this is exciting! thanks for developing this feature O.net team - i'm interested to navigate the "new" tension of maintaining my del.icio.us tags and/org developing something separate here for the content i'm tracking. its a really important feature. thanks for the feature and the process :)

Good news!!!

:) nmw

ps: I'm not a member of sitedev -- was that the link you wanted to drop here?

nmw said:

...

ps: I'm not a member of sitedev -- was that the link you wanted to drop here?

Sorry - fixed.

Jim Carroll said:

nmw said:

I've got a question Haney: Was there a "reasoning" not "rolling out" tagging in personal news -- or was there another reason not to do so?

This is my bad, Norbert. There's a tiny bit of code subtlety with News being like another blog, but not being in a group. I notice It's not explicitly in the internal May release plan, but I think that's my oversight too.

nmw said:

I have no problem with it: I feel that group collaboration is much more interesting than personal blogs -- indeed, I refuse to give discussions posted in personal news any feedback. For much the same reason that other people do not appreciate receiving negative feedback on personal news, I feel it ought to be a "evaluation free" zone. Likewise, it might be arguable that "meta-tagging" is also not exactly appropriate in a personal space.

Nicely transparent to see who has used which tag/term. Although there's some ambiguity.

For instance ...

I tagged Haney's Net2 conference post as "Net2", "Conference" others used "free". When I linked through "free" - expecting a list of users of the "free" tag - I see the list of everyone who has tagged the post rather than those using "free".

Peter Rees said:

Nicely transparent to see who has used which tag/term. Although there's some ambiguity.

For instance ...

I tagged Haney's Net2 conference post as "Net2", "Conference" others used "free". When I linked through "free" - expecting a list of users of the "free" tag - I see the list of everyone who has tagged the post rather than those using "free".

Good eye Peter. I noticed this too. The way I justify it to myself is that the particular row in the tags results is specific to the particular item. That item has been tagged by x number of people, and here those people are.

I do think that it would make sense for these rows to show the popularity of the item for _only_ the particular tag. This would change the wording to: Tagged with 'peace' by:

The nice thing about the current method is that a popular item tagged with both 'peace' and 'awareness' will show with the same popularity in both tags results, where otherwise it might be popular with regard to peace, and less popular with regard to awareness. Hmmm...

Thanks for your patience while we polish the details.

Perhaps it could read:

Tagged with 'peace' by: a, b, c and also by d, e, f.

Is that worse or better?

Also noted that personal news is exempt from the tagging protocol.

For instance, Mark Grimes revelations from the Portland Wiser Commons session aren't taggable - a pity.

Peter Rees said:

Also noted that personal news is exempt from the tagging protocol.

Right, do we plan to make it possible to tag personal news.

At the early blush of tagging at O.net, find I'm catagorising for my future reference.

Realising if I use terms such as "interesting", "offensive", "agree", or "off-topic" ... I'm moving beyond categories and into feedback. In the context of using the "tag" tab on my profile page ... a revealing outcome.

I'd have to accept these terms might appear on the O.net homepage. Correct?

Right, assuming someone else used the same tag. That's an interesting problem - I encourage members not to use tags as feedback in this way but I can see how it's tempting.

I'm curious how many people are using tags to re-find content for yourself vs. point out content you want others to see.

Haney Armstrong said:

I'm curious how many people are using tags to re-find content for yourself vs. point out content you want others to see.

this was why in some of my earlier suggestions I was wishing :)

that we will eventually have a 'Tag It' (for personal reminders) as well as a 'Index It Tag' (with mechanism for adding the linked post to 'Index list/s') which we can develop together as groups or individually

Brad - now that we are officially taking suggestions for more features - could you re-post that to the "point to content" discussion? Thanks!

ok, give me an hour, and I'l try to post something good ;)

curious,

does the development team have ideas for developing or indentifying different tag groups via the tag color?

or is there any other ideas referancing the tag color?

Peter Rees said:

Realising if I use terms such as "interesting", "offensive", "agree", or "off-topic" ... I'm moving beyond categories and into feedback. In the context of using the "tag" tab on my profile page ... a revealing outcome.

One possible future feature for tagging is to help people discover others with similar interests. The premise is that people like you and John Berger are both tagging with 'social-enterprise' often. If you didn't already know each other, we could introduce you through some site feature.

