Description Fields for Tags

[mfb]

Title:
Description Fields for Tags

Area:
tags

Summary:
Add metadata for tags -- a short description of usage, or whatever else a description field might be useful for.

Description:
I'd like to be able to attach a description to my tags, to indicate usage or meaning, without making an extraneous 'this is what my tags are for' entry. The descriptions could show up on the /tag/ page -- maybe on any tag anywhere, with a mouse-over title attribute, like with icons. This seems like it could be really useful in communities with strict usage of tags. It might also be useful to store the age of the tag.

UI-wise it would seem trivial to add the description option as another field on the Manage Tags page. I don't know how difficult it would be backend-wise.

Poll #8409 Description Fields for Tags

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 63

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
21 (33.3%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
8 (12.7%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
12 (19.0%)

(I have no opinion)
22 (34.9%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[ratcreature]

I fear that this might encourage idiosyncratic or incomprehensible cutesy tags, both things I loathe. Isn't the whole point of tags that they already are descriptive themselves?

[solitarywalker]

Good point.

[pauamma]

I don't follow you. Can you elaborate?

[azurelunatic]

(This one is my favorite example for its cleverness.) Would you guess what the tag "we are not a bean or a car or a horse" meant upon seeing it without explanation?

[pauamma]

I have a "notary sojac!" tag (on LJ). Even I have trouble remembering what I use it for, but I'm not going to remove it. So I like the original suggestion.

[azurelunatic]

(And in case you were wondering, "we are not a bean or a car" is for all things Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto, which is often known as "Pinto".)

[ratcreature]

Some people have tags that say random things, or things that are meaningful only to them, or an injoke instead of using one of the obvious things. I find that impossible to navigate and loathe it, find it not funny and wish the practice would DIAF. Of course it's their journal, so there's no way to prevent it, but I feel this encourages behavior like that, because it might suggest that tags that aren't transparent and useful for others might still allow others to find say all your fanfic, even if you taggged it "gnarglgnurps" instead of "my fanfic".

[mfb]

Are they intended to be transparent? I do not know if Dreamwidth uses tags for any site-wide search, statistics, or other functionality, or if they're completely endemic to one's journal. (An example of tagging that is not endemic to one's blog is tumblr's tag and search system.)

I'm not certain that metadata alone would be enough to encourage the practice. When I've used junk or conversation tags on other websites, it's usually been because my friends on that website do the same thing -- conversely, when I've used meaningful tags, it's because I put a conscious effort into making my content navigable. Obfuscating the names of my tags, only using the metadata to describe them, would defeat that purpose. However, I am not a significant sample size and would like to hear others' experiences.

[ratcreature]

There is the Latest Things page that you can display by tag.

[mfb]

That's definitely precedent for site-wide relevance of tags. (I seem to be having trouble with some of the tags on there, though...)

[denise]

Bug. :)

[mfb]

Oops, I didn't realize both of the posts I replied to were yours. Sorry for jumping your inbox!

[thorfinn]

I have an unproven feeling that adding descriptions to tags would encourage tags to actually be more meaningful, not less. If one is encouraged to think of a description for a tag, one might be more likely to use a tag that matched the description. Better yet, if the tag is something that has no definition or a general linguistic definition that doesn't match the way the tag owner wants to describe it... there's a description to be had.

[kate_nepveu]

Enh, but people who like that kind of thing are going to do it anyway, and the community point strikes me as potentially useful. Also, if I could do this, I would put in links to my old LJ tags and that would be awesome.

[mfb]

It would be if the length of a tag's name wasn't as limited. There isn't enough room to describe the usage of a tag if the usage pattern is strict, just the nature of it. (And then, who wants to read the usage pattern every time the tag comes up?) It's a useful note to the author or authors.

I hadn't considered the encouragement of junk tags. I've seen that go badly elsewhere, but kate_nepveu seems reasonable in stating that people who use tags for fun or conversation will do it anyway, and people who don't won't. I don't know of any study to back this, but it would be enlightening to see.

[azurelunatic]

This could be useful. The same general idea might be able to be done with a per-tag "sticky", which would only show up sticky in that tag view, and not in the main journal view, because more than one of those could get unwieldy.

[matgb]

Oh, I like this idea, I like it a lot. Question, how would you see it working for a mutli tag view?

[azurelunatic]

A collapsed bar for each sticky stating which tag it was the sticky for.

[snakeling]

That's my (with changes) vote :)

[susanreads]

I think I prefer this version.

[zing_och]

+1

[montuos]

+1

[deborah]

As a librarian, I approve of metadata which are described.