My idea was much better, it preserved the second tag. The two guaranteed tags made a whole hell of a lot of difference IMHO. You can still keep the second tag with this new system though. My question is why in the world did you want to get rid of the second tag? Granted, you'll still have a community tag, but this essentially went from miles ahead of reddit to only as far as you can throw a baseball ahead of reddit. The only reason I can think of is existing data structures. I'm guessing the entire system only supports 3 tags total, amirite? You should have just waited until the rewrite to add stuff like this. Assuming you guys moved over to a real database, you would have actual flexibility to test things like this without screwing up existing features. For existing users, you probably don't see how powerful the two tagging system is. You already have a network of users developed that you know and trust. For first time users, articles posted in two tags (AND a community tag) creates great content discovery and user discovery in general. Being a new user that hasn't fully developed a network of users to rely on, I'm not sure that I can anymore with this system. We'll see, though.
If the advantage of tags was that new users could discover more content via them and thereby could build the amount of people/tags they follow, then this has just been drastically improved imo. I can now go to #science and find posts I think are interesting and then follow science.user and the user that posted it. I may find that the user posts other content I dislike and can remain following their science tag. There are plenty of scenarios like this that exist. But if your main concern is the loss of the second tag, my guess (and this is only an experiment) is that you'll find it's largely unchanged. I look forward to your thoughts in a week or so. Definitely.but this essentially went from miles ahead of reddit to only as far as you can throw a baseball ahead of reddit.
If the worth of the site by your estimation, hinges upon the ability to offer two tags, you're in luck you still can. Given that less than 10% of posts were given community tags and you can still offer up 2 tags at time of post, honestly in this regard, not much has changed. I realize that the second tag can be changed by the community, but unless that number increases (which it may) I don't think you'll find much of a difference.
I can see one of two things happening. If community tags increase in popularity, then people will have to post their initial tags with the idea of, hmm, which of these tags am I willing to sacrifice? That, or community tags will decrease in popularity as a result of this feature, because people will feel they are infringing on the submitter's original choice in tags. Before, when you posted you weren't affecting the original post at all, now you can directly screw with people. Vindictive users could abuse this, bots could abuse this, etc.Given that less than 10% of posts were given community tags and you can still offer up 2 tags at time of post, honestly in this regard, not much has changed. I realize that the second tag can be changed by the community, but unless that number increases (which it may) I don't think you'll find much of a difference.
Keep in mind that you yourself only just got the ability to add a community tag. Bots will not have an easy time gaining this ability. Vindictive users are usually vindictive in all aspects of their use and easily identified and filtered.I can see one of two things happening.
there are any number of things, anticipated and unanticipated, that could come from this. I'm excited to see what those things are. Kick the tires, have an open mind about it and please keep sharing your feedback. It's imperative. Vindictive users could abuse this, bots could abuse this, etc.
Filtering is not an option in this case, though. So let's say I decide to create a bot or even just a separate account to screw with people's tags. All I have to do is post a bit and get one hubwheel (like I just did), and then I can use this account forever. Because you are saying using filtering is how you will prevent people from doing this, that is on a user level. Users don't know what community tags are suggested or voted on at all, so they won't know who to filter if the vandals just compartmentalize multiple accounts. So I can go right now into #blog for instance and just strip off everyone's community tag and randomize the tags to be completely off-topic, and now the only valid tag they have is their #blog tag. The only way to trace who did this would be for admins to get involved, which I was under the impression that your designs were to give the users control over moderation. Yes, the community can go in and fix all that, but if it were an automated process or just something someone spent a little bit of time on each day, would you want all your users to do this? They'd have to fix every single post every single time. Plus, it wouldn't be that tag that the poster chose, it would be exclusively a community tag at that point (hence, why I said you essentially got rid of the second tag). Do you as full-time job possessing admins also want to go around policing the site to figure out who these users are? This is mostly vandalism and juvenile, but we're talking about internet users here :)Keep in mind that you yourself only just got the ability to add a community tag. Bots will not have an easy time gaining this ability. Vindictive users are usually vindictive in all aspects of their use and easily identified and filtered.
