Favourite Tags

August 22, 2011 8:39 AM

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

posted by jbw to Feature Requests at 8:39 AM (61 comments total)

The MyAsk part of Ask MetaFilter does this somewhat, allows you to havw a custom view of the front page based on categories and favourites
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:44 AM on August 22, 2011

We have this at Ask MetaFilter, it's called My Ask. You can choose your favorite tags and categories and you get a customized view of questions based on those.

We built that feature because the churn is fairly high at Ask MetaFilter compared with the other subsites so it's harder for people to keep up in the standard view.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:45 AM on August 22, 2011

This is EXACTLY as Nostradamus predicted in his 47th quatrain:

"When the churn is very high
Yay, the time for favouriting tags draws nigh
But when the churn is low, take heed!
Ye shall not have the functionality ye need".
posted by the quidnunc kid at 8:59 AM on August 22, 2011 [7 favorites]

"The grand parliament, full of churn
Shall the moderate ones' patience burn!
Complaints too many shall there appear -
Yea, they wish only to knock off work for a beer."

--Nostradamus' 57th quatrain. Experts believe that it predicts that MetaTalk will end in fiery apolcalypse some time in 2012.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 9:05 AM on August 22, 2011 [4 favorites]

Huh. I thought that you could already get RSS feeds for tags. I thought I had IMed with Cortex about this… Maybe I dreamed it.
posted by klangklangston at 9:09 AM on August 22, 2011

I heard in 2012 the color polarity will spontaneously switch and MeFi will be green and Ask MeFi will be blue.
posted by nathancaswell at 9:12 AM on August 22, 2011 [2 favorites]

You can get an RSS feed for individual tags and you can get an RSS feed for the My Ask page you create which combines "your favorite tags and categories"; there is so much MetaFilter awesomeness that I don't take advantage of, instead just refreshing and clicking like a schmuck.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:13 AM on August 22, 2011

"The guardians of the site of high churn
Will, one day, upon each other turn!
They shall churn at one another, and woe to all shall come!
And then the site will churn no more, and all will say 'Oh, bum'".

--One of Nostradamus' less successful quatrains, the 14th.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 9:14 AM on August 22, 2011 [2 favorites]

*kicks the quidnunc kid on the shin and runs away*
posted by infini at 9:22 AM on August 22, 2011 [1 favorite]

I heard in 2012 the color polarity will spontaneously switch and MeFi will be green and Ask MeFi will be blue.

No, MeFi will turn to #FF9966 and Ask MeFi will turn #BD98B9.
posted by Johnny Assay at 9:34 AM on August 22, 2011

Good rule of thumb on Metafilter (and the internet!) if you want RSS feeds: Give the URL of the thing you want to a RSS reader and see if it can find a feed. Or just add "/rss" at the end in the case of Metafilter, so if you really like the tags tag and tags on Metatalk, and want to view it as RSS, just go to http://metatalk.metafilter.com/tags/tags+tag/rss. But, you'd still have to subscribe to them in your reader.
posted by skynxnex at 9:35 AM on August 22, 2011

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

Didn't you notice my answer with the MyAsk URL?
posted by John Cohen at 9:35 AM on August 22, 2011

skynxnex, I realise that but maybe I don't want to manage my feeds in a separate application. Maybe I like visiting MetaFilter's website instead :)

John Cohen, yeah I noticed all the comments in fact.

This requested functionality is with regards to the main MetaFilter site/area. If you have it on Ask then great shouldn't be hard to add the main site if it's to be added.
posted by jbw at 9:57 AM on August 22, 2011

I prefer my prophecy in Limerick form.

There once was a man called Deceiver,
Whose followers were true believers,
He told them some tales,
Which got him some sales,
And now we are felled by the Reaper.

I like that it's vague enough that future historians will be able to take whatever current politician/ celebrity that the public is obsessed with, and use it to vilify them.

And that's what a good prognostication should be used for.
posted by quin at 10:11 AM on August 22, 2011

Maybe I like visiting MetaFilter's website instead :)

Maybe you also like hacking stuff together for yourself.
Here's the basic tag url structure:

http://www.metafilter.com/tags/YOURTAGHERE+1MORETAGIFYOUWANT

Bookmark your favorite tags. Boom.
posted by carsonb at 10:52 AM on August 22, 2011 [1 favorite]

Something similar to what Stack Overflow does would be cool. Over there, a set of "tag-favorites" highlight posts that have those tags, making it easy to show posts that would generally be of more interest to the end user.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:37 AM on August 22, 2011

And then the site will churn no more, and all will say 'Oh, bum'".

the Rise Of Butts, Lol foreshadows the realization of the prophesy
posted by mannequito at 12:19 PM on August 22, 2011

