So, perhaps, if this point keeps coming up again and again and again, it is an indicator that it is a real pain point for the users? I suppose I just don't understand from any of the discussion I've read so far what the theoretical drawbacks are going to be. So, the tag space expands, so what? It's just adding dimensionality to the content space, adding far more aspects to view the feeds through. As you say, I want to follow the tags that are relevant to me to catch what I think is interesting - but if everyone tags every music post with #music, even if I follow #triphop, it is useless because nobody uses it. It's a chicken and egg problem in that case. Alternatively, if I am interested in #elections but not #politics, I am going to miss out on any posts that are relevant to both because the original poster decided to use the more broad category. Or what if there is a great #NASA #comedy music video? In short, with the current system I see only limitations, but no advantages. As an engineer, building this type of system I feel that I would either remove the tag system altogether and try to work out some other approach, or remove the crippling limitations :)
The one advantage that I really enjoy about our current tagging system is the ability to "ignore" a tag. For example, I follow briandmyers because I tend to really enjoy the content he posts to Hubski and I've enjoyed the conversations we have had quite a bit. That said, he uses the #kiwimusic tag quite a bit and I'm not a big fan of most of that music (sorry Brian). But, I don't want to not follow him because I really enjoy his other posts. So, I just "ignored" #kiwimusic and all is well. I also like creating my own tags like #tng or recently #rockumentary for the sake of archiving. I enjoy following tags like #writebetterdammit and #wheresthebeef too. There's a creativity to tagging and there's the ability to archive that I would miss if it were to be removed. It's also a great way for new users to be introduced to hubskiers. Even in the "real world" we meet people through topics and then come to befriend them through the breadth of their interests. Maybe you could only follow tags for so long? Then it's about following users only??
This is probably true. I do think that some sort of change is in order. However, I want to think on it for a short time. rk just posted this very good article, which provided some insight. I am somewhat interested in a dual tagging mechanism where both the users and the poster have some input. But, at the same time, I don't want tags to become the default following mechanism. If this is the case, tags become communities, and then you start to fall into all the problems that arise in shared forums. Here's a post I wrote some time ago that spoke to that. The tagging issue arose there as well.So, perhaps, if this point keeps coming up again and again and again, it is an indicator that it is a real pain point for the users?