Written on phone. Please excuse typos.So let's say I decide to create a bot or even just a separate account to screw with people's tags. All I have to do is post a bit and get one hubwheel (like I just did), and then I can use this account forever.
mk can the globally ignored add comm tags as is? I know we've never had a bot/spammer take the time to gain the ability to add one, but on the off chance they do, could they if they're globally ignored?Because you are saying using filtering is how you will prevent people from doing this, that is on a user level. Users don't know what community tags are suggested or voted on at all, so they won't know who to filter if the vandals just compartmentalize multiple accounts.
it's a valid concern, for sure. In the past we toyed with the idea of the comm tags showing who suggested them. Perhaps that's worth considering again? It's a potential problem that should be thought on though, I agree. Do you as full-time job possessing admins also want to go around policing the site to figure out who these users are?
even if I didn't have a full time job, I don't want this. Not ever. We want to leave as much moderation as we possibly can in your collective hands.
This is mostly vandalism and juvenile, but we're talking about internet users here :)
-I agree, it's worth being out in front of such things.
I'm going to have to separate this into two posts. I JUST NOW out of coincidence filled up my first hubwheel and tried out the community tagging feature on this post: https://hubski.com/pub?id=164815 I figured it would be easy to remove my community tag (which is dumb, #major?) or replace it with what was originally on it (#baseball#, #baseball.flagamuffin, #sports). I was just messing around trying to figure out how the community tag feature worked. Is there any way I can change my vote on what the community tag should be? I want to get that post back in #sports! I think I just screwed up flagamuffin's post (sorry dude!). PS: #baseball isn't linking properly above... I messed around with it and it's a problem with the paren before the hash symbol.
Is there any way I can change my vote on what the community tag should be? I want to get that post back in #sports! I think I just screwed up flagamuffin's post (sorry dude!).
You change your community tag by doing exactly what you did: appeal to the community. From time to time, I have asked people to add specific tags when my two were used up. Someone usually obliged within the hour. (I'm like four hours late on this.)
Congrats! You have to be careful w the comm tag, it's not editable. I've gotta be away from site for a bit. Bbl.
I think we all gotta be away from the site for a bit tng.
It's important, no doubt about it. Normally, I'd never declare as much but I thought it rude to be in the middle of a discussion and not say I was not going to be able to respond for a while. But yes, I realize we all need lives outside of the ole keyboard. I mean, where else will we gather our vague questions? -a personal tag I am gladly following btw.
No, we could have 80 tags if we wanted to. Actually, the second tags still reside in the data. There were a few reasons. The most concise are: 1) tags could then have between 0-5 tags, and 4 of the tags would be repetitive. You can see that elsewhere in this post, one of the biggest complaints is the feeling of clutter. Having two primary and two corresponding personal tags was a mess. 2) Community tags were on just over 5% of posts, and they were very rarely edited. We feel, and others have told us, that the community tags and personal tags are good ideas, but they were poorly executed. With this current approach, we simplify the functionality overall, and ramp up the utility of both of those functions. Give it a shot. Like I said, this is an experiment. Often what we learn from these experiments leads us to something we never could have never planned out in any number of discussions. In experimentation, I have found the personal tag to be a compelling content discovery tool. One thing I have also considered is how this plays into scaling. The conventional wisdom says that as tags grow more popular, the ratio of quality content will fall. However, what if I really want to get great #politics posts even after hundreds of users are submitting to it? Previously, I would have had to follow #politics, and filter an ever-increasingly large swath of users (in entirety, not just their politics posts) to cull out the chaff. It is a race, that eventually I would lose. Now, I have the option to browse #politics, find the best users submitting to it, and follow their personal politics tags. With this approach, my politics feed doesn't degrade over time. Of course, I need to work if I want new voices, but I won't have to be constantly filtering users to have a quality politics feed. Of course, for quieter tags, I can take the opposite approach: filtering a personal tag or two might be all it takes to keep the overall tag quality, and I need't filter out those users wholesale. In that respect, we now have two kinds of filtering: content-specific, and user-specific.I'm guessing the entire system only supports 3 tags total, amirite?
You can still keep the second tag with this new system though. My question is why in the world did you want to get rid of the second tag?
