Comments on: Keyword Tags For Metafilter

Keyword Tags For Metafilter

mathowie — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:14:20 -0800

I'm in the process of adding keyword tags to MetaFilter. Right now, you can go back and tag all your old posts. Please, help me make this a useful feature by tagging your stuff with descriptive keywords that help people find other related posts. We could really turn this into something useful if we stick to that. I'm still working it into the new post form and working bugs out of the display end, but the basics are now there. Go forth and help make this useful.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:16:32 -0800

And just to be clear, keywords are coming to Ask Mefi soon (I don't think Metatalk needs them), and I'm still working on making the all tags page more useful.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:19:51 -0800

Oh and you can tag your own old entries, but not edit or remove them. I'll try to do my best to tag/edit/update as needed, and I'll ask jessamyn to help out too, so that we can help establish some standards.

And please, try to keep the jokey tags to a minimum if you could, thanks.

By: seanyboy

seanyboy — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:20:09 -0800

Well, I managed to mess up the adding of tags to my most recent post and no other posts seem to allow tags. Arghhh.

By: Gyan

Gyan — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:20:52 -0800

[off-topic]

What happened of the redesign contest?

[/ot]

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:22:15 -0800

"Right now, you can go back and tag all your old posts."

Okay, how? Where? What am I missing?

By: smackfu

smackfu — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:22:27 -0800

Only works for non-archived posts?

By: trharlan

trharlan — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:22:50 -0800

Same problem as seanyboy's here.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:24:24 -0800

is there a master list of suggested tags? what's to stop people from varying, and thus not being included where they should? (i'm in the middle of something like this at work, with archives, and developed a master list with room for additions first, so that we wouldn't mislabel anything.)

By: monju_bosatsu

monju_bosatsu — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:28:30 -0800

This is great. A few thoughts:

I really think we should be able to edit our tags. As tagging conventions develop, we're sure to want to make changes, and just having one moderator, or even a team of moderators, is bound to be a pain.
As smackfu said, it appears to only be working for non-archived posts.
Are rss feeds for tags in the works? If so, how about rss feeds for users and posts, while we're at it.
I notice you're using the rel="tag" attribute. I assume these will show up in the technorati tag search?

Sorry for the barrage, but I'm loving the tags!

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:29:24 -0800

Thanks a lot matt.

British & American spelling may be a point worth remembering, for us this side of the pond. Also, correct spelling, and other conventions may need to develop: 'GOP' may not return posts on 'Republican', for example.

A recommended tag-list sounds like a good idea, or maybe just a list of popular tags somewhere? Just an idea.

By: Jimbob

Jimbob — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:29:35 -0800

is there a master list of suggested tags? what's to stop people from varying, and thus not being included where they should?

The best way to handle this is simply to encourage people to label posts with all possible variants. There's no harm with labelling a post with as many tags as possible - it will just be a good mental excercise for people to think of all the possible categories and keywords that may apply.

By: seanyboy

seanyboy — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:30:02 -0800

The beauty of tags is that they're quick to add. The fact that they don't come from a master list means that you'll get more categories, but the ease of use means that more people will use them. It's not an ideal technical solution, but it's a great social solution.

By: soundofsuburbia

soundofsuburbia — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:32:03 -0800

How cool!

By: tomharpel

tomharpel — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:32:33 -0800

Cool stuff Matt.

Tags are at their best when there is no defined taxonomy or lexicon. Tags work because there is no cost to coming up with them; just free associate a list of words about the item being tagged. No deep thought involved. Tags are metadata, uninhibited.

By: rooftop secrets

rooftop secrets — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:34:42 -0800

Thank you Matt. This adds loads of functionality.

By: scarabic

scarabic — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:35:00 -0800

A recommended tag-list sounds like a good idea

Yeah, and some basic rules like "don't use plurals" or "always use plurals" (assuming that matters) would be good to get a handle on too.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:38:21 -0800

I think conventions will soon develop but let's go free for a few days. Ditto on edits. I'll add editing functionality down the line too.

So far I made a comma-remover (which I forgot to do) and I'll soon make it so you can edit the old archived posts.

By: soundofsuburbia

soundofsuburbia — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:39:29 -0800

...and maybe one should tag the sites that don't work anymore with something specific? "Deadsite", maybe.

By: matteo

matteo — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:39:46 -0800

thanks matt

By: scarabic

scarabic — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:42:09 -0800

How come "art" looks like a bigger font, here?

http://www.metafilter.com/tags.mefi

For a second I thought maybe because it had more posts associated with it? That would be incredibly useful. This list is bound to get very very long, and finding a way to represent the popularity of various terms would be huge.

By: Quartermass

Quartermass — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:42:26 -0800

once added, where do the tags appear?

