4 ms·

Tags are superfluous if you have a good search engine. Hierarchy isn't.

guerrilla 5y ago
Yeah, tagging really seems like the job of a file manager (and indexer) rather than a file system. That seems like an easy way to get everything we want without rewriting billions of lines of code that deal with hierarchies.
dredmorbius 5y ago
Tags (or other metadata) are: - A controlled vocabulary. This addresses the problem of numerous terms referring to the same concept, the same terms applying to different concepts, disagreements on spelling or charactersets, and standardisation or cross-references between multiple terms. - Externally applied, subject to authority independent of an author or publisher. This addresses the problem of keyword-stuffing. - Capable of referencing information not within a document itself. Its place of publication, earlier or later versions, cultural context, citations, amongst others. - Can be applied to nontextual media: images, audio, video, data. Tags themselves are not hierarchical. Search is not introspective or contextual.
- Tomte 5y ago
  Tags could be a controlled vocabulary, but in almost all cases they are free-for-all. Archive of Our Own has an interesting scheme, where authors tag their pieces freely, and volunteers behind the scenes enrich those pieces with tags that are indeed from a controlled vocabulary. (They also do other mind-boggling stuff: in those tags they encode all kinds of information, so that you can search for a Kirk-Spock love story where violence is involved and Spock is dominant, and so on…)
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    I could have been clearer, but tags, even in a highly informal process, *are supplied by the reader(s) or curator(s) rather than the author/publisher, at least in the context of organising one's own archive. In that sense, tags are, even if not highly structured, a controlled vocabulary. (I'm not referring to tagging that's provided by a publishing site itself, though yes, that's a fairly common practice. Tagging by a skilled third-party curator or librarian can of course be excellent.)
- civilized 5y ago
  > Search is not introspective What?

Yeah, tagging really seems like the job of a file manager (and indexer) rather than a file system. That seems like an easy way to get everything we want without rewriting billions of lines of code that deal with hierarchies.

dredmorbius 5y ago

Tags (or other metadata) are: - A controlled vocabulary. This addresses the problem of numerous terms referring to the same concept, the same terms applying to different concepts, disagreements on spelling or charactersets, and standardisation or cross-references between multiple terms. - Externally applied, subject to authority independent of an author or publisher. This addresses the problem of keyword-stuffing. - Capable of referencing information not within a document itself. Its place of publication, earlier or later versions, cultural context, citations, amongst others. - Can be applied to nontextual media: images, audio, video, data. Tags themselves are not hierarchical. Search is not introspective or contextual.

Tomte 5y ago
Tags could be a controlled vocabulary, but in almost all cases they are free-for-all. Archive of Our Own has an interesting scheme, where authors tag their pieces freely, and volunteers behind the scenes enrich those pieces with tags that are indeed from a controlled vocabulary. (They also do other mind-boggling stuff: in those tags they encode all kinds of information, so that you can search for a Kirk-Spock love story where violence is involved and Spock is dominant, and so on…)
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  I could have been clearer, but tags, even in a highly informal process, *are supplied by the reader(s) or curator(s) rather than the author/publisher, at least in the context of organising one's own archive. In that sense, tags are, even if not highly structured, a controlled vocabulary. (I'm not referring to tagging that's provided by a publishing site itself, though yes, that's a fairly common practice. Tagging by a skilled third-party curator or librarian can of course be excellent.)
civilized 5y ago
> Search is not introspective What?