I've bookmarked pets-animals and Anonymous and do well with that. Of course, your category/user may vary.
posted by deborah at 1:22 PM on August 22, 2011

Wouldn't it be nice if we were older, then we wouldn't have to wait so long
to be able to follow certain tags on Metafilter, and now the meter of this lyric is all wrong...
posted by hippybear at 5:31 PM on August 22, 2011 [1 favorite]

This requested functionality is with regards to the main MetaFilter site/area.

ah, ok. Sure we can do that. Here's My MeFi. Test it out, report any bugs here, and when it looks good we'll make the "My MeFi" tab live for everyone.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:46 AM on August 23, 2011 [4 favorites]

ah, ok. Sure we can do that. Here's My MeFi. Test it out, report any bugs here, and when it looks good we'll make the "My MeFi" tab live for everyone.

This is great! Seems to be working just fine for me.
posted by vidur at 1:14 PM on August 23, 2011

I'll be trying it out, thanks! I have to admit sometimes I think "all tags except [tag]" would be a perfect My MeFi for me but I'm not asking/agitating for that on the blue or the green.
posted by immlass at 8:59 PM on August 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

I lazily added all the tags it suggested, and I go back to the page and I just get the 'getting started' text. There were legit tags in there. Is this only for new posts or something?
posted by pompomtom at 10:11 PM on August 23, 2011

ah, ok. Sure we can do that. Here's My MeFi. Test it out, report any bugs here, and when it looks good we'll make the "My MeFi" tab live for everyone.

Rad.
posted by juv3nal at 11:54 PM on August 23, 2011

pompomtom, did you click Set Preferences after you added the tags?
posted by pb (staff) at 7:45 AM on August 24, 2011

pb, Thanks :-) didn't expect such as quick turnaround.
posted by jbw at 10:30 AM on August 24, 2011

pb: I honestly don't recall, so I've just now gone to the page to check what I was doing, and lo, it is populated. So file that as unrepeatable chair/keyboard interface error.
posted by pompomtom at 2:46 PM on August 24, 2011

Thanks pompomtom, and thanks everyone for trying it out. It's available for everyone now.
posted by pb (staff) at 3:39 PM on August 24, 2011

Wow! This looks great. Thanks, pb.
posted by bru at 8:00 PM on August 24, 2011

Sweet, my tags are naughty and yielding much content. Mua ha ha! Delicious pony meat.
posted by aydeejones at 8:40 PM on August 24, 2011

Is it ok to roast and eat the pony or should I just play with it?
posted by aydeejones at 8:42 PM on August 24, 2011

Found it in the wild (roll Perception -1). Looks great! Thanks, pb.
posted by BeerFilter at 7:44 AM on August 25, 2011

Just found the "Favourite Tags" option. Yayyy! I've hoped for a pony like this and delighted to find it all shiney brand new!
posted by _paegan_ at 9:36 AM on August 25, 2011

OMG, it's beautiful! I want to roll around nekkid in it.
posted by _paegan_ at 9:39 AM on August 25, 2011

I'm nekkid on the My Mefi page right now too! Woo hoo!
posted by Skygazer at 3:42 PM on August 25, 2011

Also, strangely, after setting tags, the only posts that come up are by The Whelk!

What the heck?
posted by Skygazer at 3:49 PM on August 25, 2011

Joking Skygazer? Maybe you picked a tag that only The Whelk uses? Try diversifying and see if that helps.
posted by pb (staff) at 3:56 PM on August 25, 2011

Very useful, works great. Now the tags on post need a little [+ MyMefi] beside them.
posted by stp123 at 7:56 PM on August 25, 2011

Love that I can use the batshitinsane tag.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 8:48 PM on August 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

Now we just need categories for posts to the blue, like we have with AskMe: "grar," "outragefilter," "SLYT," "somethingifoundonkottke.org", etc.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 8:57 PM on August 25, 2011

Try diversifying and see if that helps.

Yeah, I added the word "hamburger." Much better now. Many, many more diversified posts.

Awesome.


/Hamburger
posted by Skygazer at 9:44 PM on August 25, 2011

Thanks for this!

My only issue that I've had is I made what I think is a relatively narrow in scope list that's over limit:

"Sorry, your preferences were not be saved. Your list of favorite tags is limited to 800 characters, and your list is over the limit. Please go back and edit your list of tags."

Basically the list is a coverage of the arts and a few geographical regions with a couple of other interesting bits to it. While the list is of a certain scope I tried to make it robust in that I added plurals and alternates of some of my tags. It would be great if we were able to have a higher character count allowed. If not I will edit down of course but I wanted to provide my feedback.

