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These are very nearly the exact opposite of the tagging ideas/motives on del.icio.us, an early popular system with tagging. There were lots of people who made s

by pvg 4y ago

These are very nearly the exact opposite of the tagging ideas/motives on del.icio.us, an early popular system with tagging. There were lots of people who made similar arguments at the time as well! I thought they were wrong then and nothing has really appeared along the lines of what you're describing to convince me otherwise but it's probably worth taking more whacks at.

joshu 4y ago
We did suggest tags as the intersection of "tags used by others for this url" and "tags you have used in the past" to increase cohesiveness.
- pvg 4y ago
  Hmm yeah, kinda, or at least I remember it slightly differently - that the sort of 'winning point' for it was that it was useful for individual users because it helps you pick out tags you already have or add a new tag you didn't have, plus it tells you something about the url. The purposes overlap, of course and it's been a while. The thing above is much closer to what some of the librarians were really into.
  - joshu 4y ago
    oh definitely. lots of librarians campaigning for strict rules around tag use etc
caseyross 4y ago
Ah, interesting! I never used del.icio.us myself, but from what I understand, it's fairly similar to Instagram (for example) in how tags work, optimizing for ease of use rather than ease of finding specific content. In my opinion, this is almost certainly the right decision for any platform where "absurdly detailed search" is not job #1, and I'm pretty sure I would have argued the same way as you did. That said, having seen some of the centralized, intricate tagging systems out there, that let you filter down from Earth to one specific ant in the blink of an eye, that's what I think of when I think of "tagging" that's really effective. YMMV, but I would argue that if you can't type in 10 different tags and get 1 result that's exactly what you're looking for, tags aren't really delivering on their promise.
- joshu 4y ago
  no. tags were a separate field, and you were shown the tags you used as prominently as the things themselves. note that it was built as a memory aid so that you had a chance of finding something again later. your idea that it needs be exact, perfect, and precise or it won’t work is silly.
  - caseyross 4y ago
    Ok, after reading this and also your top-level comment, seems we're talking about the two different types of tagging ("personal curation" vs "collaborative") which you list in that comment. That makes more sense. Definitely agree that if you're mainly tagging for your future self, you can derive tons of value without constraints. Whereas if you have people tagging for others, that needs more support. Although, if you're so inclined, you could also view these as a continuum --- with "personal" tagging being the apex of centralized consensus, and having to increasingly labor for consensus with every added user in the system.
gryn 4y ago
image boards like danbooru and similar websites are an example of the things mentioned by the parent comment. and from my personal experience they are the best implementation of tags I've seen on the internet. they are not perfect and still have lot of room to improve on but they are way better than what's used and available elsewhere. they have their own description, their get moderated, other people can add tags, they can report them, you can alias tags, see related tags, and get feedback on them. disclaimer: most of these image board are NSFW.
dredmorbius 4y ago
Commonly called a folksonomy. These are easy to establish, but can be quite difficult to maintain and rationalise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy
- pvg 4y ago
  Commonly called a folksonomy. Yeah, it's not, really. And thankfully.
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    How so not? del.icio.us is specifically listed as an example. (I'm aware that you're more than casually familiar with del.icio.us. I'm just confused by your response.)
    - pvg 4y ago
      It is but nobody involved in making deli.cio.us used it (del predates it, too). The term was popular for a bit at the time and has now mostly gone out of use. Unsurprisingly, being a bit of a clunker.
      - dredmorbius 4y ago
        So ... del.icio.us's tagging wasn't used? Or the make-up-your-own tagging wasn't used? Are you doing anything related these days?
        pvg 4y ago
        It's two things, really, one is that 'folksonomy' was a term of its time, like, I dunno, 'blogosphere' or 'microformats' and is similarly obsolete. The other is that there were lots of people who thought or hoped that del.icio.us-style tags would lead to some sort of useful or interesting taxonomy or ontology, either emergent or by more prescriptive means (as in the initiating comment above) and that didn't really happen, perhaps because it wasn't (for the most part) what the tags were for. 'Foksonomy' is terminology that came from that line of thinking.

by pvg 4y ago

joshu 4y ago

We did suggest tags as the intersection of "tags used by others for this url" and "tags you have used in the past" to increase cohesiveness.

pvg 4y ago
Hmm yeah, kinda, or at least I remember it slightly differently - that the sort of 'winning point' for it was that it was useful for individual users because it helps you pick out tags you already have or add a new tag you didn't have, plus it tells you something about the url. The purposes overlap, of course and it's been a while. The thing above is much closer to what some of the librarians were really into.
- joshu 4y ago
  oh definitely. lots of librarians campaigning for strict rules around tag use etc

caseyross 4y ago

Ah, interesting! I never used del.icio.us myself, but from what I understand, it's fairly similar to Instagram (for example) in how tags work, optimizing for ease of use rather than ease of finding specific content. In my opinion, this is almost certainly the right decision for any platform where "absurdly detailed search" is not job #1, and I'm pretty sure I would have argued the same way as you did. That said, having seen some of the centralized, intricate tagging systems out there, that let you filter down from Earth to one specific ant in the blink of an eye, that's what I think of when I think of "tagging" that's really effective. YMMV, but I would argue that if you can't type in 10 different tags and get 1 result that's exactly what you're looking for, tags aren't really delivering on their promise.

joshu 4y ago
no. tags were a separate field, and you were shown the tags you used as prominently as the things themselves. note that it was built as a memory aid so that you had a chance of finding something again later. your idea that it needs be exact, perfect, and precise or it won’t work is silly.
- caseyross 4y ago
  Ok, after reading this and also your top-level comment, seems we're talking about the two different types of tagging ("personal curation" vs "collaborative") which you list in that comment. That makes more sense. Definitely agree that if you're mainly tagging for your future self, you can derive tons of value without constraints. Whereas if you have people tagging for others, that needs more support. Although, if you're so inclined, you could also view these as a continuum --- with "personal" tagging being the apex of centralized consensus, and having to increasingly labor for consensus with every added user in the system.

gryn 4y ago

image boards like danbooru and similar websites are an example of the things mentioned by the parent comment. and from my personal experience they are the best implementation of tags I've seen on the internet. they are not perfect and still have lot of room to improve on but they are way better than what's used and available elsewhere. they have their own description, their get moderated, other people can add tags, they can report them, you can alias tags, see related tags, and get feedback on them. disclaimer: most of these image board are NSFW.

dredmorbius 4y ago

Commonly called a folksonomy. These are easy to establish, but can be quite difficult to maintain and rationalise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy

pvg 4y ago
Commonly called a folksonomy. Yeah, it's not, really. And thankfully.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  How so not? del.icio.us is specifically listed as an example. (I'm aware that you're more than casually familiar with del.icio.us. I'm just confused by your response.)
  - pvg 4y ago
    It is but nobody involved in making deli.cio.us used it (del predates it, too). The term was popular for a bit at the time and has now mostly gone out of use. Unsurprisingly, being a bit of a clunker.
    - dredmorbius 4y ago
      So ... del.icio.us's tagging wasn't used? Or the make-up-your-own tagging wasn't used? Are you doing anything related these days?
      - pvg 4y ago
        It's two things, really, one is that 'folksonomy' was a term of its time, like, I dunno, 'blogosphere' or 'microformats' and is similarly obsolete. The other is that there were lots of people who thought or hoped that del.icio.us-style tags would lead to some sort of useful or interesting taxonomy or ontology, either emergent or by more prescriptive means (as in the initiating comment above) and that didn't really happen, perhaps because it wasn't (for the most part) what the tags were for. 'Foksonomy' is terminology that came from that line of thinking.