Tagging
How are tags generated? Do you have any that are encouraged for specific articles? For instance, the article here: http://www.annarbor.com/sports/meande... has the following tags: John Beiliein, morning roundup, Tim Tebow (one tag spelled wrong) but doesn’t have tags on sports, University of Michigan, football etc. which I would think would be more useful.
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Inappropriate?I'd like to be able to suggest tags. Article authors could have the final say over whether they were appropriate or not.
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Inappropriate?I predict that as they are currently being utilized tags will quickly become completely useless. After only a week of operation, look at the current list of tags: http://www.annarbor.com/get_rss/. There are misspellings, case differences, and nonsensical words.
Some authors apparently don't even understand the concept of tagging because there are tags for "classic egg salad sandwich with photos" and "non-motorized transportation plan". Other authors are delimiting tags with semi-colons instead of commas, resulting in tags like "Kurt Wermers; Rich Rodriguez; Justin Boren;"
Perhaps the worst thing is the inconsistent application of tags. For example, look at the first post about the tragic death of a bicyclist on Tuesday. That post is tagged "bicyclist, crash, Pittsfield Township". Let's imagine that I came across that post and wondered if there were any follow-up posts. If I clicked on any of the 3 tags, I wouldn't see that there is a follow-up story because it is tagged with "bicycle, Pittsfield, Southeast Michigan Council of Governments".
Tagging is great for situations in which you have a large number of people tagging the same item, but it's not so great when you have a small number of people individually tagging separate items. If 10,000 people were to tag those two posts about the death of the cyclist, it's very likely that the same tags would be applied to both articles. If there are only 2 people each separately tagging 1 of the posts, it's very unlikely that the same tags would be applied to both articles. (And the fact that the author of both posts is actually the same person only highlights the difficulty of consistent tag application from a small set of taggers.) -
Inappropriate?Tagging is currently a hot topic here on the newsroom floor. I promise we are working diligently to clean up the tags that are currently in use. Our goal is to remove the tags with misspellings and such, but also to insure that tags are not used once and forgotten. At the same time, we are trying to keep words that are in the title, out of the tag lines. Its not perfect yet, but we'll get there really soon. :)
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Inappropriate?I'm glad that you're cleaning up the tags. But why would you keep title words out of the tags? If you look for articles tagged "bicycle", wouldn't you expect to see articles about bicycles regardless of whether "bicycle" is in the title?
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Inappropriate?I guess i should have been more clear. We are refraining from putting things in the tags just because they are in the title. The plan is to identify the post in 3-5 (reusable) words as best we can, regardless of the title. We'll be pushing for this quite a bit over the next few weeks. Let us know if you see a change (for better or worse). We're very interested in what you guys think.
Sometimes the builders overlook the obvious because they stare at it all day. -
Inappropriate?What "us guys" think is that we should be tagging your articles. That's how social media work.
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Inappropriate?Thanks for the title words explanation. I still think that you'll find this to be an unworkable solution. Vaguery is right that readers should be the ones tagging the articles. The whole point of tagging is to avoid the inconsistencies and headache of categorization of items by a small number of individuals. The current tagging scheme on the site has all of those inconsistencies and headaches but none of the rigor that makes something like a library catalog useful.
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Inappropriate?I would like to remind everyone that we are only a week old. A lot of things are changing in accordance to what our users request. I would also like to remind everyone that the best way to create a community is through camaraderie. We're here to listen. Please take advantage of that.
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Jim, this comes off as being very defensive, and I don't understand why you would feel that way. Everyone here is engaged in construction criticism as far as I can see. If we (the users posting here) were only interested in bashing the site or being jerks, we wouldn't be spending hours of our time taking screenshots and writing up detailed posts. -
Sorry i didnt respond earlier to this Bob, i somehow totally missed it. Also, my apologies if my post came as being defensive. I've been doing a lot of responding lately :). You too should come in to the first floor. We value people with an attention to detail, and hope you'd be willing to help grow our community with that gift. -
Inappropriate?Jim: see, you're not a week old. You (and your managers) can't in good faith simultaneously claim to be 175 years old and at the same time absolutely ignorant of the social norms and technical details of this way-cool novel online internet environment you've launched into.
What we're trying to communicate to you is how to comport yourselves like adults who have been paying attention.
So, please: "tagging" is something that your readers should be allowed to do. If you want the authors or "editors" or whatever to manage it without allowing the community to do it properly, then the words should be called either "keywords" or "categories".
That's actually a matter of common usage.
I’m wishing this was more about balloons in space
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Inappropriate?Thank your for your careful attention to detail.
The Movable Type system underlying the AnnArbor.com site has both "categories", which come from a fixed list of predefined terms in a hierarchy, and "tags" which can be created on the fly without the requirement for validation, uniqueness, or adherence to a standard.
