[mb-users] using folksonomy tags for personal collections/wishlists

[Robert Kaye]

First off, thanks for starting this discussion! I'm glad to see that  
people are already thinking about how the tagging system should be used.

On Sep 25, 2007, at 3:28 PM, Alex Dupuy wrote:

> If you have a release, tag it with "owned-<modname>" (e.g. I would use
> "owned-dupuy"); if you want it, use "wanted-<modname>" instead.

Very interesting use of tagging, I've got to admit. I just had a  
quick chat with Don wrt this topic and here is a bunch of our  
thoughts on this matter.

My first reaction was that we're conflating the tag space -- we're  
using it for two distinct purposes that could weaken either of the  
two purposes. But in light of the Ollie's link to the excellent  
tagging article (thanks!) I'm changing my tune on that.  
Hypothetically speaking, what is the "correct" way of using tags in  
this case? I think providing personal value is probably the most  
"correct" way of gaining adoption.

We're not going to enforce any kinds of conventions right now -- nor  
are we going to discourage any kinds of conventions. Let's take on  
Don's favorite saying that "Rules follow practice". So, lets get out  
there, tag things and then we'll see what "rules" we should establish  
after people have gotten the system bootstrapped. To that end, would  
someone please start a documentation section/page that captures the  
conventions as they emerge?

Now, about creating tags that contain editor names -- I think that is  
something we should avoid doing, if at all possible. A folksonomy is  
useful when convention converges on tags. The more people use a tag,  
the more data you can collect and the more data you can infer. If  
people use tags that are specifically used only for themselves, those  
tags will never correlate to anything else. Data islands if you will.  
These will be useful for individuals, but not for the community as a  
whole.

What if I suggest that we make it clear that when viewing a tag cloud  
that you can see which tags you applied (in one color) and aggregate  
tags others applied (another color). This way, if you apply a "want"  
tag (without editor name), you can see which releases/tracks you want  
to have in your collection. And if the want tag appears in an  
aggregate tag, we know that there are lots of people who want to have  
that release/track. (Of course that begs the question what it means  
when you apply a "want" tag to an artist. I can see myself applying a  
dontwant tag to Britney and a want tag to Beyoncé. :-) )

The use of tags for the I want/I have feature is quite interesting.  
If we find that people are using the feature, but it doesn't quite  
fit right or our tag space gets borked somehow, we can always code  
the want feature in regular DB tables and yank our the want tags from  
the folksonomy. I'm happy to go see and how things emerge and then  
adjust later.

Finally, I'd like to undertake some UI changes:

1. As suggested above, distinguish your tags from aggregate tags.
2. Show the most popular aggregate tags on the artist/release/track/ 
label page
3. Add a preference to not show tags artist/release/track/label pages
4. Add caching support to tags.
5. Add some short verbiage about folksonomy syntax below the tag box.

What other UI tweaks do we need?

--


--ruaok      Somewhere in Texas a village is *still* missing its idiot.

Robert Kaye     --     rob at eorbit.net     --    http://mayhem-chaos.net