Pony: seeing tags from outside the thread October 25, 2006 10:33 AM Subscribe
Could we have it set up that mousing over the number of comments in a FPP shows us the tags? [more inside]
Affixing the tags to the # of comments seems a bit random. How about showing, say, the first three tags on the front page as unobtrusively as possible?
posted by jack_mo at 10:42 AM on October 25, 2006
posted by Mr. User at 6:17 PM GMT - 8 comments (8 new) tags: cheese monkeys hull(If this is even necessary - if the idea is to make it easier to skip Iraqfilter, Newsfilter, Whateverfilter, it's normally pretty obvious from the text of the post, isn't it?)
posted by jack_mo at 10:42 AM on October 25, 2006
I'm not sure it will help, but I don't think it can hurt much.
posted by crunchland at 10:47 AM on October 25, 2006
posted by crunchland at 10:47 AM on October 25, 2006
I could see doing jack_mo's idea, but not quin's. That's totally random.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:49 AM on October 25, 2006
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:49 AM on October 25, 2006
I like jack_mo's suggestion. quin's idea is an awkward fix, but an excellent idea.
posted by terrapin at 10:58 AM on October 25, 2006
posted by terrapin at 10:58 AM on October 25, 2006
Hmm, maybe my hypothetical didn't explain it well. Here is a real example:
Tweakers with nuclear weapons technology Exactly what the world needs in these uncertain times.
posted by empath at 10:35 AM CST - 3 comments (3 new)
And when posters go crazy and have dozens of tags, just limit it to the first three or so.
posted by quin at 11:02 AM on October 25, 2006
Tweakers with nuclear weapons technology Exactly what the world needs in these uncertain times.
posted by empath at 10:35 AM CST - 3 comments (3 new)
And when posters go crazy and have dozens of tags, just limit it to the first three or so.
posted by quin at 11:02 AM on October 25, 2006
I like Quin's idea, although I think it's unnecessary. I dislike Jack_Mo's; enough already with adding features to the byline. Clean design is good design. Cluttered design make Hulk smash.
posted by cribcage at 11:07 AM on October 25, 2006
posted by cribcage at 11:07 AM on October 25, 2006
posted by empath to meth, classified, nuclear at 10:35 AM CST - 3 comments (3 new)
posted by mendel at 11:10 AM on October 25, 2006
posted by mendel at 11:10 AM on October 25, 2006
If you do add this mathowie, could the tags be linked rather than just displayed?
I can't be alone in often not bothering clicking into threads, so if a post on a given topic had a few clickable tags on the front page, it would be nice to track down its previously posted fellows without having to click/wait for the thread page to load. And it would still help folks just wanting to skip certain posts. (Might even encourage non-taggers to tag, too, which would be a boon.)
On preview, mendel's method is clearer and probably takes up less space, and crunchland has a very good point - not sure so much gubbins on the page is worth it for a tiny featurette.
posted by jack_mo at 11:13 AM on October 25, 2006
I can't be alone in often not bothering clicking into threads, so if a post on a given topic had a few clickable tags on the front page, it would be nice to track down its previously posted fellows without having to click/wait for the thread page to load. And it would still help folks just wanting to skip certain posts. (Might even encourage non-taggers to tag, too, which would be a boon.)
On preview, mendel's method is clearer and probably takes up less space, and crunchland has a very good point - not sure so much gubbins on the page is worth it for a tiny featurette.
posted by jack_mo at 11:13 AM on October 25, 2006
I was thinking about this yesterday but instead of the tags, I thought the post title might be a good mouseover feature. I've always found the title rather pointless unless you read MeFi from a feed.
But then again, if someone is being obscurechic in the FPP text, such twattery will probably spill over into the post title and tags...and often does. So, carry on.
posted by peacay at 11:22 AM on October 25, 2006
But then again, if someone is being obscurechic in the FPP text, such twattery will probably spill over into the post title and tags...and often does. So, carry on.
posted by peacay at 11:22 AM on October 25, 2006
maybe mat could AJAX something up instead. hovering over comment count to get tags is... dissonant.
posted by boo_radley at 11:27 AM on October 25, 2006
posted by boo_radley at 11:27 AM on October 25, 2006
How about this:
posted by empath at 10:35 AM CST - tags- 3 comments (3 new)posted by Chuckles at 11:28 AM on October 25, 2006
Not bad.
posted by boo_radley at 11:34 AM on October 25, 2006
posted by boo_radley at 11:34 AM on October 25, 2006
Okay, I could have done a much better job of that. Something more like this:
posted by Chuckles at 11:37 AM on October 25, 2006 [1 favorite]
Tweakers with nuclear weapons technology Exactly what the world needs in these uncertain times.I'm not convinced putting tags under a link into the thread is really out of context.. Meanwhile, actually writing out the tags on the front page would be nasty.