Here's my tag list that was over the limit. I don't think it's too crazy, since as is acknowledged, people do not adhere to the same nomenclature when tagging.

animation animator architect architects architecture art arts artist artists bass bassist bassists batshitinsane black blue blues book books brooklyn brutalist building buildings color colors comic comics cyborg cyborgs cybernetic cybernetics design designer designers designs diy doom drawing drawings drum drummer drums film flash font fonts funk game games geometry guitar guitars guitarist guitarists history illustration illustrator illustrators ia info infomatics information informationarchitecture informationdesign japan japanese kyoto language linguist linguistics literature math mathematics maths metal music musician musicians noise noises newyork painting paintings photography punk redhook rhodeisland ri risd robot robots rock rockers science sciencefiction scientist scientists scifi scify sf slyt sound sounds soundtrack soundtracks tokyo type typedesign typography typographer typographers video writer writers writing youtube

Thanks again. I really think this is an awesome development.
posted by safetyfork at 7:38 AM on August 26, 2011

Where do the suggested tags come from? Favoriting or commenting activity?
posted by morganw at 3:50 PM on August 26, 2011

Yeah, we might need to adjust the limit for MetaFilter. We've had this same feature at Ask MetaFilter for over three years and haven't heard any complaints about the limit. But I'm sure people are going to use this in different ways at MetaFilter. We just launched this so we're going to give it a week or so, gather feedback, and then make some decisions about changes like this.

Where do the suggested tags come from?

It's a combination of tags on posts you've both commented on and favorited.
posted by pb (staff) at 1:37 PM on August 27, 2011

I am vaguely curious whether it's possible in this scheme of things to eliminate tags? Like would it be a huge CPU suck or would it be simple. I'd love to be able to have an unwanted tags list in MyMeFi, don't care so much about MyAsk.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 3:42 PM on August 27, 2011

Thanks, pb!

Yeah, I don't use this with Ask as I find I'm more willing to scan all the questions for what I might be able to help with, whereas there are some things on the blue I feel more strongly about not even bothering with / would prefer to never see (throwing this out there as it follows jessamyn's recent line of thinking too) but the things I do want to see on the blue I really don't want to miss, hence trying to get good coverage through tag alternates.

All that said, I have edited down the tag list from above to come in under the current limit and it seems to be doing alright for a "my" mefi experience.
posted by safetyfork at 4:12 AM on August 28, 2011

This is an excellent feature. And it would be even more excellent if we could add an infinite number of tags.
posted by jason's_planet at 12:39 PM on August 29, 2011

ok, just updated My MeFi so you can have unlimited tags and excluded tags. If it starts throwing sparks we might have to dial it back, but let's try it.
posted by pb (staff) at 4:40 PM on August 30, 2011

If I enter excluded tags only, will I get every other tag?
posted by JohnnyGunn at 4:54 PM on August 30, 2011

Yes, now. Good idea.
posted by pb (staff) at 5:04 PM on August 30, 2011

Thanks pb.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 6:02 PM on August 30, 2011

Thank you!!!!!
posted by jason's_planet at 7:07 PM on August 30, 2011

Thanks, pb!!
posted by jason's_planet at 7:08 PM on August 30, 2011

Thanks!
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:12 PM on August 30, 2011

Very cool! Many thanks.
posted by safetyfork at 9:15 AM on September 1, 2011

I somehow missed that this was enabled, there are certain topics that I don't like discussing reading about on metafilter, and this looks like an excellent way to avoid them. Thanks a lot!
posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory at 4:58 AM on September 2, 2011

There's something mildly disquieting about this. It made sense on AskMe, for people to filter for questions that they had some interest or expertise in. But doesn't allowing it on the blue flirt with the community fragmenting and echo-chamber problems that made killfiles a no-no? Because these are essentially killfiles for whole areas of discussion.

It sounds silly, I know, but it feels like people should be presented with all topics on the front page, even if they dislike them or think they would never comment on them, in the same sense people should eat their vegetables or pay their taxes. Being confronted with a variety of issues is a good thing both for members and for the community. For instance, lots of people say they're sick of politics, but I've seen plenty of useful or interesting comments from such people when those threads come around. I'd hate for people to completely and forever shut themselves off to such discussions on a whim.* Same goes for Lady Gaga, My Little Pony, Facebook, Apple, and any other controversial or oft-posted topic that garners worthwhile discussion from people who aren't their biggest fans. Maybe they would stay out of such topics no matter what, but pre-emptively filtering them out with an algorithm so they never even see them in the first place feels wrong to me.

*especially if they casually killfile popular tags -- someone sick of the 2012 election drama might block "politics" or "palin", but that would also block quality posts about medieval palace intrigue or a Monty Python post that mentioned Michael Palin.
posted by Rhaomi at 2:54 AM on September 3, 2011

To adapt a popular comment from valkyrn when the subject of user killfiles came up a few months ago:

One of the things I like most about MetaFilter is that in many ways it attempts to use the internet and its associated technologies to be a version of real life. Not a better version, not the Web 2.0 version, but as close as possible to a bunch of people in a room, having a conversation, with the added bonus of being able to instantly reference the accumulated media of the internet with no extra effort.