By: mathowie

mathowie — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:43:18 -0800

big fonts = more popular, just like how flickr and technorati list theirs.

By: eyeballkid

eyeballkid — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:45:30 -0800

Q-Mass, try clicking on the link again and looking next to your byline on the post.

By: orange clock

orange clock — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:45:37 -0800

What is someone makes a tag like big_daddy_pants

By: Quartermass

Quartermass — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:47:38 -0800

Problem #1 - started tagging, but then my older posts don't have the option to add tags.

By: Quartermass

Quartermass — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:48:05 -0800

ahhh - subtle.

By: riffola

riffola — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:54:52 -0800

The font sizing seems arbitary 'cause so far flash and art are only associated with one thread each yet they are bigger than the rest of the tags.

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 17:02:54 -0800

I went back to my most recent posts [todays and older] to tag 'em. Clearly older ones are not taggable, but I found a[n unrelated?] bug:
I clicked on my username in the John Peel memorial thread, and instead of going to my profile, it goes to thread 13659, as opposed to user 13659]. Screenshot [nb: 56kb jpeg].

By: scarabic

scarabic — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 17:07:58 -0800

big fonts = more popular

SWEET.

That will be like a window into the MeFi universe. Pardon my ignorance. I'm just not into Flickr or technorati.

By: scarabic

scarabic — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 17:09:54 -0800

Incidentally, how long before people begin clubbing together to create little group blogs, using this functionality? Is that part of what it's for? Or is that time to GYOW?

By: robocop is bleeding

robocop is bleeding — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 17:11:08 -0800

For what it's worth, there's been some del.icio.us tagging going on for Ask Me.

Looking forward to tagging my 6 when clicking my handle doesn't do as dash_slot mentions.

As a tagging convention, how about tagging based on "This post is about _____"? So "This post is about movie" makes no sense, but "This post is about movies" works fine. Thoughts?

By: stopgap

stopgap — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 17:11:32 -0800

dash_slot-: That bug has been mentioned here before. It happens on all archived posts.

By: matteo

matteo — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 17:15:38 -0800

Matt, do we have a tag big enough for "Bush"?

By: fenriq

fenriq — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 17:19:46 -0800

This is cool and I'm looking forward to seeing all kinds of other neat stuff coming from this.

Thanks, Matt!

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 17:30:53 -0800

Thanks - I guess it needs a stopgap measure...

Matt, is there any way of making the list of tags more readable? Maybe separated by a '/' or '-' ?

By: cosmonik

cosmonik — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 17:32:18 -0800

Looks great, and I can't wait to see what impact it has on the site.

How about a NSFW tag?

On preview: any way of making the list a list, instead of a paragraph of unrelated words? Or would that be too painful to scroll?

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 17:33:29 -0800

"Right now, you can go back and tag ~~all~~ your old posts" ... that haven't yet been closed via the 30-day archival period.

Or am I missing something?

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 17:34:26 -0800

Apparently I'm missing something. Carry on!

By: gen

gen — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 17:41:39 -0800

Will you be keeping the same syntax as say Flickr, where "two words" in quotes, with a space, counts as a single tag?

Matt, this is a WONDERFUL new feature! Thank you very much! I hope it is very successful.

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 18:04:56 -0800

Good job Matt. "combinephrases" by writing them as one word, ok, but how about proper names? Should they also be joined, like "davidhasselhoff"?

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 18:23:34 -0800

It's good to see that art is our biggest category so far. Who knew?

By: scarabic

scarabic — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 19:12:36 -0800

Ooh, a whole new editorial milieu to bitch about.

May I be the first? "15" sucks as a tag.

KIDDING. NEVERMIND!

By: cmyk

cmyk — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 19:19:55 -0800

Awesome feature. Yay for art!

By: trondant

trondant — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 19:43:17 -0800

Tags are at their best when there is no defined taxonomy or lexicon. Tags work because there is no cost to coming up with them; just free associate a list of words about the item being tagged.

Not if you want other people to find your posts.

Looking forward to tagging my 6 when clicking my handle doesn't do as dash_slot mentions.

This sounds dirtier everytime I re-read it.

By: interrobang

interrobang — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 19:44:51 -0800

A couple of my older posts contain bold where once there was a link. Does this mean that metafilter's somehow searching the web to find dead links as part of the user's (to come, presumably) editing process?

By: dhoyt

dhoyt — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 19:47:21 -0800

Very cool. Thanks for your work on this, Matt.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 19:51:33 -0800

lowercase? UPPERCASE? BumpyCase? Title Case? How do we feel about using_underscores?

I realize the whole idea is emergent behaviour, and there are no correct answers per se, but any thoughts on what's best? (my vote is lowercase, no underscores, for what it's worth)

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 19:53:54 -0800

PS Thanks again, Matt. This ought to be fun!

