Tags now avaible!

January 18, 2005 1:16 AM

tagging comes to metafilter test post for the tagging system
posted by mathowie at 1:06 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Well I know my interest is certainly piqued. Dish, dish!
posted by squirrel to Feature Requests at 1:16 AM (38 comments total)

Here, by the way, for those with question marks hanging above their heads right now.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:17 AM on January 18, 2005

Yes, thanks, stav. I saw that post and was all stoked to try out the new pony. What's the tagging system about, Matt? ETA?
posted by squirrel at 1:28 AM on January 18, 2005

Ooh! Delicious Tasty!
posted by bdave at 1:30 AM on January 18, 2005

Tags here will be hard on the *filters. But cool!
posted by dhruva at 1:35 AM on January 18, 2005

Here's a starter page for it, with live links to that thread.

I've got to add some data checks to my test forms, but I should get this launched sometime tomorrow night (here's hoping tomorrow I have insomnia like I had today).
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:46 AM on January 18, 2005

I was going to do this for Ask MetaFilter months ago, but there are so many changes necessary for Ask MetaFilter that I wanted to test out the biggest parts on other sections first. But if all goes well, this should be coming to Ask Mefi soon after.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:47 AM on January 18, 2005

Thanks, Matt! I hope you didn't mind my endlessly chasing you for this particular pony.

*takes credit for the whole thing*
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 2:00 AM on January 18, 2005

Nice. Thanks Matt!
posted by LeeJay at 2:49 AM on January 18, 2005

delicious! :)
posted by taz at 3:26 AM on January 18, 2005

Cool...

*watches the database server strain under the left, inner and outer join queries need to run the tag system*
posted by ModestyBCatt at 5:59 AM on January 18, 2005

*weeps with joy*

Can we RSS the tags? Hooray, thanks stav, er, Matt!

*watches the database server strain under the left, inner and outer join queries need to run the tag system*

Meh. I think the db would cache these queries well, since they're not user-specific.

Here's a question- can only the poster tag a post? Could I tag posts myself for my own private collection (which would, of course, lead to user-specific queries...)?
posted by mkultra at 7:27 AM on January 18, 2005

sweet, i came in here to ask if we can have tags! maybe also we can steal the sensible erection's rating system so each thread doesnt have to turn into a raging debate about its good and bad qualities and be saved for un-meta comments.
posted by GleepGlop at 8:13 AM on January 18, 2005

In the words of Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein:

IT!
COULD!
WORK!!

I can't wait to see how this is implemented. Matt, you continue to rock.
posted by chicobangs at 8:30 AM on January 18, 2005

Is this the kind of thing that will be available on all 3 sites? There's a lot of demand for it in AskMe.
posted by scarabic at 8:38 AM on January 18, 2005

Duh. Don't mind me.
posted by scarabic at 8:39 AM on January 18, 2005

For those of us who are computer illiterate (me), what is a "tagging system" and how does it enhance our lives?
posted by Juicylicious at 9:34 AM on January 18, 2005

Juicy, it allows you to assign keywords to each post. So say your most recent MeFi thread about the magic pill could be tagged aka classified using the following keywords: drugs marijuana medicine. Now clicking on the keywords will take you to a page that lists other posts that were about the same topic.
posted by riffola at 10:22 AM on January 18, 2005

Um sorry the tags I picked for your thread missed the main topics. Anyway I hope it helps you understand how it works and why it's helpful.
posted by riffola at 10:26 AM on January 18, 2005

Juicy, the use of tagging in web applications has been a meme around here for a while. Also, on preview, what riffola said.
posted by fatllama at 10:27 AM on January 18, 2005

[Caution: possibly dumb question from someone who is only semi web-literate ahead]

Can tags be retroactively applied to posts, or only at the time of posting? Be nice if they could be applied retroactively.
posted by googly at 10:55 AM on January 18, 2005

It breaks if the tags don't exist. But I'm sure you knew that already.
posted by smackfu at 10:55 AM on January 18, 2005

I think I'll let anyone add tags to their own posts, retroactively.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:10 AM on January 18, 2005

