What are the norms around the number of tags that are appropriate for a post to get? There are some posts of mine that I wish more people would read, and piling relevant tags onto them looks like an easy way to accomplish this. However, I’m looking at some of the other tagging effort that’s being done, and it seems like sometimes posts are being tagged with just one or two of a larger collection of say 4-5 tags that could be considered relevant.
I’d say that the appropriate number of tags for a post is “as many or few as seem to match the contents of the post”.
I expect that many posts that have just a few tags are that way simply because the tagger didn’t happen to think of the other possible ones. Or someone might be focusing on some particular tag and tagging all relevant posts with that, without also looking at those posts to see what other tags might be suitable.
I put 1-3 on most posts, but I’ve gone up to 5 or more on some. Probably many of the posts I’ve tagged could have other tags applied to them that I didn’t think of at the time. It’s not about a hard number, it’s about asking for each individual tag, is it likely someone exploring this tag would think this post was relevant to it?
I feel a bit uncomfortable with “piling on tags” (maybe the phrase more than what you’re actually suggesting). I think it’s because when I’ve seen authors apply lots of tags to their own posts (I’m assuming the motivation), half the tags seem like a stretch and the posts were low karma/quality (less true of yours, but it’s an association now in my mind).
That said, I do think 4-5 tags can be reasonable, and more posts might hit that or more as we have more tags and people do more tagging. I’m mostly responding to the phrasing “piling on for easy visibility”. The heuristics Kaj and Multicore suggest feel right to me.
If the relevance is really there, it’s good to tag.
What are the norms around the number of tags that are appropriate for a post to get? There are some posts of mine that I wish more people would read, and piling relevant tags onto them looks like an easy way to accomplish this. However, I’m looking at some of the other tagging effort that’s being done, and it seems like sometimes posts are being tagged with just one or two of a larger collection of say 4-5 tags that could be considered relevant.
Edit: Thanks for the responses, all.
I’d say that the appropriate number of tags for a post is “as many or few as seem to match the contents of the post”.
I expect that many posts that have just a few tags are that way simply because the tagger didn’t happen to think of the other possible ones. Or someone might be focusing on some particular tag and tagging all relevant posts with that, without also looking at those posts to see what other tags might be suitable.
I put 1-3 on most posts, but I’ve gone up to 5 or more on some. Probably many of the posts I’ve tagged could have other tags applied to them that I didn’t think of at the time. It’s not about a hard number, it’s about asking for each individual tag, is it likely someone exploring this tag would think this post was relevant to it?
I’m glad you asked!
I feel a bit uncomfortable with “piling on tags” (maybe the phrase more than what you’re actually suggesting). I think it’s because when I’ve seen authors apply lots of tags to their own posts (I’m assuming the motivation), half the tags seem like a stretch and the posts were low karma/quality (less true of yours, but it’s an association now in my mind).
That said, I do think 4-5 tags can be reasonable, and more posts might hit that or more as we have more tags and people do more tagging. I’m mostly responding to the phrasing “piling on for easy visibility”. The heuristics Kaj and Multicore suggest feel right to me.
If the relevance is really there, it’s good to tag.