dw_suggestions | use a tag list not a tag cloud on the subscription filter interface

Title:
use a tag list not a tag cloud on the subscription filter interface

Area:
tags, subscription filters

Summary:
When creating a more specific filer, I find it very hard to find tags in that tag cloud with the different sizes and arbitrary order. It would be much easier to have an alphabetical list to select from.

Description:
I really like that we can now subscribe to specific tags from users and have filters with that. However on the Manage Subscription Filters page (http://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/subscriptions/filters) when you pick tags, they are listed in a cloud. It is very hard for me to find all tags I might want to subscribe to when they are in no discernible order.

I suppose the sizes are correlated to frequency, but that is not very helpful. I filter by topic, and a cloud may be fine if someone has ten tags or even fifteen, but not when someone has a hundred or several hundred, and they are in no discernible order so you have to hunt for the ones you want. Looking at my own tags on that page the cloud starts "recs: spider-man sentinel: continuity animagus challenge scans: marvel peanuts criminal minds fanart: his dark materials recs: avatar superman terminator: reviews..." and this goes on for a long, long time, with a couple of huge ones thrown in that make reading and scanning even harder but no order at all. It's like randomnized and impossible to find anything. I would like an alphabetical list instead in this interface.

Poll #1380 use a tag list not a tag cloud on the subscription filter interface

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 30

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
16 (53.3%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
11 (36.7%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
0 (0.0%)

(I have no opinion)
2 (6.7%)

(Other: please comment)
1 (3.3%)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I like having the sizes, although I would love to have them combined with alphabetical order. Reasoning: If someone has two tags: dw and dreamwidth, or computer and computers I would like to know whether one of them has only been used once and the other 100 times. If I go alphabetically, I might only see 'dreamwidth', think "oh, cool, now I get the DW related posts" and not search anymore, when actually dw is the tag the user posts to for the posts that interest me.

Yes. I like the cloud, but making it alphabetical as well would make sense.

I would rather have numbers after like when you display tags as a list in your journal. Most of my tags are the same size in a cloud display, whether I use them one or twenty times (though with 28 times it starts to get a tiny bit larger), then a few are truly large like "reviews" which I assigned 149 times, but actually my tag comics whih I used 203 times is tiny again, not enlarged at all, so from the tag cloud you couldn't tell it was my most used tag (that could be some kind of bug, but right now size doesn't even correlate to use in all cases). Numbers are much better.