I’ve had this very failure to communicate with Tom McCabe (so the evidence is mounting that the problem is with me, rather than all of you) - [edit]Tags[/edit] are categories, only with more awesome and fewer constraints. If “predefined categories can be used to drive navigation”, then surely [edit]Tags[/edit] can be used to drive navigation, without having to be predefined.
Is the problem just that the commonly used [edit]Tags[/edit] need to be positioned differently in the site layout?
I think xamdam meant that there should be a category of “lighter” posts that people could opt out of (ie, not see in their feed of new posts) so that they wouldn’t have the right to complain that they didn’t live up to their expectations. Promotion means that there are two tiers, but I’m not sure whether people read the front page or the new posts.
Incidentally, I think people are using the tags too much for subject matter and not enough for indicating this kind of weight or type of post. For example, I don’t see a tag for self-experimentation. If the tags were visible in the article editing mode, that would encourage people to reuse the same tags, which is important for making them function (thought maybe retagging is the only way to go). If predefined tags were visible in the article editing mode, that would encourage posts on those topics; in particular, it could be used to indicate that some things are acceptable, as in Anna’s list above.
I think xamdam meant that there should be a category of “lighter” posts that people could opt out of (ie, not see in their feed of new posts) so that they wouldn’t have the right to complain that they didn’t live up to their expectations. Promotion means that there are two tiers, but I’m not sure whether people read the front page or the new posts.
Idea #3 (less easy) is to support saveable searches that include or exclude tags (and rss feeds of those searches) so that users can view the site through that customized lens.
Tags do not affect how the site is read by most people, some predefined categories can be used to drive navigation.
I’ve had this very failure to communicate with Tom McCabe (so the evidence is mounting that the problem is with me, rather than all of you) - [edit]Tags[/edit] are categories, only with more awesome and fewer constraints. If “predefined categories can be used to drive navigation”, then surely [edit]Tags[/edit] can be used to drive navigation, without having to be predefined.
Is the problem just that the commonly used [edit]Tags[/edit] need to be positioned differently in the site layout?
Tags are categories.
I think xamdam meant that there should be a category of “lighter” posts that people could opt out of (ie, not see in their feed of new posts) so that they wouldn’t have the right to complain that they didn’t live up to their expectations. Promotion means that there are two tiers, but I’m not sure whether people read the front page or the new posts.
Incidentally, I think people are using the tags too much for subject matter and not enough for indicating this kind of weight or type of post. For example, I don’t see a tag for self-experimentation. If the tags were visible in the article editing mode, that would encourage people to reuse the same tags, which is important for making them function (thought maybe retagging is the only way to go). If predefined tags were visible in the article editing mode, that would encourage posts on those topics; in particular, it could be used to indicate that some things are acceptable, as in Anna’s list above.
yes
Excellent (it was me).
Ideas in commets below:
Easy change #1 would be to list the most popular tags in the edit interface, just below the tags inputbox.
Idea #3 (less easy) is to support saveable searches that include or exclude tags (and rss feeds of those searches) so that users can view the site through that customized lens.
Easy change #2 would be to add categories (or tags) to Tags, and to group the tag list by category, like:
Mood: flippant, serious, light, humbly_curious
Subject: standard_biases, etc.