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Ask HN: Why doesn't HN use tags?
Are tags bad or counterproductive? I mean tags like "computer security", "law", "biology" etc. I ask because I am sometimes in the mood to read specific topic rather than just front page. Was curious if this would help new posts get more eyes and also make searching easier. Sometimes I try to find a post I've previously seen and have a harder time even thought i know what "category" it is.
Thanks for reading.
- superasn 8y agoI remember somebody made a site which automatically categorized HN posts based on machine learning. Was there on the homepage of both HN and Product Hunt. Can't find it now as it was hosted on some less used TLD that I can't remember. But that is definitely one way to do it.
- allenleein 8y agoYes me too. I can't find the project, but I remember it is from a hackathon. Does anyone have the link?
- marz0 8y agoHere is the link: https://www.taggernews.com/ https://www.taggernews.com/ and here is the article describing how it was built: http://varianceexplained.org/programming/tagger-news/ http://varianceexplained.org/programming/tagger-news/
- quickthrower2 8y agoThe problem is: who is going to tag? If it is the submitter they may get it wrong. Who will police that? Mods have enough to do. What if the mods tag it? Well they have enough to do! You'd need community moderation like StackOverflow for something like this to work. On HN there is just flagging and upvoting. Flagging for a wrong tag seem OTT though.
- veddox 8y agoI believe part of the philosophy of HN is to keep it all "one community". Although we do have a large range of topics, categorizing them in any way might encourage sub-communities to form.