New Geekzone feature brainstorm: tags

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freitasm

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#87045 18-Jul-2011 16:11

Folks, I have been toying with the idea of creating tags for topic discussions and replies for a while, so it may be time to start thinking about it.

Is this something you folks would use? Would you tag posts from a curated tag list? Would you be happy for trusted users to add new tags to the list? Filtering discussions by tag, in addition to the forum/subforum structure we already have?

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#494857 18-Jul-2011 16:22

All the sites I've seen where tags are input by end users, they've always been pretty useless. Each user has a different concept of them, so their value is quickly diluted.

It's like the Genre tag in MP3s. Interesting, but one person's Rock n Roll is another person's Pop.

I think having clear, well defined categories as GZ does now in the forums is good. It forces some ridgedness in catagory selection when people post.

What problem is the addition of tags trying to solve?

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freitasm

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#494862 18-Jul-2011 16:28

Mind you I said "curated tags". It means *WE* would create and maintain a list of tags, and accept suggestions. At some point trusted users could create tags, but would not be the case from the start.

This could make it for a more granular filtering...

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gehenna

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#494863 18-Jul-2011 16:29

I see this implemented on other sites but it's not a feature I use. If I'm searching for something I have fairly specific criteria to go by, if I'm not getting hits from that then I don't think I'll get hits at all...

Adding tags to the mix seems to ensure returning numerous hits that aren't actually relevant to the search topic itself, basically the opposite of their intention.

The only place I ever see Tags working well is in a personal application like Evernote, where you define the tags and you know what they pertain to. Externally curated tags are too open to interpretation.

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#494874 18-Jul-2011 16:50

gehenna: The only place I ever see Tags working well is in a personal application like Evernote, where you define the tags and you know what they pertain to. Externally curated tags are too open to interpretation.

This is what I was trying to say (not very clearly, rereading) initially. Tags are great if they're something the end user can use freely and only they see their tags. Tags don't really work (IMHO) when they're seen and usable by everyone.

Being able to tag GZ posts as interesting/stupid/funny/wtf and being able to go back and browse based on that could be rather cool.

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#494885 18-Jul-2011 17:00

I'm not keen on the concept of tags either, category listings and good house keeping make the site easy to browse. I'd rather the search interface was updated, often when I search for something I'll get old treads instead of new recent threads I know exist. Tags could well have a place, but it would need to be a quick, easy and safe method for tagging. In the end it may just result in more moderator time sorting through ill-tagged or illicitly-tagged posts.

nigelj

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#494890 18-Jul-2011 17:15

In my opinion, tags used correctly & managed well are useful (look at Stack Exchange sites for a good example) and could be a better alternative to Google Site Search (I can never find what I want on the first page), example, iPhone topics seem to be spread across the Apple, Off-Topic, Vodafone, Telecom, etc etc forums.

If you could limit results based on a combination of tags (i.e. say iPhone + Vodafone + International Roaming (I'm assuming 'Roaming' would relate to roaming between 2D & Vodafone towers)) then it would be useful, ASSUMING that posts were tagged uniformly (and previous, articles have been tagged to some extent).

For creating new tags, I think the way to do it is something like: have x posts + x threads tagged, then allow tag creation. That or let an elite team create/cull tags.

As for individual post tags, the only useful ones I can think of are: "Answer" (selected by the OP/Mods for "How do I?", "Why does x not work?", "Winner" for competitions, and something for when answers come back from the likes of the Ask Freeview threads.

Also, it'd be nice if there was a per user "Favourite" tag (which would appear on your Profile etc).

My 2 cents.

Edit: Re-reading the original post, something I liked about Whirlpool when I was in Australia, was that (for instance) all Mobile Provider posts belonged in the parent "Mobile Provider" forum, but were tagged at creation (if appropriate) w/ the provider that it related to which would generate a provider sub-forum. (At least from my recollections).

Tagging would make that cleaner.

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#494892 18-Jul-2011 17:22

Pre made tags would work much better than purely user made ones. Needs #uselesspost

(#uselesspost)

Ragnor

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#494906 18-Jul-2011 17:56

Tags wouldn't be bad but to me improved/advanced search would be more useful.

eg; Being able to search for posts by keywords with filters like user, start date, end date.

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#494910 18-Jul-2011 18:14

I think tags would be useful for people who come here via google trouble shooting one off problems but for regular users i don't see any added benefit.

If you did implement tags i think a good system is pre defined tags and all users can +/- or thumbs up/thumbs down so more relevant tags get moved up and less relevant tags get removed without moderators being run off their feet!

As others have said an improved search would be a better feature as the Google custom search is somewhat lacking and a few times now i haven't been able to find a topic that i know exists using search so i end up going pages and pages back to find it.

freitasm

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#495174 19-Jul-2011 10:44

Ok... What about tagging a topic as "QUESTION" and the correct answer as "ANSWER" so people can filter views only for Q&A instead of all topics?

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muppet

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#495176 19-Jul-2011 10:47

freitasm: Ok... What about tagging a topic as "QUESTION" and the correct answer as "ANSWER" so people can filter views only for Q&A instead of all topics?

Great idea.

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#495898 20-Jul-2011 19:27

freitasm: Ok... What about tagging a topic as "QUESTION" and the correct answer as "ANSWER" so people can filter views only for Q&A instead of all topics?

+1 to that. Excellent idea.

Similar to what Google does with its support section you mean? http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=40e055034b743ebe&hl=en
The best, and possibly further curated answer moves to the top of the thread, just below the OP.

Also, another idea: what about a "Thanks meter", similar to XDA forums. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1128354

If someone helps you out, and you want to say thanks in a way that gives other users an indication of their geekzone "geek-cred" standing.

Sorry, a little OT there.
Just a though.

blakamin

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#495907 20-Jul-2011 19:42

As long as the tags dont end up like all the million on XDA and Ubuntu.. trying to read those forums these days is like running blind through a minefield

Everything is marked with [REF] [WIP] [DEV] [ROM] [KERNEL] [UNOFFICIAL] [STICKY] and then the topic....
and my favourite -[SOLVED] - when it's not, or the OP goes "oh, yeah, i figured it out" and thats the last you ever hear.

Thanks is a good idea though.

nigelj

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#495939 20-Jul-2011 20:59

freitasm: Ok... What about tagging a topic as "QUESTION" and the correct answer as "ANSWER" so people can filter views only for Q&A instead of all topics?

As I brought this up as part of my original reply, I can't see why I can go back on saying this is a great idea ;)

But I do think general tagging can help as well.

nickb800

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#495946 20-Jul-2011 21:22

Tagging would address the problem of topics that straddle different forums. An example of this would be a slingshot user having dsl problems. While some of the issue might be slingshot related, there may also be problems that an isolation test would fix, so general dsl advice would also be helpful. Could be tagged as dsl, broadband, & slingshot.

The question/answer filtering would also be helpful, (not sure if the recent search overhaul has fixed this) as sometimes when searching, multiple entries for the same forum come up. Also if one of the answers in a 50 page thread is off topic but related to your search query, then it can give the impression from searching that the particular topic covers your query in depth.

As an aside, what does it take to become a trusted member - I cant see anything around here that mentions the process?

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