MetaTalk posts tagged with tags

Is there a way to find most favorited posts with [xyz] tag?

Asparagus — Wed, 01 May 2013 15:53:34 -0800

We can find "popular favorites" going back a day, week, month, all-time. And we can find all of the posts with a given tag. Is there a way to combine these two features, to find, say, "Posts with the tag [books] that have been most favorited?"

Unpopular Tags

the man of twists and turns — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:08:00 -0800

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?

Tags with weird characters

stebulus — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 00:41:47 -0800

When tags with non-ASCII characters appear in the tag search results, the links are broken (while tags with non-Latin-1 characters are simply not accessible by any means). Tags with percent signs make the server grumpy. Underscores also seem to be treated somewhat inconsistently (or at least counterintuitively) by the tag search. 1. Tag search vexed by non-ASCII characters, and worse When tags with non-ASCII characters appear in the tag search results list, they appear correctly in the text, but the link doesn't work. For example, the search {orr} includes a tag "orripálldýrason". The page is encoded in UTF-8, and the characters appear literally in the text and in the href attribute:

<a href="http://www.metafilter.com/tags/orripálldýrason" target="_self">orripálldýrason</a>

My browser (Firefox 18.0.1 on Ubuntu 12.04.1), at least, follows that link by %-encoding the UTF-8 bytes and issuing the request

GET http://www.metafilter.com/tags/orrip%C3%A1lld%C3%BDrason

Metafilter replies:

Sorry, no matches for the tag orripÃ¡lldÃ½rason across MetaFilter.

Here the %-encoded bytes have been interpreted not as UTF-8 multibyte sequences, but as individual characters: thus á (U+00E1 LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH ACUTE), encoded in UTF-8 as the two bytes C3 A1, has appeared as the two characters Ã (U+00C3 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH TILDE) and ¡ (U+00A1 INVERTED EXCLAMATION MARK). I'm citing Unicode code points here, but they're the same in Latin-1, which might be what the code thinks it's doing. If, on the other hand, I manually %-encode the two non-ASCII characters using their Latin-1 values and issue the request

GET http://www.metafilter.com/tags/orrip%E1lld%FDrason

then the desired page is served. Note also that the "tag sidebar" in the tagged post itself has its hrefs in this Latin-1 form, and that works fine. It may seem, then, that the solution is just to make the tag search results page construct its hrefs in the same way that the tag sidebar on the thread page does. But wait! There's more! There are a few tags with characters that are not in Latin-1 and which therefore at present simply cannot be accessed. There are a b u n c h with so-called "smart quotes", one with ž, which didn't make it into Latin-1, and a couple with ™. In these cases, the tag sidebar displays the character in the text but replaces it in the href with %3F (a question mark, perhaps the automatic output of a character encoder faced with an unencodable character) and the links don't work. In fact, it seems that there is no way to request the tag page for such tags... so maybe the way it works on the tag sidebar is not so hot after all. 2. Tags with percent signs very much disliked The tag "100%pure" (on this post) cannot be accessed, neither verbatim (as it appears in tag search results pages)

GET http://www.metafilter.com/tags/100%pure

nor %-encoded (which is obviously more righteous)

GET http://www.metafilter.com/tags/100%25pure

Both yield 400 Bad Request. 3. Underscores, unreliably discovered This one is a little fuzzier, but it seems like the tag search doesn't discover tags very consistently when they contain underscores. Examples:

Searching for {adam} finds the tags adam_curtis and adam_gopnik, but neither adam_curry nor adam_walsh_act.
Searching for {40} finds the tag 40_degrees, but searching for {4} doesn't find the tag 4_billion_years_ago.
Searching for {human} finds the tag human_rights but not, for example, the tags human_centipede or human_rights_filter.
The previous example (and others) suggest that the tag search might be showing just the underscore-containing tags with more than 1 hit, but I refute it thus: searching for {space} doesn't find the tag space_station, which has two posts.

(On reflection, the last one could be explained by the tag search truncating the results, keeping only the most frequently used tags... but the results for {adam}, for example, cannot be explained this way.) In all these cases (and others I have tried), the omitted tags are listed if you include the underscore in the search string: {adam_}, {4_}, {human_}, {space_}. And, of course, if a completely reliable search of tags is really needed, one can go to the infodump. Still, it seems pretty weird. Other punctuation marks are, it seems, consistently treated either as normal characters (e.g., full stops: {127} finds 127.0.0.1) or as word delimiters (e.g., hyphen: {127} finds lz-127). In my testing so far, only the underscore yields inconsistent results.

