Smarter Tag Tracking

[sally_maria]

Title:
Smarter Tag Tracking

Area:
tags, tracking

Summary:
When tracking an entry, a shortlist of tags from that entry should be provided first, rather than the entire taglist.

Description:
Stolen from <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/suggestions/995518.html">this suggestion on LJ</a>.

Tracking a specific tag on a journal or community is a wonderful way of only following the entries you are interested in. Generally, I will have followed a link to a specific entry, read it and wanted to follow the other entries with that tag. (For example, a fanfic WIP where the author has created a tag just for that story.)

If you click on track on that entry, you get the option to subscribe to a tag, but are then presented with every single tag used on the journal. It would be far more useful for that option to only offer the tags used on that particular entry. Having to scroll through the whole list is a pain.

A More Choices button (or something of that kind) might be a good idea, just in case someone wanted access to the other tags, and in any case, if someone clicked to the track screen from the Profile then I'd expect the whole list to appear. For most people using the function though, limiting the tags to the ones that you've seen most recently, on the entry that you are interested in, seems a much more useful arrangement.

I can see an argument that users might be confused not to see the full list, but I think that seeing a whole list of tags, most of which have nothing to do with what you are looking for, is far more confusing. Particularly as tracking tags seems to me to be something much more likely to be done by more experienced users - though that is only my guess, not fact.

ETA - msilverstar has come up with an excellent variant in the comments - "I could go for the set of tags for the entry, followed by a line on the menu and then the whole set of tags." I'd be more than happy with that as a solution, it still addresses the basic problem of making the tags for that entry easily accessible.

Poll #2354 Smarter Tag Tracking

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 32

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
19 (59.4%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
7 (21.9%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
0 (0.0%)

(I have no opinion)
6 (18.8%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)