Have you thought about coding 'em up with the new technorati markup, so they can appear here?

By: madamjujujive

madamjujujive — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 19:56:29 -0800

yippie yi yo kayay. thanks, Matt!

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 20:00:32 -0800

This is going to be so great - and when we can tag our old posts, mefi will become so much more of a time sink than it already is. Reading an interesting post and then following its tags to similar posts is going to be so very very bad for my productivity.....I second the idea of posting as many tag variations as you can think of.

By: victors

victors — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 20:06:43 -0800

tags for ask.meta is the killer app.

$.02: I ended up chopping input to 25 characters at mixter because I assumed folks would abuse and sure enough several have tried to enter really, really huge tags.

By: konolia

konolia — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 20:07:24 -0800

What the crap are y'all talking about, and why would I want to do it?

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 20:09:43 -0800

Ooo, ooo, any chance we could have a delicious style ability to winnow by tags - ie, all posts labeled art and also labeled funny?

By: dhruva

dhruva — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 20:13:02 -0800

I think underscore is better than mashing the words together.

By: interrobang

interrobang — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 20:27:19 -0800

What the crap are y'all talking about, and why would I want to do it?

The naming of things, konolia. The naming of things.

By: Dr. Wu

Dr. Wu — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 20:39:31 -0800

I truly don't know what tags are, what I can do with them, or how to use them. Could someone please explain how to use and take advantage of this new feature? Thanks.

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 20:46:48 -0800

It's simple, yet brilliant. You make a post, and add tags based on its content. Soon, there are lots of posts tagged, say, "art", and you can click on the tag for a list of every post that deals with art.

By: konolia

konolia — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 20:46:54 -0800

Why do they need naming?

Thanks, I think I'll pass.

By: interrobang

interrobang — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 20:47:34 -0800

Dr. Wu, I don't think it really works yet, but it'll eventually be like this:

You create a post, and file it under a term like "politics" or "conspiracies", or whatever other words you associate with it.

This makes it so that eventually, one can click on the term following the post, and find other metafilter posts that have been filed under the same term.

This post, currently the top of the front page, could be filed under "taxidermy", "art", or "death", or whatever else seems appropriate. The linking that's being talked about--once it gets there--will lead you to other posts linked to those categories.

By: interrobang

interrobang — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 20:48:21 -0800

And so konolia came to pass.

By: Pigpen

Pigpen — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 21:02:25 -0800

How come no one is answering the questions about *how* to create the tags? I understand how to use the tags once they are created, but on the Post a Link/new Question pages there is no obvious way to add them.

By: fenriq

fenriq — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 21:09:27 -0800

my vote is lowercase, no underscores, for what it's worth

Seconded, stavros.

I suppose there will be much jocularity with the tagging of things but how and what limits need to be imposed?

By: interrobang

interrobang — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 21:09:31 -0800

Pigpen, I think a lot of this doesn't quite work yet.

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 21:13:02 -0800

Also, in the olden days of cavemen and wooly mammoths, we called tags "keywords".

By: thedevildancedlightly

thedevildancedlightly — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 21:13:04 -0800

Should posts be tagged for their content, or also for the discussion that arose?

Eg, should there be a "Godwin" tag for discussions that were godwinized?

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 21:14:11 -0800

konolia:
Please, help me make this a useful feature by tagging your stuff with descriptive keywords that help people find other related posts. - mathowie

Clearly, matt hopes that this will make Mefi more useful to all members. Even for those of us that don't frequently post, it'll be conventional behaviour to add a tag or two. It isn't difficult: just think of what words describes your post - say, 'advice', 'retro', 'fun' for your last one.

You'll get the hang of it, I'm sure.

pigpen: I added tags to my post earlier today, after I posted it (mathowie announced this after I posted). So I clicked on the actual post I made: there was the box wherein I could post words that became tags. It's all very clever - and yet, so simple!

By: abcde

abcde — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 21:18:34 -0800

Looks like the color for the keyword field is into the whole page.

Pigpen: It's only there currently for going back over posts you've already made, Matt already mentioned that.

By: abcde

abcde — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 21:22:45 -0800

Leaking onto the whole page, that is.

Is the fact that it doesn't work on closed threads intentional? 'Cause to go back and tag archived threads seems to be an honorable goal for those who bother.

Also, I take it there'll still be categories on AskMe (tags are probably no replacement).

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 21:25:36 -0800

Read the recent AskMe thread asking why de.licio.us (or Flickr to name the two highest-profile poster boys/girls) is cool for an overview of the New Big Thing, 'folksonomies'. I'm quite excited by the idea, and keen to see where Matt takes it, if the community participation is high.

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 21:28:07 -0800

"Should posts be tagged for their content, or also for the discussion that arose?"

No, please; a million times "no". For a million good reasons.

