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?

[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.

[deborah]

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