Custom metadata field

[cesy]

Title:
Custom metadata field

Area:
entries

Summary:
Add a custom field to update.bml, that can be set in your options and then filled in when you post.

Description:
Add one (only one, so it doesn't clutter up the page too much) customizable field to the Mood/Music/Location area of the post.

Usage examples:
Number of Words in NaNoWriMo: 17,596.
Currently Reading: Shakespeare.
Current Weather: Sunny.

(Original LJ suggestion: http://community.livejournal.com/suggestions/911599.html and the ones Azz linked to from there.)

This might be a fairly big thing to implement, judging by a couple of the comments on LJ, but would be easier done while we still only have a few styles it will need to be tested in.

Now I'm possibly straying into implementation so this may be changed later:

You would set in your options that you wanted your custom field to be "Currently reading", and then if you filled in the "Custom field" box on the update page, it would appear properly on your entry. (Make the box name "Custom field" so it works neatly with clients or email posting and if you change what it's called in the future.)

Poll #1097 Custom metadata field

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 50

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
11 (22.0%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
17 (34.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
13 (26.0%)

(I have no opinion)
9 (18.0%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[rho]

From the writer's point of view, I can see how this could be helpful, but from a reader's point of view, I think we already have too much metadata. I have current whatevers set to not display at all on my reading page because I find they take up a lot of extra space without really adding anything useful.

And to pre-empt a possible counter argument, the reason why adding more would bother me even though I don't actually see any of them is that people sometimes make a reference to their metadata in their entries, which means I have to either go look or just resign myself to not understanding the entry.

However, I could see some mileage for this if the viewing options for metadata are improved. If I could choose to (for instance) display current mood and custom metadata but not display current music or current location, then I'd change my vote to "no opinion". As it is, though, I'm against it.

[pseudomonas]

Agreed. People fill in the spaces because they're there, and almost all the time they're either irrelevant to or redundant to the post contents.

[zarhooie]

Might make a good paid user feature. I don't remember which social networking site does this, but it seems to be relatively unobstrusive.

[zvi]

I don't understand what would happen if you wanted different custom metadata. That is to say, during nanowrimo you would want Word Count, but if later on, you wanted to keep track of what book you were reading, how we would display the old Nano info?

[cheyinka]

I didn't think of that. I suppose it'd just be displayed strangely ("Current book: 45,627"), the same way that references to profiles and custom styles sometimes end up strange?

[cesy]

With my idea, it would be displayed as "Currently reading: 20,000." Someone else may have a better idea for implementation, though.

[miang]

I like the idea, but I'd rather see it as leaving only two or three metadata slots total and making them fully customizable. Keeping 'mood' as-is makes sense because we have mood themes, but I never use Location in the way it was intended, and I haven't been using Music as such in about six or seven years either.

[musyc]

This. I never use location or music except on rare occasions. I'd far rather be able to switch those out to something I do use often: viewing (movie, tv, etc.), reading, that sort of thing.

[syderia]

Thirded.

Right now, you can change "current whatever" to what you want for your entries, but it doesn't display correctly on your circle's reading lists. Changing that would be nice. (But I don't know how possible)

[noxie]

+1

[queenbarwench]

+1

[calime]

+1

[turlough]

I like this!!

[ninetydegrees]

Exactly.

[aedifica]

Another +1.

[tephra]

I never use location (and find it kinda creepy that it exists when people actually put their physical location there and it gets linked to maps) and would love to switch it to something else.

[fairlight]

OMG THIS. Creepy creepy creepy.

[inarticulate]

+1

[triadruid]

I don't like this, because it makes it incredibly hard to style. If I customize my view to show customMetadata1 as "Cooking Up: XXXXXXX" and yours is "Currently Reading: YYYYYYYY", who wins on my friends' page?

[syderia]

Another possibility would be to have a set of metadata
- location
- mood
- music
- books
- ...

And to let people pick the ones they want to display. It might also be possible to make it so free users can pick three and paid users more (or the complete set).

[noxie]

I like this idea too.

[triadruid]

This would only be workable, to me, if metadata then got set into a sidebar of the entry. Otherwise you could be talking about metadata that's 2-3x as long as an actual entry!

[pseudomonas]

Personally, I'd not be opposed getting rid of freetext metadata entirely. It's mainly messy and mainly arbitrary, and makes for complication in syndication and so on.

Structured metadata (say, location in long:lat pairs) might be something that could be interesting for development, but stuff that's meant to be human-readable only could really go in the big box that's the actual content of the post. Obviously either the posting form or any posting client could allow templating to put custom things in a neat table within the post (though personally I'd probably find the results annoying).

If a metadata field is customizable per-user, there's little that can be done with the results - I have "Currently reading", she has "Now reading", he has "Current book", and there's no way for my toy or your custom style to deal with them consistently.

In general, I think we ought to have a really good reason to define anything as metadata rather than just content.