Also, I would like an inter-engine fermentation system.

zarq — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 12:15:40 -0800

We have clouds for the top 150 tags posted to Mefi, Music, Meta, Jobs, IRL and Ask. We can see the top ten tags we've used listed on user profiles. Would it be possible to view all tags (or a greater subset than 'top ten') for individual users, either in a list or cloud form? Thanks in advance, as always.

Change scares me

Mezentian — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 03:40:22 -0800

All of a sudden I am seeing some odd symbols (associated with some Java tomfoolery)? Did a new pony ride into town? Are we in the Matrix? posted by MezentianMe at 3:29 AM on December 17 [+] [!] Need to fix a typo? Edit Other [4/4]: «≡· and «≡» They seem to do stuff? Did I just find a sweet spot where new things are being tested, or rolled out?

Ponies for everyone!

jsturgill — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:03:12 -0800

~~Pony~~ clydesdale request: a community-edited list of recommendations for AskMe questions that aggregate the answers in the discussoin thread and put them together in one place along with relevant links. Here is a question that would benefit from it as an example, but basically any AskMe question centered around recommendations would be appropriate, and there are a whole lot of them. I would love to see a list somewhere on these questions' pages that has the following structure, or something similar to it: [link to product page, wikipedia, whatever]title/name/label of the recommendation[/link] - recommended by [link to user page]user[/link] - [link to comment where it was recommended]short pull quote for context cut off after 20 words or so, similar to the best post list on the home page...[/link] The list would be curated by the membership, with everyone having full control over adding, editing, and removing items, and a flagging system to report abuse. This does a few good things:

Provides an overview of responses, allowing for posters too eager to read the whole thread to know what has already been covered. You may argue that everyone should read the whole thread regardless, but we all know that will never happen consistently, and this will make things better. Even for people who read everything consistently, I contend that this would be a godsend.
Ensures sure all recommendations have an appropriate link. It is, in fact, too much work to google something yourself. Hyperlinks make the web work. If there is a product that is being mentioned, a link should go to where you can purchase that product or view reviews (or both). If the responses are about historical figures, say, there should be a link to interviews, wikipedia, or some other resource about the figure, and so on.
Increases the potential for affiliate payments in an organic way that doesn't abuse the community's trust.
Makes AskMe much more useful for many kinds of extremely popular questions.
Extends the relevance of old posts, as link rot in the list could be fixed by site members whenever it is noticed.

This would be a major extension to the site functionality, and likely a pain to implement wisely. But I think it's worth it. The internet needs links, dammit, and far too often, responses to questions don't include any. Having access to the collected responses all in one place might also encourage a diversity of responses, as people can more easily notice what is missing or gaps in the recommendations. And it will probably lower taxes, too.

It was not Treaty of Westphalia length

Chrysostom — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:26:42 -0800

What is the maximum character length for a tag? I had a lengthy tag fail to appear on post preview. What's the longest a tag can be?

more better tag

pwnguin — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 13:24:30 -0800

Can we get a frequency count for users following / tracking tags? Since My Mefi allows users to filter by tags, it seems like a useful feature to know how popular tags are. We already have the tag cloud, but I'm more curious about the middle-range of tags. Not that I plan to spam the most popular tags, but knowing for example, if "ubuntu" is a more followed tag than just "linux" would be useful when deciding how to tag a post about an Ubuntu announcement or something. I realize there's probably some privacy concerns about the data, but I think a few heuristics could resolve that (ie, drop all tags below a threshold from the count). Thoughts?

I know, write it in a word processor, then copy/paste if you don't want to lose it.

256 — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 16:28:59 -0800

Bug (or at least unexpected behaviour): deleting tags sends half-written comments to the aether. I was in the middle up writing a clarification a recent askme, when I realized that one of my tags was misleading. So, I clicked the little [x], with the expectation that some javascript magic would happen, but instead got a page reload and lost three paragraphs of immortal prose. This is certainly an edge case, but it's still probably not the ideal behaviour.

this is not a chawade

Eideteker — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 08:04:55 -0800

What was that tag where... Is there a "standard" or recommended tag on AskMe for those questions where you're trying to identify some vaguely remembered tv show/movie/song/painting/other cultural artifact? I'm not saying we need this, but it might be a nice idea for mindful posters who feel like adding one. Y'know, 'going forward.' If there isn't one already, maybe "whatwasthat" or something like it? This came to me because I wanted to show a friend the power of AskMe for tracking down obscure things we barely remember. I had thought there was such a tag, but I can't remember/find it. Just a suggestion, more to the userbase than the moderators.