By: Pigpen

Pigpen — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 21:37:23 -0800

dash_slot, abcde, thanks. I saw Matt had said you could tag your old posts but I didn't realise that that was all you could tag.

By: carter

carter — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 21:41:04 -0800

I think this is very cool - and I really like the idea of random walks through the MeFi archive. Nice one, Matt!

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 21:42:24 -0800

"Should posts be tagged for their content, or also for the discussion that arose?"

No, please; a million times "no". For a million good reasons.

Bligh can't tell you what to do. Thats the beauty of it. I suggest "trainwreck" and "nocomments"

By: rxreed

rxreed — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 21:50:41 -0800

neato.

By: Dr. Wu

Dr. Wu — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 21:51:10 -0800

Thank you, CunningLinguist and interrobang. Makes much more sense now.

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 21:52:01 -0800

No, but a million good reasons can provide good guidance for what to do.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 00:21:53 -0800

You should finally be able to tag all your old posts now if you follow your user profile page that lists all your old posts, there should be a link that says add tags to post.

I'll work on the all tags page as it fills out, to attempt to make it more useful.

By: Asparagirl

Asparagirl — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 00:37:30 -0800

I made a boo-boo: I added a tag for "9/11", but it leads to this, which is broken.

Obviously, that's not good. Please help/fix/change to "9-11"?

Sorry. I promise not to break the toys in the future.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 00:50:44 -0800

Ok, I'll change that to 9-11. I should filter out any / marks and replace with a dash automagically.

By: fatllama

fatllama — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 00:52:40 -0800

[this is good]

By: Asparagirl

Asparagirl — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 01:08:16 -0800

Much obliged, Matt!

And, uh, while you're at it, how about line added at the top of the individual tag pages (i.e. "There are 7 posts tagged as [tagname]") for those of us bad at math?

FYI, "psychedalia" should probably be "psychedelia". Just sayin'.

By: SpecialK

SpecialK — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 01:50:59 -0800

Just to add this to the stewpot ... I tagged some of my posts where the link is dead or has significantly changed as 'deadlink' ... that way someone who's reading the archives can see my note.

By: elpapacito

elpapacito — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 03:35:34 -0800

That's cool...can we get some stats on how many posts were tagged so far, like for instance XYZ out of XXXXX ?

By: Tarrama

Tarrama — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 03:41:02 -0800

After checking, I have come to the conclusion that my posts aren't worth tagging. Now that's depressing.

By: Pretty_Generic

Pretty_Generic — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 04:38:29 -0800

How about consolidating plurals and singulars? That would be easy to do.

By: iconomy

iconomy — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 05:04:24 -0800

Can you edit your tags once you've added them? I can't find a way to be able to do that.

By: shawnj

shawnj — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 05:26:53 -0800

Weird, I tagged this post and after doing so the thread now says, "This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments." I posted that yesterday.

By: anastasiav

anastasiav — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 05:47:30 -0800

Why do they need naming?

Well, why does your library need a card catalog (or newfangled high-tech filing system)?

Its a way for people to find things on MeFi by subject or interest. Just click on this link and then click on a word that interests you. I think you'll see the value once you do.

A couple questions:

-- Will there be a way to edit tags?

-- There are some posters who have left MeFi (for whatever reason) (some of whom have hundreds of posts) whose posts are wonderful and should be tagged ... have you thought about a way of doing this? Emailing them and saying "I've added this ... would you be interested in tagging your posts?" or assigning someone to do the work later on in the project.

-- When are you going to link to this on the sidebar? Perhaps a link to the tags.mefi and a link to that del.icio.us askme to help folks who haven't yet run across the concept?

Matt, thanks so much for doing this. What's been interesting for me is that in tagging its forced me to go back and review all the posts I've made ... leading to me finding some stuff I'd forgotten about and some stuff I wish I could forget about.

Finally, I think its interesting that I find myself cross checking what I type against the ever-changing list of already-used tags, something I would never do in del.icio.us. I guess it has to do with the idea of tagging things for yourself rather than for other people.

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 06:07:57 -0800

Whee!! I've tagged my massive collection of posts.]

Soon, there are lots of posts tagged, say, "art", and you can click on the tag for a list of every post that deals with art.

To be precise, you get a list of every post that is tagged with "art." Which is probably a different list than every post that deals with art. Not that this isn't great and wonderful and exciting, but one should be aware of its limitations as well.

Prettiest pony since AskMe. Thanks, Matt.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 06:12:07 -0800

will we be able to search by tags, when making new posts and generally?

By: monju_bosatsu

monju_bosatsu — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 06:35:28 -0800

For those of you having trouble thinking of tags for your posts, you might check del.icio.us to see what people have tagged the links. Use the bookmarklet posted here to check out the del.icio.us history for a page.

