Cleaning up tags

You may have noticed a lot of topics, primarily older topics, currently don’t have any tags.

Tags were deleted that did not fit our current criteria of representing a reasonably popular technology, and/or could not reasonably be consolidated or merged with any existing tags.

I plan to work on our old auto-tagger from years ago and see if we can get it to work in some places.

OK ... and without further ado, the results of this (seemingly never-ending) project:

We've reduced from 9541 tags down to only 212 tags by completely removing tags that did not meet our criteria (e.g. tags that did not represent a technology), but, in most cases, consolidating tags into larger categories, by synonyms, etc.

~200 tags is manageable. People can browse tag categories the way they would forum categories, without the negative of having a hierarchy of 200 forums/sub-forums/sub-sub-forums. Anything more specific or more niche, people can use our search functionality.

~500 articles contributed over the past 5 years are currently tag-less. ~5000 articles contributed over the past 10 years are currently tag-less. ~75K articles contributed ever are currently tag-less, which makes sense when you consider when in our lifetime we introduced the tagging feature.

I've implemented a permissions change in which non-newbie community members (members with more than 15 reputation points) can no longer create new tags. The reason for this change is because it brings us closer to my reason for implementing tags in the first place.

The world of programming was going through a growth spurt and there were lots of new languages seemingly being invented every week. It was no longer making sense for us to have a forum devoted to each language, and our catch-all forum for non-popular languages was proving not-so-useful because it was just grouping lots of completely unrelated questions together, and growing in size larger than even our most popular language's forum.

With ~200 tags now each representing a unique technology or collection of related technologies, I think it makes sense to make the ability to create new tags more of a moderated one.

So to create a new tag one only needs to create a new account (newbie)? Seems odd but I know I avoid tag creation because reasons.

members with more than 15 reputation points

Perhaps she meant "less than"

No, I meant what I said and said what I meant :)

I think so, anyways?

Members with more than 15 reputation points (non-newbies) used to be able to create new tags. They no longer can do so.

Ugh, there I go posting as my test account again. I really should finish working on this feature I'm working on before posting more.

Code is locked!

Wait, huh?

So to create a new tag one only needs to create a new account (newbie)? Seems odd but I know I avoid tag creation because reasons.

Oh, I see. Yes, newbies were never able to create tags. The notable change here is that non-newbies previously were, and now they aren't as well.

Just moderators and staff writers now, I’m afraid. I thought that was implied when I said, given the overhaul, “I think it makes sense to make the ability to create new tags more of a moderated one.” :)

I had to laugh reading this thread AFTER reading the "Writing and speaking clearly" thread. Thanks for the chuckle.

I posted this as a PM but I want to post it again to open up the discussion to others. Rather than starting a new thread and trying to figure out an appropriate tag I'll just extend this thread.

If I want to start a thread in geeks lounge to discuss favourite movies, I go to the tag field and type "m" which gives me nothing related to movies. Neither does "mo" or "mov". I also tried e, then n, then t thinking entertainment might work (although it's so vague as to useless), then h, o, for hobbies, and still nothing. So now I have to just keep guessing what might be appropriate letters to see the next five best matches for tags? Adding a tag should not be a game of twenty questions.

And if I do stumble on a match I am going to pick it even if there may be a much better match I have not yet seen. I could always go to "Top Tags" but that would require opening up another tab in my browser and navigating away from the post I am working on.

As I recall, the geeks lounge used to be an area where we could start threads to discuss just about any topic (while adhering to rules governing suitability, etc). I don't see how we can do that under the new tagging rules. Perhaps a compromise by not requiring tags in geeks lounge.

I just want to clarify that there are no new tagging rules. For about a decade now, nearly all members would get an error message if they tried to tag something with a tag that didn't already exist. The change is that now all members get the error message, as opposed to nearly all (with the exception of moderators, but we still don't want moderators abusing this power).

Our tagging rules have been in place for quite a few years now, though; Pretty much ever since I started this tagging project quite a few years ago.

The objective is for tags to be the equivalent of sub-forums. In other words, to paraphrase my previous post in this thread, the tagging system was initially implemented because there were lots of new programming languages and technologies popping up, and it just didn't make sense for a forum to have 50 sub-forums. Plus, a lot of times different technologies would be used together, and sometimes it was hard to decide whether to post in one sub-forum or another. (e.g. Choosing between the PHP forum or the MySQL forum for a question about connecting to MySQLi from within PHP.)

Here is the heuristic: If creating a new tag, I want you to ask yourself one, simple question: Would it make sense for there to be an entire forum or sub-forum about just this topic? For example, would it make sense for DaniWeb to have, within the Community Center forum, the four sub-forums of Say Hello!, Geeks' Lounge, Meta DaniWeb, and Tagging. If that doesn't make sense to you, tagging doesn't deserve to be its own tag.

Now as far as how to pick a tag ... That's a UI/UX issue which I will address when I'm feeling a little bit better later today.

I also just want to quickly add that the goal is to make the tagging system useful. Tagging things with lots of niche keywords might make it easy to post, but it doesn't really add much value aside from that.