Sweet. Thomason Auto Group post, you're getting dusted off, baby!
posted by cortex at 11:16 AM on January 18, 2005

"I think I'll let anyone add tags to their own posts, retroactively"

*plans to add "asshat" tag to all his posts*
posted by mr_crash_davis at 11:28 AM on January 18, 2005

I think letting people tag their own posts is brilliant, because people are nothing if not self-centered.
posted by smackfu at 11:34 AM on January 18, 2005

Just think of the inevitable metadata in-jokes... *shudder*
posted by fatllama at 11:55 AM on January 18, 2005

Let's start clamoring now for Pony 2: The Reckoning, in which Matt will provide semantic meta-tagging to allow the delineation of synonymous and antonymous and maybe also totally arbitrary groupings and relationships among the tags.

Or at the very least, some sort of means to deal with the inevitable spelling and word-choice variants on the same idea would be good. [vibrating] and [vibrates] and [broom] all seem to be aiming for the same notion, ferexample, and providing some sort of unifying mechanism for such groups would help address some of the semantic bifurcation that'll come from thousands of different people tagging as they please.
posted by cortex at 12:10 PM on January 18, 2005

Heh, I like antonymous tagging. "Which tag would describe this post the worst?"
posted by smackfu at 12:28 PM on January 18, 2005

Yes!

Thank you Uncle Matt this is the bestest pony ever!!!!
posted by grouse at 2:38 PM on January 18, 2005

Maybe I'm a negative bastard, but wouldn't it be nice if you could tell Metafilter to display all posts except those with certain tags....
posted by Jimbob at 3:35 PM on January 18, 2005

I think that tagging your own work (threads) in this case, is a start, but that the true power of del.icio.us and flickr are that anyone can tag any piece of content.

Just saying that I'm looking at this gift pony's teeth and this badboy is ripe for some equestrian orthodontetry. Dig?

Tags are better when the folksonomy can just devleop. If I take the time to go through my posts, which I will, because there are like 5 of them, I could be stymied because I won't know what to put. I won't know best, or to put a finer word on it, completely, what tags would be best to bring them up with similar posts. But others will if we let them help in the tagging work.

Hrm. I don' want to suggest approving tags everytime someone suggests one. But I don't think free-tagging will work well for us here....
posted by zpousman at 3:45 PM on January 18, 2005

So, with the example given by this post -- which so kindly fried my eyeballs, btw, thanks Matt -- which shows the tags inside the post: will the tags ever be shown outside as well, on the front page? Because that would be nifty.
posted by contessa at 3:49 PM on January 18, 2005

zpousman, I think you need to compare this more with flickr than delicious. Delicious is great because people are linking to anything, even the same thing (...and 139 other people...), all with everyone's own personal metadata and that's great, but not quite what metafilter is like.

MetaFilter's more like flickr where you contribute a unique thing like a photograph (in our case a post about something that hasn't been posted before), and then you describe it yourself. Flickr adds the additional thing where your friends/contacts can also tag stuff, and I could exploit the contacts functionality here to do that.

But I think fundamentally, even though MetaFilter has links to stuff getting keywords, it shouldn't be compared with the free-for-all service delicious and more like the everyone-tags-their-unique-stuff-themselves Flickr.

Make sense?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:51 PM on January 18, 2005

yes, tags coming soon to the front page.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:51 PM on January 18, 2005

fatllama, I know that people have been posting about tags for awhile now, I've just never investigated what they are since I'm not a computer-type. I thought that I should learn more now that they will be available here.
posted by Juicylicious at 4:00 PM on January 18, 2005

Oooooh it's farky. But it should help with searching/managing information, so hopefully it proves useful.

Please, just tell me the first post to use this pony was not the Hasselhoffian Recursion!
posted by cosmonik at 4:29 PM on January 18, 2005

Tag this pony fabulous!
posted by CunningLinguist at 4:56 PM on January 18, 2005

cosmonik, you just cracked me up.
posted by squirrel at 6:00 AM on January 19, 2005