Unpopular Tags

February 13, 2013 3:08 PM

The page Popular tags on MetaFilter has a list of the 150 most-used tags. What about the least-used tags? Is there a list of tags that have only been used once? What about a list of tags only used by one user?
posted by the man of twists and turns to Feature Requests at 3:08 PM (39 comments total)

I imagine the list of least used tags will be quite large.
posted by Blasdelb at 3:08 PM on February 13 [3 favorites]

Indeed. Someone could work this out pretty easily with the tagdata files in The Infodump, but I can tell you right now that at a reasonable estimate about half the entries in a frequency table calculated from that will be singletons.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:12 PM on February 13

So Recent!
This can be closed, I have an answer, I apologize for wasting a MeTa.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:13 PM on February 13

You need a datawanker, they can suss this stuff out for you.
posted by marienbad at 3:13 PM on February 13

wasting a MeTa

sometimes we let a
guy* waste a MeTa
but now please go get a
nice chunk of feta
cause, hey man, I bet a
lotta users love feta
or at least mozzarella
so what'cha say, fella?
bring us some CHEESE!

*gals too!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:32 PM on February 13 [1 favorite]

You're a bit low Cortex. Of the 254,000 tags that have been used 176,000 are unique.

Here's a sample from the 'A's:

1 AccursedRichards
1 Accusations
1 Accuweather
1 AceFu
1 AceMoney
1 AceOfSpades
1 AceVentura
1 Acela
1 AcerAspire
1 AcerAspireOne
1 AcerL100
1 Acetabulum
1 Aceto
1 AchesAndPains
1 Achewood
1 AchievementMetrics
1 Achillestendonsportsinjuryheelpainrunningjogging


If I recall last time someone wanted to see them with tags that varied only by uppercase/lowercase considered as single tags. I'll run that next.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:40 PM on February 13

You're a bit low Cortex.

Oh, interesting! But maybe that makes sense, since I was baselining against frequency distributions for all words in natural language corpora, and there's a couple of things going on with tags that differ from that:

- lack (relatively) of the very common glue words that would be in a natural language frequency table, since people (mostly) don't use articles and prepositions as tags—the, a, an, of, in, on, &c. will eat up proportionally much less of the top of the list here I'd guess.

- concatenation of words for multi-word phrases as single tags, which you might still see some of in a traditional corpus (in the mefi frequency tables you'll see this some because I treat internal hyphenation as part of a word instead of breaking on it) but not at the same sort of "this is normal" rate as with our tagging system.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:46 PM on February 13

With uppercase/lowercase condensed it's 220,000 total and 150,000 lowercase respectively.

I don't know how parts of speech play out for frequencies, but I think tags would be very very heavy on the nouns as well.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:50 PM on February 13

Is there also a list of tags that have never been used even once?
posted by Pyrogenesis at 4:00 PM on February 13 [10 favorites]

That would be ridiculous. Though there is one for tags people started to type in but then thought better of.

I put the case-condensed file right here for anyone who is interested. Left column is the count, right column is the tag.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 4:07 PM on February 13

Has there ever been a post with only unique tags? I came very close today, but threw 'militaryhistory' in there at the last second.
posted by Copronymus at 4:14 PM on February 13

I would like to see a list of tags that have never been used.
posted by Rumple at 4:22 PM on February 13

I have the honor to be the only person to use the OhShit tag.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 4:35 PM on February 13

How the hell is achewood only used once as a tag?

I'm pretty sure I'm one of the most frequent one off taggers.
posted by The Whelk at 4:40 PM on February 13 [1 favorite]

Can we please also have a list of the tags that have been used 0 times. I just need to complete my list.
posted by Splunge at 5:00 PM on February 13

My list. It needs completion. Please? Don't make me beg!
posted by Splunge at 5:02 PM on February 13

What the hell is achewood?
posted by cjorgensen at 5:02 PM on February 13

A type of drink.
posted by The Whelk at 5:05 PM on February 13 [1 favorite]

How the hell is achewood only used once as a tag?

Where did you get that? The list I posted shows it being used 9 times.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:21 PM on February 13

1 Achewood

I said that before I looked at the case-sensitive link
posted by The Whelk at 5:27 PM on February 13

WTF? Cat(s) isn't in the top 150 tags?! Get to work, people! More cat videos!
posted by deborah at 5:32 PM on February 13

I make it a point to use one unique tag per front page post. It's just an annoying tangent for entertaining my internal weirdo. Think of it like a pointless quirk for a lame criminal you'll never see on a network crime scene investigation drama.










...or will you!?
posted by 1f2frfbf at 6:03 PM on February 13

...or will you!?

Well if I want to implicate you, definitely.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:12 PM on February 13

Can I have a list of the people who have asked jokingly for a list of the tags that haven't been used?
posted by shakespeherian at 6:33 PM on February 13 [1 favorite]

*squints* You. Know. Too. Much.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 6:33 PM on February 13

Can we please also have a list of the tags that have been used 0 times.
You can start with all the user names here. Try tagging one of your posts with Splunge.
posted by unliteral at 8:48 PM on February 13

Oh! hang on. I just went and tried it and you can tag your posts with your username. I thought that was disallowed after some shenanigans from quonsar
posted by unliteral at 8:52 PM on February 13

After this callout.
posted by unliteral at 8:57 PM on February 13

The first one I thought of was, to my surprise, one I've used: hapax legomenon. See also: Zipf.
posted by knile at 12:37 AM on February 14

The only thing I have to add is that I am deeply saddened that no one else has used eatenbymice. I will reiterate: I am not angry, just disappointed and sad.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:42 AM on February 14

Can we please also have a list of the tags that have been used 0 times.

grackle
posted by flabdablet at 3:29 AM on February 15

whizz
posted by flabdablet at 3:32 AM on February 15

aliphatic
bendable
cromulent
depraved
englebert
finagle
gobberwarts
hobnob
idiopathic
jeremiad
kleptomania
leucoplast
myxomatosis
nibble
orpington
pasternak
queef
rabble
splendid
tincture
ungulate
volumetry
wheezy
xerography
yackandandah
zoomorphs
posted by flabdablet at 3:55 AM on February 15

alphabetgame
posted by flabdablet at 3:56 AM on February 15

batshitinsane
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:11 AM on February 15

codswallop
posted by flabdablet at 5:53 AM on February 15

The first one I thought of was, to my surprise, one I've used: hapax legomenon.

Someone should use that one again.
posted by Johnny Assay at 10:44 AM on February 15

tag

tags

tagging

yaddayadda
posted by y2karl at 12:12 PM on February 17

OK, so what about tags that only one users uses?

For example, Blasdelb uses "LinksToTheDamnPaper" for certain posts of his, and I use "newgildedage" for certain posts of mine. This indicates a way of thinking about the world, of organizing information, and what each poster thinks is important. Are there other tags, that only one user uses?
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:15 PM on February 26