Add interest keywords to feed accounts

[ninetydegrees]

Title:
Add interest keywords to feed accounts

Area:
feeds

Summary:
It's been suggested to make feeds searchable, which is a very good idea. However, I'd also like to be able to use interests to search for them because I think it would be more helpful when you want to find feeds pertaining to a certain topic.

Edit: see this comment for an alternative suggestion which doesn't use interest keywords.

Description:
I have no idea how many feed accounts they are on the site or how many are created per day so, to be honest, I don't know if this is a nice idea or a crazy one and how to implement it. Ideas and discussions are really welcome.

First, who would be able to add interests? Any user? A dedicated team of volunteers? Should users only be able to add interests from a pre-approved list? Could new ones be suggested? How?

Should the interests remain general (e.g. news, comics, music, science, technology, food,...) to be more manageable or would that would make the feature less useful/too restrictive?

What about personal blogs? I can see the potential for drama there. OTOH, it'd be like letting people assign interests to one's profile. OTOH, Neil Gaiman's blog is the feed with the greatest number of subscribers on DW so if we leave these out how useful is the feature?

Anything else?

Poll #6451 Add interest keywords to feed accounts

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
9 (22.0%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
5 (12.2%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
3 (7.3%)

(I have no opinion)
21 (51.2%)

(Other: please comment)
3 (7.3%)

Comments

[ninetydegrees]

Some blogs have a line which describes their content; it's in the bio section of the profile page. What would you think if we used keywords from these to build general categories?

[cesy]

Getting closer, but I still think it's too risky - which keywords you use from the bio is controversial, and many sites have more than one area that could be described as "bio". The more automated it can be, the better - anything that requires editorial input from someone not the content owner is ripe for drama.