posted by empath at 11:35 AM EST - 4 comments (4 new) [tags]
posted by Chuckles at 11:37 AM on October 25, 2006 [1 favorite]
Let's try this another way: Why do this? I thought the purpose of tags was to group like threads and to facilitate searches, not to summarize content. You're proposing that we use tags like categories — in which case, why don't we simply introduce categories on MetaFilter like we have on AskMe.
posted by cribcage at 11:45 AM on October 25, 2006
posted by cribcage at 11:45 AM on October 25, 2006
now let's say hovering over
posted by boo_radley at 11:47 AM on October 25, 2006
[tags] produced a div popup with clicky-links to tags. Thoughts?posted by boo_radley at 11:47 AM on October 25, 2006
seems like the solutions presented here vary between too much extra clutter and too obscure of info buried in a mouseover. I don't see what gain either offers. I mean, the text of the post should be an indicator that something is political or newsy or arty, right?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:50 AM on October 25, 2006
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:50 AM on October 25, 2006
Nothing wrong with making things clickable, but I think it is important to be neat and tidy.. If stuff starts popping everywhere like those text link adds.. Well, that would be bad.
Categories are rigid and uninteresting, but more information is helpful. I do take your point though cribcage, people should be adequately describing their posts, so tags should be unnecessary.
posted by Chuckles at 12:01 PM on October 25, 2006
Categories are rigid and uninteresting, but more information is helpful. I do take your point though cribcage, people should be adequately describing their posts, so tags should be unnecessary.
posted by Chuckles at 12:01 PM on October 25, 2006
seems like the solutions presented here vary between too much extra clutter and too obscure of info buried in a mouseover. I don't see what gain either offers.
Me neither. It doesn't make sense to attach a list of tags to the a link on comments, the two aren't connected in any way - you might as well list the author's favourite cheese or something. Added to which, assuming the site isn't being slooooooow, it'll take virtually the same amount of time to click the link to view the tags as it would to read the title text. This isn't solving a problem that doesn't exist.
posted by TheDonF at 12:03 PM on October 25, 2006
Me neither. It doesn't make sense to attach a list of tags to the a link on comments, the two aren't connected in any way - you might as well list the author's favourite cheese or something. Added to which, assuming the site isn't being slooooooow, it'll take virtually the same amount of time to click the link to view the tags as it would to read the title text. This isn't solving a problem that doesn't exist.
posted by TheDonF at 12:03 PM on October 25, 2006
Tags are in their very essence meant to be links, wherever they are displayed. They are, effectively, a link between related items. Putting the tags in the
posted by ijoshua at 12:33 PM on October 25, 2006
title attribute of anything is pointless.posted by ijoshua at 12:33 PM on October 25, 2006
Putting the title of the post in the
posted by ijoshua at 12:35 PM on October 25, 2006
title attribute of the link makes perfect since, however.posted by ijoshua at 12:35 PM on October 25, 2006
Mouseovers are a bad place to hide useful information. Especially now that I have gotten used to keyboard navigation of the front page. If the information is not useful enough to be put in plain view, then it can hide inside the post where it belongs.
If people's posts are too cryptic, that's a separate problem and this solution does not fix it, unless cryptic posters can be relied on to provide informative tags. If anything, this would only encourage poorly-formed posts, with posters thinking "it's OK, I can mention that it's a NSFW 150MB video in the tags" at the expense of those who are not really up on this mouseover technology.
posted by nowonmai at 12:37 PM on October 25, 2006
If people's posts are too cryptic, that's a separate problem and this solution does not fix it, unless cryptic posters can be relied on to provide informative tags. If anything, this would only encourage poorly-formed posts, with posters thinking "it's OK, I can mention that it's a NSFW 150MB video in the tags" at the expense of those who are not really up on this mouseover technology.
posted by nowonmai at 12:37 PM on October 25, 2006
For those wondering why I thought something like this would be useful, I direct your attention to this thread. There was a lot of vitriol being thrown around about whether or not posting news stories was a appropriate activity on the blue.
I was trying to come up with some way that people could glance at a thread and see whether or not it was something they would be interested in. I tried to limit myself to doing it in a way that wouldn't actually add any additional links or anything, but I concede that my method was in fact, too random.
I totally agree that the FPP itself should let the reader know what the content is going to relate to, but we've seen time and again that this is not always the case:
Somehow.
Preston Wheeler , Keven Dagit, Christopher Lem and Sascha Grenner- Case: Left Behind.
Hadji Girl (10.6 MB wmv) Some folks think this is funny. Some don't. What do you think?