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 06:36:27 -0800

Forgive my ignorance on this stuff, but would it be easy or hard to make tag posting somehow be forced into a mandatory spellcheck? That might save a lot of typo problems.

By: grabbingsand

grabbingsand — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 06:42:01 -0800

Hmm. I've tagged several of mine with "comicbooks" ... but then I see there are existing tags that say "comics" ... perhaps a means of combining like tags?

Or ... if I can't have a pony, maybe a "tag-checker" that compares my tag to existing tags and suggests a more commonly used tag?

By: 31d1

31d1 — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 06:44:15 -0800

amberglow:

http://www.metafilter.com/tags/art

returns all posts tagged with art

http://www.metafilter.com/tags/funny

and there's funny.

By: crunchland

crunchland — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 07:10:54 -0800

I did about 20 of my posts and then collapsed. 225 to go.

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 07:14:59 -0800

Wow, there must be furious tagging going on.....the tags page is changing every minute. And I love how the font size reveals our interests and obsessions.

(Thank god I've generally been reticent to post.)

By: DBAPaul

DBAPaul — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 07:17:06 -0800

humor or humour? Are tags in other languages useful?

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 07:20:44 -0800

Hmm. I've tagged several of mine with "comicbooks" ... but then I see there are existing tags that say "comics" ... perhaps a means of combining like tags?

Perhaps, if it's done so carefully. comicbooks vs. comics wouldn't be a good case for consolidation, though; comics may cover comic strips and stand-up comics as well as comic books.

By: chicobangs

chicobangs — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 07:22:02 -0800

Well, for some people, this could take a while. (I was done in about 10 minutes.)

I'd like to edit a couple of mine, and I'm sure there's stuff I'd not thought of when I was doing it. Would the ability to edit them (maybe after the rush of everyone tagging ebbs a little) be addable?

By: brownpau

brownpau — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 07:22:31 -0800

On my "Bug Dicks" post, I clicked Post, remembered another tag I might want to add and reflexively clicked Back, typed it in, and posted again. Now there's a bunch of duplicate tags -- though it still shows up just once in tag view. Just a small, er, bug, heh heh.

By: 31d1

31d1 — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 07:30:57 -0800

Matt, do you plan to change:
http://www.metafilter.com/tags.mefi
to
http://www.metafilter.com/tags/
at some point?
Seems like that would make alot of sense.

And I'm sure I'm the only one thats just totally fascinated that you went with the flickr style /tags/ and not the delicious /tag/.

This rocks!

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 07:37:44 -0800

I'd like to edit a couple of mine

Me too. The first ones I did weren't very comprehensive. Seeing other people's tags made me realize I forgot some.

By: headspace

headspace — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 07:39:58 -0800

For some reason (in Mozilla, I can't speak for other browsers,) 7 tags are too many for this thread. I swear, it wasn't broken before I added the tags.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 07:41:35 -0800

It is so much fun to just follow the tags around. It's like the web is supposed to be.

Also, art has escaped it's own line height, and is attacking anti-semitism (at the moment).

By: exlotuseater

exlotuseater — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 07:45:19 -0800

This is the bestest pony ever. Thanks.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 07:55:19 -0800

holy crap, what a time for me to be out of town at a library conference! This is great news, nice work Matt.

By: enrevanche

enrevanche — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 08:11:08 -0800

Lurve this.

By: soplerfo

soplerfo — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 08:25:40 -0800

Yeah, this is definitely the coolest

By: gwint

gwint — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 08:28:32 -0800

I was praying this day would come to pass. Awesome, awesome, awesome.

Matt: I second the request for the ability to search multiple tags in a single query. del.icio.us does it this way:

metafilter.com/tags/musicvideos+funny

By: smackfu

smackfu — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 08:29:50 -0800

Pretty please make tags mandatory on new posts.

By: adampsyche

adampsyche — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 08:43:41 -0800

All posts tagged with wtf (View a list of all available tags)

Sorry, there are no tags with that name. Please check out the list of all available tags.

This must be a mistake.

By: cortex

cortex — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 08:50:08 -0800

Minor pony:

Can we get a list-by-popularity view of /tags/ in addition to the strict alphabetical?

It'd be neat to see a sort of tagging-zeitgeist that way, and it'd also make it easier to see what tags are singletons.

By: monju_bosatsu

monju_bosatsu — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 08:53:48 -0800

Oh, oh, how about a list of tags used by each member on their own member page! That would be sweet.

By: DBAPaul

DBAPaul — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 08:59:38 -0800

Weird, I tagged this post and after doing so the thread now says, "This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments." I posted that yesterday.
posted by shawnj at 5:26 AM PST on January 19

Currently, taging active threads closes them, I've inadvertanly closed this one too.

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 09:04:48 -0800

I tagged the Survivor thread and it's still open.

