Ask Slashdot: Tags and Tagging, What Is the Best Way Forward?

siliconbits writes "The debate about tagging has been going for nearly a decade. Slashdot has covered it a number of times. But it seems that nobody has yet to come up with a foolproof solution to tagging. Even luminaries like Engadget, The Verge, Gizmodo and Slashdot all have different tagging schemes. Commontag, a venture launched in 2009 to tackle tagging, has proved to be all but a failure despite the backing of heavyweights like Freebase, Yahoo and Zemanta. Even Google gave up and purchased Freebase in July 2010. Somehow I remain convinced that a unified, semantically-based solution, using a mix of folksonomy and taxonomy, is the Graal of tagging. I'd like to hear from fellow Slashdotters as to how they tackle the issue of creating and maintaining a tagging solution, regardless of the platform and the technologies being used in the backend." A good time to note: there may be no pretty way to get at them, but finding stories with a particular tag on Slashdot is simple, at least one at a time: Just fill in a tag you'd like to explore after "slashdot.org/tag/", as in "slashdot.org/tag/bizarro."

Comments

fuck tags

[Anonymous Coward]

that is all

Re:fuck tags

[plover]

It's nothing more than associating an identifier or keyword with something. The asker is bemoaning the lack of standards in those identifiers, how to apply them, how to search on them.

The question really misses the point, though. If you index the entire contents, then anyone searching will find it based on what they know, not what you think of in advance. Google seems to do pretty well at locating pages, despite many fine pages lacking meta tags (and despite many poor spam articles trying to abuse meta tags.) If the keywords aren't present in the article, it's probably not a very useful article anyway, as it obviously is lacking a common description.

Re:fuck tags

[icebike]

Nonsense.

There are only small localized subsections of "technicla fields" where tagging is of any importance at all, and metadata is
simply the latest over-hyped buzzword of this small segment.

The vast majority of "technical fields" have no need of this. Its not even widely used in computerized systems.
It mostly sprung up from people who's only knowledge of computer systems came from the area of database administration.

We've been through these hype-wars before. In five to seven years you won't even remember why this was so important to you.

Made up problem

[mugnyte]

Tagging isn't anything. It's a construct within a semantic web design; a common-language-everywhere issue. Essentially, you want everyone to agree to a tagging vocabulary, or morph things into it using automation. Why not just ask everyone to speak Esperanto?

My questions for OP...
why use words of any language?
why isn't everything online (include video, images, sound) simply act like a tag with "search the web with this input"?
isn't the best database of tags the web itself? in that case, isn't our best query a search engine?

Re:Made up problem

[MightyYar]

The problem that some have here with the term "cloud" I have with "tag". I'm not sure how it differs from a "keyword".

The solution: Esperanto!

[sootman]

... or some other language where every word has one and only one meaning.

"Somehow I remain convinced that a unified, semantically-based solution, using a mix of folksonomy and taxonomy, is the Graal of tagging."

So basically you want everyone to agree on what to call everything. HA! Will never happen. Words mean different things in different contexts. A word that's overly-general in one context will be overly-specific in another. Also, fun fact: not everyone on the planet speaks the same language. Hell, even time changes words. 10 seconds ago, I learned that "Graal" was a word: "Holy Grail, or "Graal" in older forms" If you want a good tagging solution, start by not trying to be so cute and showing off how smart you are and use words that are used today -- call it "the grail" like everyone else in this century. People like you are what breaks tagging systems. :-)

We'll probably solve the problem of how to identify people before we come up with a unified way to name things.

Missing the point ...

[gstoddart]

Somehow I remain convinced that a unified, semantically-based solution, using a mix of folksonomy and taxonomy, is the Graal of tagging

Tags are random stuff about what people are thinking of at any given time.

So if I tag something as #anyhoo #whatever and #squork -- that's what I felt like tagging it as, and in the process I might want to make tags which aren't there or make up new ones.

If tags are meant to be a measure of the zeitgeist and what people are thinking, they're not going to do is according to some taxonomy.

Besides, some bastard will just want to come along and monetize tags and be the canonical source -- #screwem #taxonomyneednotapply

Having a "unified, semantically-based solution, using a mix of folksonomy and taxonomy" is someone trying to impose structure on something which is inherently not structured, and people will never conform to it.

I can see why in corporate contexts you'd want a taxonomy, but for the rest of the world this sounds like a solution in search of a problem. The world isn't something for librarians and archivists to tell us how we should categorize things.

slashdot shows how not to do it

[iggymanz]

Every article on slashdot gets the default tag "story".

Fucking useless.

If you have time to think about tagging...

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

...you have too much time on your hands. Get a dog, a girlfriend, or anything else with demands on your attention and your worries about tagging will happily drift away.

Re:firetheeditors

[TempeTerra]

A tag should meaningfully distinguish a subset of the content.