Two new tags: Updated and ReAsk

alms — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 08:06:55 -0800

Let's create two new special tags for AskMe: Updated and ReAsk The "Updated" tag would indicate that the OP has posted a follow-up comment letting us know that there's news about their situation. Maybe they've followed some of the advice or tried something else. The "ReAsk" tag would indicate that the OP is still looking for an answer to their question. Maybe there have been some replies so the question doesn't appear in the "Unanswered" section, but none of the replies have done the trick. The ReAsk tag could also indicate that the OP has posted a clarifying comment and is now looking for another round of answers. Each of these tags would satisfy a common need on AskMe. People often say "Get back to us and let us know how it worked out." Even when people don't say that, they often think it (at least I do), and maybe they favorite the question so that they can keep tabs on it in case the OP checks back in again. The point, though, is that updates from OPs are generally interesting. If people started using the Updated tag, I would regularly read ask.metafilter/tags/updated just to get some good stories, and I'm sure other people would as well. That page would help close the paying-it-forward loop and build community. The ReAsk tag would give people a second shot at asking their questions without cluttering up the AskMe home page with a slightly rephrased version of the question. They'd get a new set of eyeballs on the question. If people started using this tag I would regularly scan ask.metafilter/tags/reask to see if I could help out with any tricky questions that haven't yet been satisfactorily answered. I'm putting this in the Feature Request category, but it doesn't necessarily require any actual new features in the AskMe user interface. We could adopt these tags by convention (as we initially did with the special Resolved tag), and people could add them and read the tagged posts without any new MetaFilter UI. On the other hand, the tags would get a lot more use if there was some indication in the UI that they could be added and browsed.

The Popular Tags cloud on ask.me just doesn't

Tomorrowful — Sat, 12 May 2012 17:24:12 -0800

Not Actually Extremely Problematic: The "popular tags" page on the green is a tag cloud, but none of the tags appear much larger than the others. This is what I'm talking about. Maybe it's just me, but instead of being able to tell at a glance that some tags are just more common than others, the difference between the biggest (ie, most common) tags and the smallest ones just isn't visually obvious. It actually looks more like a list with really sloppy formatting than an actual tag cloud. The size range is from 20 to 30 points; 50% is a big jump in theory, but when it's all run together, It doesn't really impart "This is more common than that" in an obvious intuitive kind of way. Contrast with the tag cloud for the blue, where the range is from 15 to 30, which helps make the size differential a little clearer. (And, okay, yes, on the How Important is this Really scale, this falls just north of "Obscure bug affecting Internet Explorer for Macintosh," but it's bothering me, okay?)

April Last!

oneswellfoop — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 23:30:17 -0800

Just wanted to mention that the semi-official thread of this year's MetaFilter April Fool's Thingy (and the only one that continued to issue "staff tags" to every comment after April 1st was over) is going to be closing in a few hours. So if you haven't found out what your randomly-selected title is supposed to be, go there and leave a comment. (And if you don't like the tag you've been given, just refresh the page! It's so random!) An unauthorized message from MetaFilter's [staph] [stef] [stiffie] [stapler] [stanky] [stasi] [stab] [stable boy] [stoned] [stoooooooooooooned] [studebaker] [stavrosthewonderchicken] [star wars] [stfu] [stairway to heaven] [hairway to steven] [stand and deliver] [stack exchange] [starship trooper] [hurf durf butter staffer] [esteban] [SHAFT] [chaff] [naff] [gaffe] [graft] [taffy] [zach braff] [sweeney toddler] [stephen hawking] [smithers release the hounds] [sunday sunday SUNDAY] [sylvan learning center] [puff daddy] [cory doctorow] [horse ebooks] [fapfapfap] [spouse] [winner]

Can we increase the amount of space allowed for specifying our "favorite tags" for controlling what is shown in My AskMefi and My Mefi?

philipy — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:55:02 -0800

Can we increase the amount of space allowed for specifying our "favorite tags" for controlling what is shown in My AskMefi and My Mefi? I like to use tags to filter what is shown on those pages, and I like to use a large number of narrowly focused ones. That means I bump into the 800-char limit, which lets me have 90-100 tags. Any chance of increasing that limit? If it helps, I don't need different tags for Mefi and AskMefi. In fact I would prefer if I only had to specify tags once, and the same ones were used for both. These features are especially useful to me when I haven't been spending much time on Mefi and want to quickly scan days or weeks worth of entries for ones that are especially relevant to me.

