn't you just post THIS SUCKS in the thread like everyone else.

So my vote is...!
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:22 AM on March 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

I don't think public tagging is a good idea at all. It would be nice to have your own private tag library though. For comments and posts, because sometimes people link to really great stuff in comments. And sometimes they just write jokes about the butt, which is also good.
posted by Mister_A at 12:28 PM on March 12, 2009

I like the idea of public tagging. If someone did it well, I'd follow their favorites and tags through their profile.

To those against the idea: is it a case of too much Filter? MetaWankery? It seems some are very concerned with corralling assholery and keeping it from flourishing at all costs; the idea being that this new form of metacommentary could be used for dramatic behavior. Assholes and trolls will always find a way to behave badly—don't let their potential bullshit behavior cloud the issue. Consider the positives as well. I could see the good outweighing the bad.
posted by defenestration at 2:30 PM on March 12, 2009

...Tagging favorites publicly on comments to me seems like a way to make metacommentary asides...
Yeah, to me it seems like one step closer to moderating comments up and down. If people want to tag their own favourites, fine (although it seems a little anal to me, which is saying something), but allowing public "quality" commentary on each comment sounds like a recipe for disaster. Sometimes, you have to decide that something works fine as it is and any further additions will make it worse. Favourites are at the top of the usability curve right now, I think and any extra would be detrimental, although private tagging might be a small enough increment in functionality to not matter too much.
posted by dg at 2:47 PM on March 12, 2009

I'm softly advocating it, with reservations.

I will only proceed with enthusiastic consent.
posted by ODiV at 3:07 PM on March 12, 2009

I missed the end of a sentence up there. It should have ended the idea being that this new form of metacommentary could be used for dramatic behavior, so we should just avoid it.

I guess I hadn't thought about that... the idea that some users could oppress other users with different viewpoints... I hadn't considered community driven censorship at all, for the matter. That may have been a bit naive. I certainly wouldn't want to encourage or enable that brand of bullshit.

I'm just not entirely certain public tagging would encourage that behavior in our established userbase. Additionally, I'm not entirely convinced the allure of metasnarking would convince the Internet's class clowns to finally part with five bucks—at least not to the extend that MeTa couldn't sort out. Just because something similar—most people talk about Karma on /. and +/- stuff on YouTube and Digg—has failed or been toxic elsewhere, doesn't mean an admittedly different approach wouldn't work here, in this unique community.
posted by defenestration at 3:12 PM on March 12, 2009

extend = extent

Temporary edit feature, please?
posted by defenestration at 3:14 PM on March 12, 2009

I'm softly advocating it, with reservations.

You and Ulysses S. Grant.
posted by Sys Rq at 3:19 PM on March 12, 2009

Maybe a list of preselected tags (similar to our flags; funny, insightful, I agree, etc) that are publicly viewable, with a spot to add custom tags which can only be seen by the favoriter? This gives us some additional data while still providing some more private, tailored functionality for people who want to use it as a organizational utility.
posted by quin at 3:38 PM on March 12, 2009

Two tags? So complex. It's a solution looking for a problem.
posted by GuyZero at 3:53 PM on March 12, 2009

gman: I probably wouldn't use the tag system very much. If there was a drop-down list of customizeable tags, I would probably tag all of them "Reason for favoriting: tehloki"
posted by tehloki at 2:19 AM on March 13, 2009

I would probably tag all of them "Reason for favoriting: tehloki"

I had a horrible case of tehlokium back in the late 90's.
posted by gman at 3:55 AM on March 13, 2009 [1 favorite]

There's a tehopical cream for that now.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:35 AM on March 13, 2009 [2 favorites]

What's the half-life of tehlokium? And is it trans-uranic?
posted by GuyZero at 10:20 AM on March 13, 2009 [1 favorite]

No, but it's trans-incontinental.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:25 AM on March 13, 2009

Totally my favourite Kraftwerk song.
posted by GuyZero at 10:56 AM on March 13, 2009

Any chance of an update on this pony please, Matt/pb?
posted by Effigy2000 at 8:52 PM on March 27, 2009

We're working on it. Unfortunately it's a big job rather than a quick-add feature. We need to come up with how tags are displayed on the page, how users interact with tags, what user tag URLs look like, what's public vs. private, how you view things you've tagged, how you edit tags, etc, etc. So it's just a lot of new things to make decisions about, create, and test. I'm afraid this one will take some time.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:09 PM on March 27, 2009 [1 favorite]