Hell, the discussion doesn't even have to be political or newsfilter to be cryptic:
Is optimism enough?
Green Nazis.
Misprinted Type.
[No offense meant to any of the posters of the above threads, they were simply the first ones I came across that fit the bill.]
It seems that nearly every one of these could have benefited by providing some indication of what the links related to. I don't mind clicking on every thread to find out what it's about, but as evidenced by the metatalk thread I linked above, clearly some people do.
I really like Chuckles implementation, by the way. It's far more clever than mine.
posted by quin at 12:41 PM on October 25, 2006
I was trying to come up with some way that people could glance at a thread and see whether or not it was something they would be interested in. I tried to limit myself to doing it in a way that wouldn't actually add any additional links or anything, but I concede that my method was in fact, too random.
I totally agree that the FPP itself should let the reader know what the content is going to relate to, but we've seen time and again that this is not always the case:
Somehow.
Preston Wheeler , Keven Dagit, Christopher Lem and Sascha Grenner- Case: Left Behind.
Hadji Girl (10.6 MB wmv) Some folks think this is funny. Some don't. What do you think?
Hell, the discussion doesn't even have to be political or newsfilter to be cryptic:
Is optimism enough?
Green Nazis.
Misprinted Type.
[No offense meant to any of the posters of the above threads, they were simply the first ones I came across that fit the bill.]
It seems that nearly every one of these could have benefited by providing some indication of what the links related to. I don't mind clicking on every thread to find out what it's about, but as evidenced by the metatalk thread I linked above, clearly some people do.
I really like Chuckles implementation, by the way. It's far more clever than mine.
posted by quin at 12:41 PM on October 25, 2006
cribcage writes 'I thought the purpose of tags was to group like threads and to facilitate searches, not to summarize content.'
Like I say, being able to do that from the front page would be quite handy; the content summarising/warning isn't itself that great a use of tags.
posted by jack_mo at 1:21 PM on October 25, 2006
Like I say, being able to do that from the front page would be quite handy; the content summarising/warning isn't itself that great a use of tags.
posted by jack_mo at 1:21 PM on October 25, 2006
I typed the above Monty Python reference without thinking and hit post without thinking, and once I thought, for a moment, decided I didn't need to post it, and then decided I needed to post this to make up for it. Dang.
posted by cgc373 at 1:46 PM on October 25, 2006
posted by cgc373 at 1:46 PM on October 25, 2006
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
posted by Roger Dodger at 4:43 PM on October 25, 2006
posted by Roger Dodger at 4:43 PM on October 25, 2006
Matt should just do a script that cross-references to a database somewhere so that when you hit *Post Comment* it tells you "It looks like you're making a Monty Python reference. It might be funny, and it might even be appropriate in the situation, but are you really sure you want to do it?" Such a thing would have saved me more than once, I can tell you.
posted by yhbc at 5:13 PM on October 25, 2006 [1 favorite]
posted by yhbc at 5:13 PM on October 25, 2006 [1 favorite]
What we really need is a full on thread preview. I shouldn't have to click on a thread to actually, you know, determine if it's worthwhile. I'd like to click on a little icon of a magnifying glass and see the last comment in the thread, recent commenters, the tags, and also an inspirational quote from one of those Chicken Soup for the [Insert Identity-Valuing Label] Soul books.
posted by nixerman at 6:35 PM on October 25, 2006
posted by nixerman at 6:35 PM on October 25, 2006
If you're going to do them, they need to clickable like mendel has them. Otherwise there's no point at all.
posted by juv3nal at 7:14 PM on October 25, 2006
posted by juv3nal at 7:14 PM on October 25, 2006
Anything that forces people to add tags. It's not like that's difficult to do, but people can't seem to expend the extra ~20 characters worth of effort.
posted by Kickstart70 at 9:52 PM on October 25, 2006
posted by Kickstart70 at 9:52 PM on October 25, 2006
mathowie writes "I mean, the text of the post should be an indicator that something is political or newsy or arty, right?"
You'd think wouldn't you?
posted by Mitheral at 9:38 AM on October 26, 2006
You'd think wouldn't you?
posted by Mitheral at 9:38 AM on October 26, 2006
You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments
How about the admins set it up so when you mouse over the number of comments in an FPP link, you see all the tags that are attached to the thread. Kinda like this:
posted by MeFiUser at 12:00 PM CST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
It's discrete, it doesn't change the format of the page at all, and it allows people to see what the link relates to without having to click it.
This could help to stave off some of the complaints about news items being posted to the blue as it would make it simpler to identify cryptically worded posts. This makes it easier for MeFites to avoid things they aren't interested in.
posted by quin at 10:34 AM on October 25, 2006