Achievement Unlocked

leotrotsky — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 22:17:56 -0800

My Little Pony Request that is all.

Big text for small screens

zamboni — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 06:56:34 -0800

Does the mobile stylesheet need the  tag? The  formatting tag is great for making asides, and I use it as much as anyone, but it's moderately unreadable without zooming on a mobile device, particularly when


it's done more than once.


Text on a phone is already pretty small, and doesn't need to be any smaller. How do people feel about redefining  to be regular size (and possibly have some other form of emphasis) just for mobile devices? Side note: In the current HTML5 working draft,  means "fine print", not specifically "small text".

Stars vs. Staves On Mod Names

Aquaman — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 21:49:37 -0800

Stars vs. Staves? Awww, I really liked the stars next to the mods' names. The 'staff' button now makes me picture a slightly awkward greeter at a box store. The stars made you all seem like, well, stars. Anyone else with me?

Why, cortex, why??

shipbreaker — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 19:21:05 -0800

I have no desire to contact the mods, or use the contact form, I just want to ask people a question, and have them answer it. But whenever I do so, my posts are deleted. Can I get my five dollars back? I posted AskMetafilter 195587 and just as I predicted, it was immediately deleted. It really is an important meta-meta-question, but since it was deleted instantly no one can ever discuss it and no one will ever know. I was told to come here. Why should I be here? Can't you see that the problem is with the entire culture of MetaFilter? Then why do I keep coming back, you ask, if my questions are so clearly unwanted? Or am I some kind of sadistic troll, trolling for abuse and even more deletion? Why is the discussion over on reddit allowed to thrive and evolve, but here on metafilter it is immediately censored based on arcane unwritten rules that nobody knows?

Favourite Tags

jbw — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 08:39:27 -0800

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to mark certain tags as favourites to be able to follow certain ones? You could have a page which displays headlines filtered via your favourite tags, sort of like a customised front page. Currently you have go to tags and find/build them eat time or subscribe to them in an RSS reader which is more effort. I asked this in the wrong place before (AskMeFi) whoops. I think I tried here first but wasn't able to submit because you needed > 2 posts or comments. http://ask.metafilter.com/194047/Favourite-Tags

You're it!

These Premises Are Alarmed — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 19:59:14 -0800

Is the best approach to improving tagging on a particular post still "use the contact form"? I was trying to find this post with the tag 'Victorian' (eventually got there with 'Romance'). This happens to me once every week or so. Previously, the mod consensus seems to be to use the contact form. Is that still best? I wish there was a way that didn't involve mod-hassling. Also, the Tags tag.

headline/title

DU — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 07:58:42 -0800

If comments clarifying what this misleading meat post are going to be deleted, could a mod at least fix the post? It's not about "the" Chicago Fire.

Please display tags in the mobile style sheet

alms — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 06:57:12 -0800

Pony: could we display tags in the mobile view? I just noticed that the mobile view of AskMe doesn't display the tags for the question. This came up because I had a question on my iPhone and wanted to quickly find it on my laptop to reply. I figured the tags would be the easiest way to do that, but alas no tags were shown. There are any number of places they could be shown. It would even be okay if I had to tap something to show them. But it does seem like they should be shown. We want to encourage tagging, and part of that is treating tags as a first-class component of a post.

A tiny, corralled pony

jtron — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 23:58:56 -0800

Can we mobile users have more HTML composition buttons? I would love to have buttons that let me more easily use additional HTML tags, especially small and blockquote. Even with Swype I find entering tags on my phone to be kind of a pain ; this would make it easier to keep my mobile posts looking as meadow-fresh as the ones composed on a computer and further enable my abuse of the small tag.

Tag Search could be a bit better...

schmod — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 15:53:18 -0800

Nitpicky pony request: Tag search The tagging guidelines state that tags multi-word topics should be written without spaces as a single word. This seems simple and obvious enough. An FPP about Girl Talk would be tagged with 'girltalk'. However, if I use the search feature to search for posts tagged with 'Girl Talk', it finds a bunch of tags containing 'girl', and 'talk', but does not return a result for girltalk, despite the fact that this tag exists. It appears as though the search algorithm interprets a tag search for 'Girl Talk' as 'girl' OR 'talk,' and picks the top few results for each. I think it would make more sense for it to interpret the query as 'girl' OR 'talk' OR 'girltalk,' and to continue to highlight exact matches. I say this because tags are probably the best way to browse old topics on Metafilter. (Super-pony request: Find some subtle way to visualize the number of pages that correspond to each tag in the results. The numberic count is nice, but not useful for comparisons.)