A while back a large number of people were asked what were their biggest concerns at work. One of the top (if not THE top) complaint was feeling stupid at work. At this point I may be right but I fear that I am supremely off. One of us is missing the point and I hope it isn't me.

Let's take an example that could easily come up but isn't obviously in the tag list. Movies or music could be tagged (generically) as Video or Audio, which would be accurate but misleading, but if I were to start a thread for favourite books, perhaps science fiction. How would I tag that?

the goal is to make the tagging system useful

I think that what will end up happening is people picking a non-relevant tag just because they are forced to pick a tag but get frustrated at trying to guess one, or can't be bothered to peruse several hundred approved tags for a reasonably close match.

I think that what will end up happening is people picking a non-relevant tag just because they are forced to pick a tag but get frustrated at trying to guess one, or can't be bothered to peruse several hundred approved tags for a reasonably close match.

That's why I said that it's a UI/UX issue, as per my recent response to you in another thread about how I would go and define UI/UX.

What you describe has already been happening for the better part of the past decade. You were immune to it until now because of your moderator status.

I agree that something needs to change to improve the user experience. Exactly what, I don't know. I have some ideas, but that's why I said I would address the UI/UX issue when I'm feeling a bit better.

However, in the meantime, can you go ahead and do something for me? Please log out and then go to contribute a new thread. Choose a handful of different forums from the dropdown, and then continue to the next step, and see how the Write tab changes depending upon the forum chosen. That is the user experience that the very vast majority of people have had access to for the past many, many years. (Again, you didn't see this because you're a moderator, and you love DaniWeb too much to ever log out.)

Ah. I see the typical user gets presented with twenty (ish) tags rather than the five I get. Still a very small subset of the total available tags, but better. I still don't see that as an ideal solution though. Perhaps consider my "no tags needed for geeks lounge" suggestion since geeks lounge is a catch-all. In the mean time if I have anything useful to add I'll certainly pass it along.

Would it be feasable to scan the title and post body for words and auto-populate a suggested tag list with possible fuzzy matches?

you love DaniWeb too much to ever log out

Yeah, pretty much the case :-)

Would it be feasable to scan the title and post body for words and auto-populate a suggested tag list with possible fuzzy matches?

That's simple enough to try but with only ~200 tags sitewide, the 20 options should pretty much cover all use cases within the forum chosen. (Note they must choose at least one of the 20, while you get the autocomplete and can choose from any of the possible tags.)

As far as not having to choose a tag ...

Think of tags like subreddits. You don't start a new topic and then try to pick from one of the many, many existing subreddits which is the best fit. You first find a subreddit about a topic you're interested in, and then start a new topic within it.

... Also, I haven't found a topic yet that isn't at least a reasonable match for one of our existing tags. Top discuss favorite movies, I would maybe use 'streaming-service' or 'multimedia'. If there are enough questions all being asked about movies and TV shows, then we can add a tag about it. The same as when we used to add a new forum in the old days. But a tag with one or two topics in it is very non-useful.

That being said, Geeks' Lounge is a bit of a catch-all, but we still don't allow on DaniWeb super irrelevant content (e.g. the spammers that come in with political rants and that kind of thing).

To give you an example of some previously used tags:

• .net
• .net-2008
• .net2.0
• .net4.5
• .netframework
• etc.

It's much more functional IMHO for one single tag where someone can see all of our .net content.

Some other tags:

• amazing
• ampersand
• already
• alternate
• alternative
• and
• angry
• annoying
• another

As you can see, I'm still very tired and didn't scroll past the A's down the list. But giving the freedom to tag with anything just was leading to thousands and thousands of meaningless tags that don't help people find what they're looking for, nor help categorize similar content together.

I would much prefer to think of tags like subreddits. That's the best analogy I can think of at the moment.

Also, for the Geeks' Lounge, I suppose it does make sense to add an 'entertainment' tag. I think I can find enough pre-existing topics that would be a good fit for that.

... Or perhaps your TV shows question would fit within the 'home-theater' tag? Would it be appropriate, for example, to post your question within a "Home Theater Forum"? I think so, right?

Home-theatre? Absolutely. I wouldn't have thought to look for that one.

Think of tags like subreddits. You don't start a new topic and then try to pick from one of the many, many existing subreddits which is the best fit. You first find a subreddit about a topic you're interested in, and then start a new topic within it.

I think this is the best way I can describe it. I agree I have a user experience issue when it comes to the actual implementation.

This thread was tagged as "c" but it is not c code.

What language is it in? Python perhaps? Please update the tag if you recognize it.

I'd be surprised if it was Python. Typically a function call like

read_image (Image1, 'C:/Users/29185/Desktop/图片1.png')

would return a value and assign it to something. More in the line of

Image1 = read_image ('C:/Users/29185/Desktop/图片1.png')

All I can say is that statements in C end with a semi-colon and I don't see one of those in there. Regardless, I don't see any way for me to add or delete a tag.

Regardless, I don't see any way for me to add or delete a tag.

There should be a little + sign next to where it shows the article's tags (beneath the first post).

There should be a little + sign\

Well, how about that. how convenient. I was looking on the edit page.

It’s always been there. Have you honestly never noticed it before? It’s been in the exact same for about 15 years now, even dating back to our vBulletin days.