@Setanta,
I have no qualm with wanting to point that out, but tags are forums, and tagging the topics also has the effect of making special forums for it, and makes the threads more prominent.
It's built with the intention of serving as your signal of quality. The topics you wish to save and categorize. Eventually, as features are built on top of this data you may find the tags less useful. For example, one thing we are exploring to make more customized topic listings is to have the ability to include/exclude tags from your view. That way, those who don't like word games can just unsubscribe from the whole tag instead of voting them all down. Anywho, one of the possible ways it will work is to use your tag history to make the default grid for you (which you'd then customize). With topics like these prominent in your tags I think you'd have a fairly unpleasant topic grid.
A "topic grid" and other such techy navel-gazing is of little interest to me. As such, it does me no harm, and i don't see that anyone else is harmed by this, either. If ever i were to make use of it, it would be to illustrate the extent to which Zippy here obsesses over conspiracy charges about an alleged special relationship between Israel and the United States.
But i don't really care about the tags, and see no harm in playing with them. Once again, i'm not the only one who does it, so i don't see any reason why i should be the subject of commentary about "silly" tags, while others get a pass.
Here is a set of tags from a thread by Gungasnake:
Snake Oil, Pseudo-Science, American Humor, Evoloserism, Palaeontology
--i am responsible for the pseudo-science tag, and it's an accurate tag, with a plausible basis. I don't know who is responsible for the palaeontology tag, although the spelling suggests that it's not an American. The evoloserism tag is clearly done by Gunga himself, who uses that term ad naseum. Both snake oil and American humor are tags by someone other than me, and i suspect, are not by Gunga either, who, incredibly, seems to take himself seriously when he peddles hilarious theses such as are embodied in a thread claiming that dinosaurs and humans were contemporaries.
I don't see that any harm is done by these tags, either, except the palaeontology tag, which is misleading as hell. I also haven't seen anyone running around like chicken little over the use of tags such as snake oil or evoloserism. So, i neither regret nor apologize for having tagged Zippy's obsessional thread as i have done, nor see it as a problem for anyone but Zippy, and then only if he lets it bother him.
@Setanta,
I didn't have any of those tags in mind, a while back there were a couple of tags that were being used systemically enough that they were becoming prominent though. One example was tagging "guns" onto all topics by certain members whether or not the topic was about guns. It was an obvious response to gun obsession but it was making the gun tag climb higher and higher (till the algorithm was changed to reflect unique users).
In any case, it's not a big deal because tags like this will always be used and we'll just have to work on minimizing the less useful effects it has, my point was just that the tags serve the community for categorization and it does have an effect.
A useful tag has an effect, and what is or is not useful is also a matter of opinion. For example, if i cared enough to make the effort (which i don't) i could tag every Foxfyre thread entailing hysterical charges of the persecution of christians so that i could find them all every time i accuse her of having an hysterical response to alleged persecution. In such a case, "hysterical christians" would be a useful tag--to me at least.
I'm not responsible for your "gun" tag. Have you hunted down whoever is responsible, to confront them about it--publicly? I doubt it.
@Setanta,
Setanta wrote:But i don't really care about the tags, and see no harm in playing with them. Once again, i'm not the only one who does it, so i don't see any reason why i should be the subject of commentary about "silly" tags, while others get a pass.
I'm not singling you out, I've said this over and over every time it's come up and wrote about it on the blog in November:
http://blog.able2know.org/2008/11/22/tags-on-profile-page/
I haven't been following your tags and am not commenting on any of them specifically, I'm just saying that the tags don't just influence the thread or the author, or even the tagger. They have a collective influence on the community and I'm just trying to be an evangelist for the most useful tagging.
To give a simple example: the related topics at the bottom of each thread are driven by tags, and the more a thread is tagged the more likely it is to appear. So tagging stupid threads at all promotes them, regardless of whether the thread deserves any particular tag. On each tag page, you also see featured topics that work in a similar way.