Well, part of real life is that if someone is in the room topics are being discussed which you don't like, you can't delete them from your reality. There they are. Deal with it. Maybe dealing with it means ignoring them--well-adjusted people do this sort of thing all the time--but even ignoring them means acknowledging their existence to the point of making space for them, physically and mentally. You don't necessarily have to talk to about them, or spend any time listening to what they say other people talk about them, but the things they say actually happen and have an effect on others (and you!), and that has to be taken into account.

This requires maturity and a certain amount of virtue (in the classical sense). Which really is the best thing about this place: the mods pretty uniformly resist the temptation to implement technical solutions to problems which boil down to failures of virtue. Sure, they delete a few comments posts, but they do so on a case-by-case basis without imposing any kind of technological prior restraint. They do ban people put a higher bar on hot-button topics, but except for things like spam and self-linking, only after going back-and-forth with them the community about the problematic behavior.

There are certain users topics on this site whose absence I would not mind at all. Some of them are pretty active. So on an almost daily basis, I have to do some version of "Dammit, that guy posted yet another [x] post," or "Hey, [y] is playing to type in going off about [z] again." Every time I see that, I have to decide whether to respond, and if so, how to do so in such a way that will benefit everyone involved. A lot of the time that means not responding. And that's good for me, because I, as a person, have the tendency to say things when I shouldn't. The rest of the time, it means I have to take my time and compose a genuine answer. And that too is good for me.

Killfiles create the illusion that we can delete certain people topics from our world. But we can't. And you know what? Having to deal with those people who ideas that drive us nuts makes us better people. That's right: MetaFilter is structured in such a way that participation has the possibility of improving the moral character of its user base. How many sites on the internet can say that?

It fells like this got through backdoor-like, as a not-very-closely-examined tweak to a different request made a few days after the original implementation. I think if someone asked up-front "can I get a way to block posts with tag X from showing up on the front page," the answer would have been a firm "no," but maybe that's just me.
posted by Rhaomi at 3:12 AM on September 3, 2011

We feel differently about people blocking specific users than we do from allowing people to more readily find threads they might be interested in. While we feel that once there is a discussion that everyone needs to (or should) talk to everyone, we also realistically understand that not everyone participates in every thread. Honestly, I pretty much never participate in the political threads. I don't like them and my participation is usually limited to my moderation of them. However I love the "weird thing uncovered that was previously thought was lost" threads and would love to find them when they appeared even though they're a lot more rare. I very much feel that this is different from killfiles.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:11 AM on September 3, 2011

Rhaomi: It sounds silly, I know, but it feels like people should be presented with all topics on the front page, even if they dislike them or think they would never comment on them, in the same sense people should eat their vegetables or pay their taxes. Being confronted with a variety of issues is a good thing both for members and for the community.

Not silly, this was my very first initial response, thinking it would kill the community aspect of all the variety of voices being present for Front Page Posts/Events, but upon more careful scrutiny and seeing the MyMefi feature was presented as a subsidiary element in the toolbar (all the way in the upper right corner) it seemed de-prioritized enough as a feature that it wouldn't dilute the community by turning into 100k= different version of the front page.

I guess those who come here for only specific elements and subjects, compared to those who not only seek that, but the community element (I learn more from comments sometimes than I do the FPP's themselves) as well could go their separate ways.

I think it needs to be balanced and someone on the back-end needs to watch that the community aspect doesn't become diluted, or inadvertently create hyper stratified sub-communities tag-homesteading.

Or maybe that's good. I don't know, actually. Although I do think new members not getting to know the rest of the community could make for some friction cos they just don't know where people are coming from with their comments...
posted by Skygazer at 10:17 AM on September 3, 2011

It sounds silly, I know, but it feels like people should be presented with all topics on the front page, even if they dislike them or think they would never comment on them, in the same sense people should eat their vegetables or pay their taxes. Being confronted with a variety of issues is a good thing both for members and for the community. - Rhaomi

Not silly to me, either. I had a similiar initial reaction, including the concern of potentially cutting myself off using these options. Short-term personal experience with it has indicated I use MyMeFi when interested in mild entertainment but then revert to the main page when more time and mental agility allows. It's a lot easier than scanning while scrolling the main mentally trying to filter for quick fun and leaving the heavy topics for later. I imagine others will use the new options this way - hopefully a balance to those that become exclusive.

We'll see. I hope it goes well. I love this option. Sometimes I trip and fall into controversal topics when I'm just not up to it, when I should be sticking to kittens and muppets. MyMeFi is a safe page for me.
posted by _paegan_ at 7:56 PM on September 3, 2011