The 'favorites' section, tags, and the future

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Hey! Have you ever used the "Favorites" feature on the Forge? There's a link up top that says "Favorites" and a link at the bottom of every topic that says "Add to favorites". You can keep a list of all your favorite topics.

Well, I've been changing that. There's this crazy new "tag" thing going on on the Internet. Basically, all sorts of information is being kept not in a hierarchy of categories, but in a flat organization scheme where every piece of data has multiple tags. These tags group like info together.

I've implemented this in our favorites. Now, when you add a favorite, you can specific one-word tags that it's associated with. There's a good thread right now about Sorcerer and dinosaur kings and awesomeness. I've listed it as a favorite of mine with the tags "sorcerer dinosaurs homebrew". (You use spaces to separate tags.)

Now, that's not that interesting. Next steps are, though:

Step 1) Tags are links. You can see all topics anyone has tagged as related to, for example, "epherema". Cool.

Step 2) Make the search screen incorporate this. We know our search sucks. With this, if you participate in tagging, our search gets better.

Step 3) Related topics. Using an algorithm I've made up, you can get recommended related topics whenever reading a thread. If this thread has the tag "epherema" and 10 people have tagged another thread with "epherema," you'll see a link to it. The most tags it has in common, the more related it is.

Anyway, I'd love comments. This is obviously only half way to completion, but I think it will make the Forge an even sharper tool than it currently is. With the wealth of information we have here, a new way to organize it is long past due.

[Judd]

I absolutely use favorites.  Should I save 'em?  Will they soon be gone?

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Oh, hell, no. They're still there. Soon, you will be able to edit old ones to add new tags, too.

[Keith Senkowski]

So um Clinton, when will this be up and running?  I totally dig the whole XML way of thinking (creating tags on the fly when you need that shit).  It makes sense and I wish more shit worked this way.

But then again I am almost as big a computer geek as you so...
Keith

[Clinton R. Nixon]

So um Clinton, when will this be up and running?  I totally dig the whole XML way of thinking (creating tags on the fly when you need that shit).  It makes sense and I wish more shit worked this way.

But then again I am almost as big a computer geek as you so...
Keith

It is up and running - try it now. Thing is, only adding tags works right now.

I'm writing the code in between responding, so... the rest will be done when I'm done.

[Keith Senkowski]

It is up and running - try it now. Thing is, only adding tags works right now.

I'm writing the code in between responding, so... the rest will be done when I'm done.

Cool.  This tool is either a mad genius way of helping to organize this fucker or it is only going to spread it out even more.  Either way it is a very good idea...

Keith

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Editing tags now works. Feel free to go back and edit your old favorites to add tags.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Also, to note - and I should put up some explanatory text - tags are one-word. I'm noticing some phrases in there.

The one-word thing is on purpose. You can hack it by using, for example, "conspiracy.of.shadows". You could use underscores or dashes or something as well.

[clehrich]

I'm a bit confused.  So the tagging that I do, for my personal convenience, is then searchable by others?  Are the tags provided names, for example "these are Clehrich's tags," or are they just added to the threads or posts?  So for example, could I search for all of your tags, or do a tag-search and find out how you're tagging, or is this just part of the general pool of terms?  I sort of started to tinker, but then found that I couldn't figure out what the implications were, so stopped.

I'm convinced that this is a cool and nifty thing, but I'm not really quite savvy enough to figure out how to use it.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I'm a bit confused.  So the tagging that I do, for my personal convenience, is then searchable by others?  Are the tags provided names, for example "these are Clehrich's tags," or are they just added to the threads or posts?  So for example, could I search for all of your tags, or do a tag-search and find out how you're tagging, or is this just part of the general pool of terms?  I sort of started to tinker, but then found that I couldn't figure out what the implications were, so stopped.

Is it searchable by others? Yes.

The tags go into a general pool, but belong to you. If you and I and Pete T. Jimcracky alll give a thread the tag of "ephemera," it'll show up as three ephemera tags on the thread. Also, each of our favorites pages will also show that thread with our own personal tags on it.

There can be no negative implications from tagging a post. You can't "mis-tag" or something.

This is somewhat hard to explain, I guess. It's a very simple concept, but one we don't have a good vocabulary for. Here's two examples that should help:

To see this concept in practical action, visit the website http://del.icio.us.

To see this concept described by those smarter than me, see the Wikipedia entry on folksonomy.

[joshua neff]

This is great. I've been tagging my favorite old threads this morning. Thanks, Clinton!

[Christopher Weeks]

This is wicked cool.  But check this for me:

"Favorites" don't even have to be particularly favorite to be worth tagging now.  I could tag every thread in Actual Play and the Anvilwerks fora that are about TSoY with 'tsoy' and then be able to recall them.  Does that somehow dilute the power, or is that the exact right implementation?

[Clinton R. Nixon]

This is wicked cool.  But check this for me:

"Favorites" don't even have to be particularly favorite to be worth tagging now.  I could tag every thread in Actual Play and the Anvilwerks fora that are about TSoY with 'tsoy' and then be able to recall them.  Does that somehow dilute the power, or is that the exact right implementation?

That does not dilute the power. I would recommend only tagging those threads that you personally find useful, though, as you do increase the chance of those threads being marked as related threads to other ones.

[LordSmerf]

First comment then question!

Comment: This totally rocks.  I want it entered into the permanent record that Clinton R. Nixon is the man!

Question: Is there/will there be a way to look at all the tags assigned to a thread?  Can I read a thread and say "Gee, that was interesting, what do other people consider interesting about this, and where do they draw connections?"

Thomas

[Ben Lehman]

Clinton:

This is staggering.

You are the rock.

yrs--
--Ben