Being a new user that hasn't fully developed a network of users to rely on, I'm not sure that I can anymore with this system. We'll see, though.
I'm not really arguing that forcing tags into community tags was a bad idea, I had a very similar idea a week or two ago and was arguing that community tags were useless without forcing it in there in some way. That's primarily a display issue, though, that is easily solved. Right now we see this on this post: "text · #blog · #blog.hubski · #hubski" All you have to do is detect that #blog and #blog.hubski are in a row and simplify the display to: "text · #blog.hubski · #hubski" Or something. You could even have #blog.hubski be two links, one for #blog and the ".hubski" part link to #blog.hubski". That, I believe, is most people's concern with visual clutter. It's just redundant display. Once we get to #blog.hubski when reading things, we already know it's in #blog. We also know it's already posted by hubski, so maybe something like: "#blog@" Where the "@" is what gets a second link. I dunno I'm just throwing stuff out there right now. I guess my point with keeping a second tag that is forced by the poster actually helps not in user discovery, but tag discovery. For instance, I would have no idea #privacy or #surveillance existed without double tagged posts. Then, it does help with user discovery since now that I have #privacy and #surveillance followed, more posts are going to show up. Someone might tag #uspolitics and #surveillance, but say I'm not fond of #uspolitics. Mr. US Politics subscriber feels that as a community tag, #nsa is a better tag for a post, and I never even see the post or know that user exists.You can see that elsewhere in this post, one of the biggest complaints is the feeling of clutter. Having two primary and two corresponding personal tags was a mess.
One thing I have also considered is how this plays into scaling. The conventional wisdom says that as tags grow more popular, the ratio of quality content will fall. However, what if I really want to get great #politics posts even after hundreds of users are submitting to it? Previously, I would have had to follow #politics, and filter an ever-increasingly large swath of users (in entirety, not just their politics posts) to cull out the chaff. It is a race, that eventually I would lose. Now, I have the option to browse #politics, find the best users submitting to it, and follow their personal politics tags. With this approach, my politics feed doesn't degrade over time. Of course, I need to work if I want new voices, but I won't have to be constantly filtering users to have a quality politics feed.
That's actually been the option that is the most attractive replacement in my mind. However, I am not sure that new users will be able to figure out that the link is split. It might be worth trying. We would also have color splitting going on as well, which may or may not help. For example, if you followed #blog.hubski, the entire thing would be blue. However, if you only followed #blog, then just the blog portion would be blue. -That splitting of colors might be instructive when it comes to the split link, however. It's probably worth mocking up. It's not terrible when the color splits. However, I do see people stumbling on the split link.You could even have #blog.hubski be two links, one for #blog and the ".hubski" part link to #blog.hubski". That, I believe, is most people's concern with visual clutter. It's just redundant display. Once we get to #blog.hubski, we already know it's in #blog.
Idea: just have all the tags as shown before, but not including "#tag.user" tags. If a user then follows the "#tag.user" tag and that's the only reason that post would show up in the feed, have it show up at the end of the list as: by user #tag1 - #tag2 - (#tag2.user) surrounded by parenthesis. It's otherwise implied that the #tag1.user and #tag2.user tags exist. Maybe in the post page itself, you can have links for users to follow the #[tag].[user] personal tags. Of course, I don't really know what you do with community tags, but I assume there isn't a #[community].[user] for that specific post? So maybe that would get a little confusing.Title
I like it, but then I'm not opposed to the way it is currently, I don't find it ugly or cluttered. I mean, the site itself is... text heavy altogether. I also think the progression currently educates as to the process. #science then #science.user suggests that perhaps the second tag is a subset of science, specific to that user. -It's visually informative. That said, this suggestion looks nice.
Honestly if it were to be supported I would much prefer arbitrary numbers of tags over one or two. Okay, maybe it should be limited to avoid an instagram-like hundred-tags-I'm-so-funny scenario, but the ability to tag posts with both general and specific tags would be nice, and many items fit under several specific tags. This is a nightmare in terms of the simplified non-repetitive tag display I'm advocating here on this same post. (Frankly, I like the simplified display better than arbitrary tag numbers.) Everything's a balancing act.