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comment by geneusutwerk
geneusutwerk  ·  3991 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski Update: Two tags

In sort of all seriousness, doesn't this sort of lead to "well if two tags are better than one, why aren't three tags better than two?"





mk  ·  3991 days ago  ·  link  ·  

If specificity were the only goal, then at some point you start to suffer from diminishing returns, as well as an increase in noise. The extent to which this would happen would probably be topic specific, however. That said, regarding specificity, I'm not sure where the average sweet spot would be.

But specificity isn't the only goal. Another goal is getting content to people that are most interested in it, without unecessarily watering down people's feeds. IMO the balance here is to get the post in the neighborhood in such a way that a typical following pattern would appropriately pick it up. That is, if I am interested in Space Exploration, the tags that I will most likely follow should be enough to pick up most Mars Curitosity posts, without having to also draw in a number of non-Space Exploration related posts. Community tags was an effort in this direction, but as lil mentioned, it frequently wasn't enough, and I also found myself often wishing that I could add just one more tag to appropriately label the post. Sometimes I had to choose between labeling and editorializing for a particularly odd post.

Another problem that I see with a large tag count, is gaming of tags. The less each individual tag is worth, the more people might be tempted to use the tags to optimize viewership. For example: #mars #space #upskirts, which wouldn't work too well on Hubski, but you get the point (maybe: #mars #space #poetry).

user-inactivated  ·  3990 days ago  ·  link  ·  

i think a better approach might have been to encourage use of the community tag rather than providing a second tag to the submitter. most of the things i post never receive a community tag so i feel like it's underutilized.

mk  ·  3990 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's definitely underutilized, and it's a point well-taken. One thing that I considered is that when the community tag is used, it is often just to apply specificity. That's not a bad thing, but I thought it might be more interesting if that job was already largely done. That is, one tag often created a big vacuum, and the community tag that typically remained was the one that filled it.

In addition the what thenewgreen said, I am looking at making the list of previously suggested community tags visible when you opt to change it. That might also make them a bit more interesting.

That said, I'm always up for killing something if it looks like it has gone awry. If two tags turns out to be a bad thing, I'll seriously consider an alternate approach. We will see. I think it is worth trying.

thenewgreen  ·  3990 days ago  ·  link  ·  

We discussed this. I wonder if people even know that the ability exists? We are going to begin sending a notification once a new user gets the ability to give a badge and give community tags. Perhaps this will ramp it up.

kleinbl00  ·  3991 days ago  ·  link  ·  

...so is there an upper limit to the number of tags that can be applied to a post? 'cuz I just gave this one a useless tag to see if I could.

And I can.

b_b  ·  3991 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I think it's two tags for the OP, and one for the community. "Beyotch"...you're giving yourself away!

thundara  ·  3990 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Looks like there's a bug with the community tags, I hit the #\Delta button and it let me put in a new fifth tag, but it then overwrote bl00's.

b_b  ·  3990 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Not seeing it. I only see three, and the community tag has been overwritten several times.

thenewgreen  ·  3990 days ago  ·  link  ·  

mk, can you check this out? Btw, I'm digging the 2nd tag.

mk  ·  3990 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, the community tag is always the most popular or last suggested.

kleinbl00  ·  3991 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Fun fact: My attempt at going incognito on Reddit was blown by the fact that I was the only person amongst 120,000 usernames that used semicolons. I was clever enough to avoid the use of the word "mutherfuckerâ„¢" ; the semicolon thing blew me away.