By: GleepGlop

GleepGlop — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 09:07:55 -0800

isnt the (one of) the point(s) of tags to be able to see what subject a post is about -before- you click on it?

By: Pretty_Generic

Pretty_Generic — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 09:10:24 -0800

Half the links don't work in the tags page due to the formatting. I suggest better spacing, or replace variable size with variable colour. Internet Explorer 6.

By: Robot Johnny

Robot Johnny — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 09:15:40 -0800

I love this.

A problem I noticed, however, is that on the master tags page, it's impossible to click on a tag that appears on a line directly above one of the hugified popular tags like "art" or "music"...

By: Robot Johnny

Robot Johnny — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 09:16:04 -0800

Er... what Pretty_Generic said I guess....

By: rushmc

rushmc — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 09:19:09 -0800

Some simple instructions somewhere would be nice for those who don't have a clue what a "tag" is or what to choose for one.

By: soyjoy

soyjoy — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 09:28:00 -0800

rush, go to the tag page that's linked up top. Boom. That's what tags are. Click on one and you'll see how it works. Go to your posts page to see the "add tag" link. Add tags.

For anyone else who hasn't started yet, be sure for now to think of all the tags you can on your first visit to the post. I'm sure this will be fixed in the future, but it seems that once you save your first tag(s), you can't go back and add more. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Oh, and thanks for getting to this, Matt. It's great. I wasn't surprised to see how many of mine could be tagged "meat," but I was surprised at the number that called for "alcohol."

Oh! And... if konolia refuses to tag her own posts, can I do 'em instead?...

By: gwint

gwint — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 09:43:36 -0800

Holy crap, the tags page is already so large, at full screen I can only see up to the "B"s without scrolling. Matt, you might want to put some sort of pull down menu for cutting off when a tag is displayed (I would guess that the page would shrink by 75% if tags with only one thread associated with it were left off)

By: theora55

theora55 — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 09:46:37 -0800

Looks like the tag page formatting has already been improved.

I'd recommend leaving out punctuation, i.e., zombie! s/b zombie.

Matt, this is just so good. Thanks.

By: theora55

theora55 — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 09:50:12 -0800

humor humour has the potential to be a useful distinction.

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 10:17:46 -0800

Some simple instructions somewhere would be nice for those who don't have a clue what a "tag" is or what to choose for one.

Choose tags that:

1) You'd want someone later searching/browsing that tag to be able to find your post. That is, that this post would be appropriate for that word. (Use many tags if needed)

2) Also, use tags that define what general category or subcategory your post is in (Use many tags if needed)

3) Throw in some variations of the above if you like.

My guess is that later Matt will expand this to add Flickr-like functionality including:

1) Bringing up one tag will bring up other related tags (by adding many tags to posts above you are also "relating" them)
2) Combined tag searches (e.g. "art" and "flash")

By: callmejay

callmejay — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 10:26:23 -0800

Thanks, Matt. metafilter++

By: Lynsey

Lynsey — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 10:35:31 -0800

Matt, I just did an ok job tagging my posts and I want to thank you for the very best pony evah! (PonyFilter)

By: mathowie

mathowie — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 10:40:53 -0800

A few things I will mention again since everyone keeps asking:

- yes, you will be able to edit/delete/add tags eventually

- I will work on the all tags page so that it's easier to read, probably truncating it to just the 200 or so most popular tags

- I will add a tag search so you can find other tags not listed

- I will fix the bug that closes new threads

- I will add the tags to the front page of mefi eventually

- I'll add the same tagging system to ask mefi later this week, once all the bugs are worked out here

- I will write up an explanation page of what tags mean, how you use them, and how to add them to your posts. I'll link this on the all tags page

- I will add a counter to the tag output page.

By: soyjoy

soyjoy — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 10:46:53 -0800

Well, that's certainly not enough stuff to do.

So here's one more: Would it be possible to TAG the TAGS?

In other words, let users indicate, for a given tag, what other tags chosen by other users this tag overlaps with, or may overlap with? Then if a certain number of people (as low as two, maybe, or as much as much as 23) agree on a correspondence between tags, the system will automatically suggest them as related tags to search when you pull up a given tag's page?

I know I presented this as yet another pony to add to the pile, but in the long run it would, I think, save Matt a lot of time and effort trying to consolidate similar tags.

By: Robot Johnny

Robot Johnny — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 10:51:18 -0800

Will we eventually be able to filter tags together (a la del.icio.us)... example "bush+video" if we want to see all posts that have "bush" AND "video" as tags?

By: mdn

mdn — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 10:52:24 -0800

there is something so aesthetically cool about looking at the tags page with the differently sized words giving a quick rundown of what MeFi is... a quick scan says:

advertising art amusing blogs books bush comics
design election flash funny history humor law
music photography politics religion
science technology video war weird.

how true.