So feel free to tag however you'd like. I'm just here to evangelize the good uses (tagging good topics with tags that serve as good forums) because tags were new to a lot of people here, and the explanations have helped produce more useful meta data in the past.
Well, apart from feeling that an expression such as "meta data" is a dubious candidates for combination with a modifier such as "useful"--i have no objection to any of that. I also doubt that tagging Zippy's "i hate Israel" and "i hate Jews" type of threads does any harm to tagging system, and in fact, may constitute a public service.
@Setanta,
Setanta wrote:A useful tag has an effect, and what is or is not useful is also a matter of opinion. For example, if i cared enough to make the effort (which i don't) i could tag every Foxfyre thread entailing hysterical charges of the persecution of christians so that i could find them all every time i accuse her of having an hysterical response to alleged persecution. In such a case, "hysterical christians" would be a useful tag--to me at least.
I understand, but I'm making the case that the collective usefulness over individual usefulness. Because the tags become forums for everyone, and because they drive content to prominence that can be less useful to others.
Quote:I'm not responsible for your "gun" tag. Have you hunted down whoever is responsible, to confront them about it--publicly? I doubt it.
I'm not here to try to shame people about tags, or try to stop them. I'm not here to confront you about your tags either (like I've said, I have no idea what you use). I'm just here to advocate tags that are useful to others because the more people that understand them the more valuable tags we tend to get.
@Setanta,
Setanta wrote:Well, apart from feeling that an expression such as "meta data" is a dubious candidates for combination with a modifier such as "useful"--i have no objection to any of that. I also doubt that tagging Zippy's "i hate Israel" and "i hate Jews" type of threads does any harm to tagging system, and in fact, may constitute a public service.
Maybe if you thought about it like this:
The old software's forums are now tags. Would you have advocated a "I hate Jews" forum on the old software? Wouldn't, say, an "antisemitism" forum be more appropriate?
I personally don't think that would be useful, it would have the effect of attracting more of that kind of content but if you still don't see any negative effect, that's fine. I've had my say for anyone else who might be making up their mind about tags and like I've said, the tags like that will always exist, and hopefully enough users use valuable tags to preserve the usefulness of the topic categorization.
My point is just that tags are forums, so for those who want to help create useful forums please think of that when you tag.
As opposed to an "antisemitism" forum, yes, i would consider an "I hate Jews" forum to be useful, as being a case of calling a spade a spade.
@Robert Gentel,
Quote:My point is just that tags are forums, so for those who want to help create useful forums please think of that when you tag.
As Set pointed out, usefulness is in the eye of the beholder. As a programmer you should understand that better than anyone. The end user is the final say on what is useful. Because you programmed with a specific direction in mind doesn't mean the users will or should abide by your intention in how tags should be used.
I think the tags are funny and enjoy reading the more ridiculous ones.
I don't care if you tag my thread with something stupid. Go right ahead.
@Bella Dea,
Start a thread, start a thread ! ! !
I wanna tag it . . .
Okay,
I give up. Go ahead and change my "Tags" to what ever you want you little... "tag"
Robert Gentel you wont get that little tag to change his mind. He always claims to know better than anyone else, even when most of the time he's wrong. Its like talking to a brick wall.
@Bella Dea,
Uh, where is your thread?
@Bella Dea,
Yeah, i went out an' found it for myself . . .
Sorry about the delay . . . i had takin' care of dogs business to attend to . . .
@parados,
parados wrote:As Set pointed out, usefulness is in the eye of the beholder. As a programmer you should understand that better than anyone. The end user is the final say on what is useful. Because you programmed with a specific direction in mind doesn't mean the users will or should abide by your intention in how tags should be used.
I understand that perfectly well parados, that doesn't mean that some tags aren't more useful to the majority than others. The ones using them for anonymous comments are in a very small minority and I clarify their purpose because they won't be anonymous forever and some might change their minds based on what it is intended for.
Others won't, I understand that and expect that. But I'll still advocate helpful use cases. I've spent an awful lot of time providing relevant tags, and if more people did the same it'd mean less work for me.
