Discussion on tagging

[tko_ak]

I know it's turned into a running joke about how quick I am to nag people to properly tag their posts. A good many of you have seen my " Please remember to tag your posts. :)" nudge, and most people are good about fixing it, or remembering in the future

Comments

[iconoclast]

The insistence on tagging is the most anal thing about this community (pun intended) and I don't recall some great groundswell of members demanding it.

[tko_ak]

You may want to read through the comments in this post, then.

And it was a member who e-mailed me suggesting tags, and the mods agreed that it was a good idea.

[tko_ak]

And I might remind you that I've never once nagged you to tag your posts, I just do it for you because it isn't worth the pissing contest (and when you were a mod, I didn't want you creating a bunch of inappropriate tags).

[anarchys_savior]

I don't ever use them, which is probably why I have such a hard time remembering to tag them.

[dunv_i]

I personally don't use them, but I totally get why tagging would be god-send for the mods themselves. It doesn't hurt us the members to tag, and it does hurt you the mods to not tag, so I say keep the tags.

[star_cabaret]

I use them, especially when I"m trying to see if something's been brought up before. Sometimes I wish we had other tags.

[tko_ak]

Such as?

[star_cabaret]

I complained about it sometimes when I posted before, but I don't remember any of those cases now, and I don't have the time to go digging through the community history. Sorry.

[tko_ak]

I know I've added some suggestions you made, such as "beating a dead horse." I did come across when you asked for a "law enforcement" tag and I thought it wouldn't be used enough when "harassment," "hate crime," "violence," and "victimization" would suffice.

[keito_f]

I think tags are good, though I had problems at first because I could not see the list of accepted tags when viewing the posts on my friend's page. I finally figured out that I can see them if I go directly to the GSA_LJ page.

I would agree that some are redundant and could be removed. United States definitely seems to be one that is overly broad and good to remove.

I would like to see some sort of hierarchy, but I don't think LJ has a mechanism for it. For example, clicking on "law" would bring up not just those tagged with "law" but also "lawsuit" and anything else that might be sub-category of law. If LJ does have that option, it would be nice because you would not have to have as many tags per post.

It seems to me that you mentioned a while back that there was a limit to how many posts could be tagged with a given tag. What happens after, say, "marriage" reaches the limit? Do the old post just lose their tags, or do you need a different tag for new posts?

[tko_ak]

The tag button should bring up a list of them, as well. But I understand that there's a learning curve. I know there was one with me. And if you can reference the link I provided in this post, you can see them that way as well

[keito_f]

I would say better to use "marriage" then "gay marriage" since it is the broader term and might include issue that relate to say the trans community that people might feel does not quite fit under "gay marriage."

I would suggest that if it gets to it and new posts need a new tag to just add "2" so you have lawsuit2. It may look kind of awkward but it would be clear to people that it was the same tag, just more recent posts.

[tko_ak]

I searched and apparently you can have 1,000 entries per tag. So we're fine for awhile anyway.

I just spent quite awhile on removing the "marriage" tag and merging it with "gay marriage." I actually agree with you that "marriage" is better because it's broader (and I came across a handful of posts tagged as "marriage" that weren't gay). However, there were 227 posts under the "gay marriage" tag, and only 70 or so under "marriage." I went with keeping the one that is most used, which saved me a lot of time.