By: Asparagirl

Asparagirl — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 10:54:29 -0800

Thanks again, Matt. Your hard work is appreciated.

[give the kids a pony, and they'll want a whole frickin' polo team!]

By: rushmc

rushmc — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 11:03:21 -0800

What's to stop someone from intentionally mistagging?

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 11:20:28 -0800

There's going to have to be some majpr tag cleanup, I hate to say.

We have humor, humor! and humour. Also, 911, 9/11 and 9-11. 2000election and election2000. Etc.

How can we fix this?

By: DBAPaul

DBAPaul — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 11:24:28 -0800

What's to stop someone from intentionally mistagging?

I see many MeTa callouts over this very misuse. Hopefully posters will be civil and not give Matt even more work.

Thanks Matt this pony is great

By: rajbot

rajbot — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 11:30:02 -0800

CelebrityIllnessFilter EarthFilter eBayFilter EvilWeightPostFilter InsatiableMediaInfobeastFilter ObitFilter OnlyInCaliforniaFilter ReformDrugLawsFilter ReligiousNutJobFilter SomepluginIsNecessaryFilter TaxFilter

Why would you tag a post with "eBayFilter" or "TaxFilter" instead of "eBay" or "Taxes"? It seems like using the "filter" postfix is a bad idea...

Thanks for the tags, Matt!

By: rushmc

rushmc — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 11:30:47 -0800

Should we add "flamefest" to the threads that went ugly?

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 11:32:53 -0800

What's to stop someone from intentionally mistagging?

Nothing. This whole tag thing is a "good-enough" approach which means lots of stuff wont get tagged properly. There is a motivation to provide tags which will get your post seen in relevant searches but there is nothing forcing you to do so.

By: shawnj

shawnj — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 11:33:34 -0800

Should we add "flamefest" to the threads that went ugly?

Please?

(Not that I enjoy reading flamewars or anything... *whistles innocently*)

By: rushmc

rushmc — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 11:33:55 -0800

The largest tags cover up some of the smaller ones, making them inaccessible...

By: stopgap

stopgap — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 11:34:22 -0800

rushmc: nothing, but the benefits from most people tagging correctly far outweigh the downsides of misuse.

By: raedyn

raedyn — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 11:38:29 -0800

I think 'flamefest' is a useful tag. When someone's looking for thoughtful discussion, they can avoid those posts, and if someone wants to see MeFI at its worst, they're free to scrape the bottom of the barrel.

Tagging is as useful or banal as we make it. It'll be interesting to see what evolves.

By: headspace

headspace — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 11:50:42 -0800

Hmm, some thinking ahead might be in order: I used "trainwreck" as a tag for the Ann Rice Loses Her Shit post I made. It did not occur to me until later that people might make posts about actual locomotive accidents.

By: mcwetboy

mcwetboy — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 12:09:16 -0800

It's spooky that the blue is being used as a test bed for AskMe, don't you think?

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 12:27:48 -0800

Look at how small the sex tag is. This has to be one of the only popular websites so little obsessed with sex.

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 12:35:02 -0800

- I will work on the all tags page so that it's easier to read, probably truncating it to just the 200 or so most popular tags - mathowie.

Noooo! Please, no.

One of the joys of browsing the tags page at the moment is clicking on the unique, wacky categories that people put their posts into. Surely, there's got to be a better way?

By: soyjoy

soyjoy — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 13:13:06 -0800

Sure, dash. View source, Save As, then drag it back into your browser window whenever you feel like a chuckle.

In other words, the downside of losing the occasional entertainment of the full version would be outweighed by the upside of increased daily functionality.

We have humor, humor! and humour. Also, 911, 9/11 and 9-11. 2000election and election2000. Etc.

How can we fix this?

Hmmmmm... gee... how indeed?

By: monju_bosatsu

monju_bosatsu — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 13:15:26 -0800

But soyjoy, who will tag the tagged tags?

By: cortex

cortex — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 13:22:57 -0800

A popular list seems like a useful default -- so long as Matt makes other modes available, I don't see what the problem is.

By: rooftop secrets

rooftop secrets — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 13:35:01 -0800

Wow...that list got BIG overnight. 'Art' seems to have developed into a behemoth, destroying the four lines above it.

By: sciurus

sciurus — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 13:35:50 -0800

I have done all of mine.

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 13:38:57 -0800

We have humor, humor! and humour. Also, 911, 9/11 and 9-11. 2000election and election2000. Etc.

How can we fix this?

Keep watching the popular tags page. One will win out. As it does, you might want to either replace your (losing) tag or add the winning tag so, again, that your post is seen and not misclassified. Thats kind of how it works.

Which one wins out just gets decided by the vote of the masses.