Generally, finding people who use similar tags often might be a good way find others with similar interests (Debbie Gleason called them 'passions')

It wouldn't do to have you to be grouped with other people who are tagging with offensive and off-topic.

Jim Carroll said:

It wouldn't do to have you to be grouped with other people who are tagging with offensive and off-topic.

There is an interesting distinction between "books" vs. "records": Whereas books are generally "about" a topic, records are "evidence" of some activity. This is a very crucial difference about how information retrieval systems built for libraries and archives differ.

The reason I bring it up here is to that Jim's statement is about "off-topic", but it is not an instance of "off-topic" -- do others feel it would be appropriate to tag Jim's post with "off-topic" (because it is about "off-topic") or would it be inappropriate to tag Jim's post with "off-topic" (because it is not an instance of "off-topic")?

nmw said:

There is an interesting distinction between "books" vs. "records": Whereas books are generally "about" a topic, records are "evidence" of some activity. This is a very crucial difference about how information retrieval systems built for libraries and archives differ.

I believe that books and records are both evidence of the activity of their creators. While records can represent a record of a live activity, both are often assembled over time with judicious editing. Both represent expressions of events external to the medium; that is to say they both strive to entertain with stories fictional and non.

Only if you take music to be the notes played, and not the joy, angst and stories that led to the music's creation can you make a distinction like this.

And that's why I think if you click on 'awesome' in Amazon's tag cloud you can find books and music (and DVDs) with equal efficiency.

It is, perhaps, a too fine distinction for people who are not focused on information retrieval to understand.

A book about the topic "driver's license" is significantly different than the actual "driver's license" (and the "information" these two types of documents convey is essentially different).

It would, nonetheless, interest me to know whether Jim's post above should be tagged "off-topic" (as that was what it was about) or not (because it was not itself "off-topic").

nmw said:

It is, perhaps, a too fine distinction for people who are not focused on information retrieval to understand.

My point exactly! Tags are not a formal information retrieval mechanism. Well said, and perhaps tags should remain something that have utility no matter how they are interpreted (or understood.) The term Folksonomy itself seemed somewhat awkward to me four months ago, but now I'm quite fond of it.

nmw, why would you tag a post "off-topic" if the tag was to refer to an instance of a post that was off topic? why tag a post "offensive"?

these kinds of labels, imo work against the utility of tagging, which i understand to be a way to ease the task of finding internet pages or posts by topic, geography, author, date etc that a) one user wants to access again later or b) thinks others interested in the item might want to find.

tags imo are not formal metadata ie a "convention." i too like the term folksonomy.

Jim Carroll said:

Tags are not a formal information retrieval mechanism.

Jim, could you please clarify what you mean? What is:

• a "formal" information retrieval system?
• an "informal" information retrieval system?

I have no idea whatsoever about the distinction you are implicitly making -- hopefully you can clear that up.

The term Folksonomy itself seemed somewhat awkward to me four months ago, but now I'm quite fond of it.

"Folksonomy" is another term that is very unclear and is often bandied about in various settings with verious meanings. It might also help alot to clarify what this refers to.

Lars Hasselblad Torres said:

nmw, why would you tag a post "off-topic" if the tag was to refer to an instance of a post that was off topic? why tag a post "offensive"?

these kinds of labels, imo work against the utility of tagging, which i understand to be a way to ease the task of finding internet pages or posts by topic, geography, author, date etc that a) one user wants to access again later or b) thinks others interested in the item might want to find.

tags imo are not formal metadata ie a "convention." i too like the term folksonomy.

i would say nmw, that in part tagging something "helpful" is far too subjective - helpful how? for whom?

i would restrict my tags to compact descriptions of the content in words that i'd remember and be likely to use again - and presumably through the socializing effects of common language, others would be as well...?

i'd also argue (and agree) generally, that a tag like "helpful" is, shall we say, "redundant" (or not helpful?): the fact that it is tagged suggests by itself the information is helpful, or why else would it be tagged?

conversely, if an item is offensive, one would assume, generally, that it is better left to dry in the sun. tagging it "offensive" drags it indoors again ;)

but what if you're looking for "inspirational literature"?