Each system which implements tags does it somewhat differently. Flickr has one idea of tags, where trusted friends can add tags to a photo. This Get Satisfaction site has some added tag flexibility as well for community generated (in addition to author generated) tagging.
Alas, the current system is not all things to all people.
In addition to the tags that you see, there are some invisible tags that control syndication of content to various parts of the site and to other sites; that is how we would decide which posts would be printed out and attached to balloons to go up into space, for instance.
You can tag the stories that you read through other social bookmarking sites, such as delicious.com ; there is a small "share this post" button at the bottom of the site which facilitates that.
I’m thankful for attention to detail
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Inappropriate?Ed, we know that we can tag stories through 3rd parties. The point is not that I cannot tag stories directly on annarbor.com, but rather that the site has tags that aren't very tag-like and unless carefully organized will quickly become worse than useless. I don't really even want to tag annarbor.com stories. But I do want to find annarbor.com content quickly and easily.
Anyway, I'm glad that you're working on improving tagging and wish you luck with what I think will be a very difficult task. -
Inappropriate?As someone who is more of a "user" than a tech-geek, I don't even really understand tagging. Or how I access it on annarbor.com. So you might want to think about adding an explanation to how to use it.
I agree that having others tag is a good idea, if it works like tagging pictures in Facebook does.
I’m undecided
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Inappropriate?Ruth:
Tagging articles on annarbor.com and tagging pictures on facebook is a little different, but similar ideas. When you tag a facebook image, you are always tagging a person in the image. When tagging an article on annarbor.com, you are more adding a keyword that describes the article. This way people can quickly skim over tags, and click on a word that interests them. I do agree that we should have a tutorial, and we would love to teach people how to use the more tech aspects of the site. You are welcome to come down and meet us in our first floor space at annarbor.com, and i will personally answer any questions you have with the site. Just let us know when you are planning on stopping by so i can be sure to meet you down there. -
Inappropriate?Jim's explanation does not make it clear that as a user Ruth cannot tag content on annarbor.com. Ruth and all other users can only view tags that have already been applied by authors and editors (my terms, not sure what annarbor.com calls them).
Ruth, at the bottom of each article is a section with a list of tags (see image below). If you click on a link in that tag section, you'll get a page with other content that has been tagged with the same tag on which you clicked. (You've probably figured all of that out already, so this is mostly for anyone else who stumbles accross this discussion.)
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Inappropriate?Just to be clear, when I wrote above that "Ruth cannot tag content on annarbor.com", I meant that Ruth and other users cannot edit or add to the list of tags that are on the annarbor.com page (circled in red in my image above).
Users can tag articles using 3rd party tools like those listed in the Share This Post dropdown but doing so has no effect on what appears in the annarbor.com tag list. -
Inappropriate?Bob,
I didn't say that because there has already been *counts posts* 11 posts going over that. I kinda thought it was obvious :)
As long as we're on the twisted path of reiteration, I would like to point out that users cannot CURRENTLY add tags. We are, at this time, in control because we are working to create a solid tag base before we open the flood gates.
Ruth:
That offer still stands. Head in any time and I'd be happy to show you the features of the site. Including the ones you cannot currently do, but if all goes well, will be available in the future.
I’m excited about the future
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Please read this in a comedic tone. :) -
Inappropriate?First of all, thanks Jim for your offer but I'm comfortable with computers I'm just not a programmer.
Now that I understand what you mean by tagging, I would say the record right now is DISMAL. You (I don't mean you personally, but the staff) are clearly not in control of this right now. If you want to use tags as labels, then maybe you need a librarian or curator.
For instance:
Currently, the bicyclist death stories have tags of bicyclist, cyclist, bicycle; Pittsfield Township and Pittsfield Township Department of Public Safety.
The story about the house with the mold is tagged as Ypsilanti (which it is NOT)--it is Ypsilanti Township.
The story about the Angell Elementary area armed robbery doesn't get pulled into the Angell neighborhood feed, even though a tag or title with that heading should certainly pull into those.
I’m following the tags
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Inappropriate?Ruth:
I agree, we dont have it under control, but we are working to do so. Ed and i will talk about the tagging situation on monday to see what can be done. I'll update here after we meet.
Again, thanks to everyone for expressing their concerns. We can build this community without you. -
Typo correction:
we CANT build this community without you :) -
Inappropriate?Jim, Was this a typo? (I hope)
Again, thanks to everyone for expressing their concerns. We can build this community without you. -
Inappropriate?hahaha. yes, that was a typo.
I cant help but giggle at those perfectly placed typos that transform the statement all together.
I’m making smoe typso
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Inappropriate?The New York Times has made its thesaurus for tagging available:
http://developer.nytimes.com/docs/tim...
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