By: rajbot

rajbot — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 14:05:06 -0800

I would never have guessed that Utah would be such a popular tag..

By: soyjoy

soyjoy — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 14:07:38 -0800

monju_bosatsu: Tag.

You're it.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 14:12:13 -0800

It seems like using the "filter" postfix is a bad idea...

Downright stupid idea, in fact.

By: rushmc

rushmc — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 14:13:30 -0800

:::waits to see who first tags all their posts with their username so they will look uber kewl:::

By: smackfu

smackfu — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 14:16:10 -0800

Fun thing to do is load the huge tag list, and then set your font to be really really small (CTRL-minus in FF). It just looks really neat.

By: gwint

gwint — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 14:22:14 -0800

I wish I had a time-lapse movie of the /tags.mefi page growing and growing and growing...

By: kamylyon

kamylyon — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 14:25:44 -0800

Look at how small the sex tag is.

::points and giggles::

By: fenriq

fenriq — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 16:14:44 -0800

The Technorati tag page doesn't even have sex on it at all!

That and I like that sewer comes right before sex!

Thanks alot, Matt, this is super cool and I, among the many others, am really appreciative of your efforts.

By: taz

taz — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 16:20:39 -0800

Whew! *wipes brow* That's mine done. I'm mesmerized by the tags page. And strangely excited.

By: gwint

gwint — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 16:53:50 -0800

I can't wait for this to be implemented in ask.mefi just to see the largest word on the page: "cats"

By: Ufez Jones

Ufez Jones — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 17:43:39 -0800

Sweet, Matt. I'll try to knock mine out in the next 24-36 hours.

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:00:16 -0800

Mine done too. I was also smugly pleased at seeing all my old threads, and the odd one or two that I'd totally forgotten - nearly three years of my online life, all in one place!
Yeah, I'm blotting out my flamefests, but they usually happen in other people's thread, for some reason...(",)

By: Pretty_Generic

Pretty_Generic — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:03:07 -0800

Please don't reduce the amount of entries in the tag page Matt, it's perfect!

By: anathema

anathema — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:24:22 -0800

Anyone else experiencing long load times on the tags page?

By: Bdave

Bdave — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:28:30 -0800

This is seriously so fucking cool. Wait 'til it's on AksMe.

Thankyou Numero Uno.

By: cortex

cortex — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:11:04 -0800

I have this burning desire to tag more posts. I can't tag just mine -- it took five seconds. What about posts by apparently long-dead accounts? What about posts by famously departed users? Eh? Eh?

I need a fix!

By: jacquilynne

jacquilynne — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:18:52 -0800

Wow. I just looked at the tags page. It's an amazing thing of beauty, it really is.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 21:04:00 -0800

shouldn't places like New York and Las Vegas be done as one word?

cortex, you can do my oldest ones if you want.

By: y2karl

y2karl — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 21:46:14 -0800

I fail to see the use. Is it supposed to make things easier to find ? Or is it all frosting and no cake ?And I am reluctant to go back and add tags to my posts just in order to hype them. Color me perplexed. I am so far unenthused about this feature.

By: rushmc

rushmc — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:30:39 -0800

shouldn't places like New York and Las Vegas be done as one word?

I'm hoping after it settles down that mathowie can go in and fix the cases where people spaced or capitalized inappropriately...

By: fenriq

fenriq — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:52:18 -0800

smackfu had a great idea and a good way to step back from the monstro and ever growing tag list. Reducing the font size until only the big stuff is readable, quick and easy MetaMeta.

Also, there's something a little wonky with "hot 10DowningStreet 12" at the very beginning of the list.

By: painquale

painquale — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 00:42:36 -0800

I fail to see the use. Is it supposed to make things easier to find?

I've already found a bunch of great links I missed the first time around just by clicking on topics that interest me. It just introduces a little categorization to the archives and makes them more useful. As it is, once a link scrolls off the main page that's really the end of it. Tags make the archives entertaining.

By: soyjoy

soyjoy — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 07:55:35 -0800

I am so far unenthused about this feature.

I just want to say that it's great to see y2karl and konolia in complete agreement about something. Huuuuuugs!

By: rushmc

rushmc — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 16:44:30 -0800

Also, there's something a little wonky with "hot 10DowningStreet 12" at the very beginning of the list.

Wait till it gets to be like the phone book, with people competing to see who can put the most aaaaaaaas in front of their tag in order to be listed first!

By: homunculus

homunculus — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 12:02:42 -0800

I really like this, but I also really wish I could edit my tags (caps and plurals and such).

For names, do we prefer just the last name or first and last together?

By: fncll

fncll — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 10:03:40 -0800

I enjoy browsing by tag as well-- makes the archives MUCH more useful (and fun). Though it seems that no one bothers to tag their posts (the seemingly inevitable conservatism of larger communities at work, perhaps)...