Tagging and construction posts

June 7, 2014 12:53 PM

Hey, just a reminder that when tagging posts that if you put a space between words that counts as two tags, not one.

Mentioned only because I made a post about Bill Watterson's recent secret comic strips, but missed seeing the previously created post due to the tags being separated. I did the tags as 'billwatterson' and 'calvinandhobbes', whilte the previous post did them as 'bill', 'watterson', 'calvin', 'hobbes' etc.

Totally not a big deal, but food for thought about constructing posts to make them easy to find both for avoiding duplicates and archiving.

posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) to MetaFilter-Related at 12:53 PM (34 comments total)

Good point, I added them to the post.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:54 PM on June 7, 2014

Just throwing in my two cents here, but when I tag posts with people's names I usually do something like this:

Bill
Watterson
BillWatterson
Calvin
Hobbes
Calvin&Hobbes

Sometimes I leave off the 'Bill' tag. Practice good folksonomy, folks!
posted by carsonb at 12:57 PM on June 7, 2014 [9 favorites]

Another fun fact for the fearlessly pedantic: You can tag the posts of your mutual contacts.
posted by carsonb at 12:58 PM on June 7, 2014 [7 favorites]

Since single-word tags are the only ones allowed, a useful feature would be the ability to tag posts written by other users. That would also fixing up posts with less useful tags.

If people abuse the feature, flagging would highlight problems.

A second useful feature to accompany it would be the ability to filter posts on Boolean combinations of tags. It's easy to filter posts based on one tag, but that's about it, as far as I can tell.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:00 PM on June 7, 2014

You can do simple Boolean ANDs in you tag search by changing the tags URL, for example from tags/grrm to tags/grrm+asoiaf. Sadly I think the rest of the ASCII set (minus the usual URL operators) is available for tags, so there's no easy logical OR.
posted by infinitewindow at 1:08 PM on June 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

Oh this saves me a pony request. Can we have two (or more ) word tags? I seem to remember it was hard to do programmatically in the past, but that was pre-pb days, so maybe things have changed?
posted by dhruva at 1:13 PM on June 7, 2014

I came close to posting, after a search for Watterson in posts came up with nothing recent.

I guess that's a point against coy and cryptic posts?
posted by Pronoiac at 1:23 PM on June 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

Dhruva, see the comment just before yours. If you look in a common tag, you can look at the suggested tags and click the + after to search for those two tags.

Psst, mathowie, Watterson has two T's.
posted by Pronoiac at 1:28 PM on June 7, 2014

Coy_and_cryptic.
posted by adamvasco at 1:29 PM on June 7, 2014

I think only the first four tags were mine. I know the tagging drill and figured "Watterson" would be distinct enough for most, especially because his name does have a pretty unique spelling. Pearlsbeforeswine was also present which seemed relevant. Somebody else added bill, Calvin, etc...
Anyway I hope you didn't spend a lot of time on your post! I know how frustrating that can be.
posted by rouftop at 1:32 PM on June 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

Love that Bill Waterson.
posted by rhizome at 1:32 PM on June 7, 2014

a (29 posts), an (2 posts), the (125 posts),
and (44 posts), or (8 posts),
am (13 posts), was (3 posts), of (103 posts), if (25 posts),
I (22 posts), he (3 posts), she (2 posts), it (76 posts)
posted by ardgedee at 2:19 PM on June 7, 2014 [9 favorites]

the (125 posts)
posted by carsonb at 2:20 PM on June 7, 2014

doh (7 posts)
posted by carsonb at 2:20 PM on June 7, 2014 [7 favorites]

Trying to account for this is why my AskMe posts always look like they were tagged by a hyperactive sea lion.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 2:58 PM on June 7, 2014 [5 favorites]

hyper active hyperactive sea lion sealion
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 3:00 PM on June 7, 2014 [19 favorites]

Seems like a good spot to ask for this pony again: "book" (1744 posts) and "books" (3559 posts) should both pull up the same set of tagged posts.
posted by mediareport at 4:55 PM on June 7, 2014 [2 favorites]

ardgedee: " the (125 posts),"

I've done this before a few times. I went back and removed them all after someone sent me a note that said, "Nice use of the 'the' tag, genius." :D
posted by zarq at 4:57 PM on June 7, 2014

so, what post has the most tags?
posted by the man of twists and turns at 5:02 PM on June 7, 2014

Every now and then I fall apart.
posted by Meatbomb at 5:18 PM on June 7, 2014

I'm not complaining, but I am curious. What was the design consideration behind making tags single non-spaced words, instead of the more typical convention of having words with spaces separated by commas?
posted by codacorolla at 5:40 PM on June 7, 2014

If you look in a common tag, you can look at the suggested tags and click the + after to search for those two tags.

I don't mean for searching, I mean for creating tags. Basically what codacorolla said.
posted by dhruva at 6:51 PM on June 7, 2014

I always thought the convention was to use the words together, not do both.

So, MattHowie, not both Matt and Howie.
posted by cjorgensen at 7:49 PM on June 7, 2014

codacorolla, IIRC there were several designs for tags being implemented around the web and after taking hints from places like flickr and technorati mathowie implemented the current system. It's interesting to see how roll-out of new site features has really slicked up in the decade since tags were added.
posted by carsonb at 9:37 PM on June 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

I am fairly bitter that Flickr made it much harder for me to use my tags the way I had been. So let's not change ponies midstream and all that.
posted by maryr at 11:23 PM on June 7, 2014

so, what post has the most tags?

I don't know, but this post by Blasdelb has a cool use of tags.
posted by mahershalal at 5:51 AM on June 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

I must be a bad person, because I am happier about being notified of the multiple Watterson double-posts than I am about the tags reminder and discussion.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Come on, people! There's records to be set here! What's more important, really; Michael Jackson dying or Bill Watterson returning to cartooning?
posted by Curious Artificer at 6:22 AM on June 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

Well, in their defenses, if you do a search in the search box for Watterson, rouftop's FPP does not show up on the initial results page because rouftop's FPP did not contain the word Watterson. After doing a search you would have had to click over to the Tags tab before you see there's a FPP on the P.B.S.-Watterson linkup.

I submit this is the reason there have been 5 doubles, and I suggest also this is a mark against Coy_and_Cryptic* FPP framing. A mere [more inside] of "It's Bill Watterson." would have avoided all this.

*I'm using this as the working name for my next EDM production collab.
posted by BeerFilter at 7:05 AM on June 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

I almost posted a double myself. I've been on a self-imposed MeFi break for a long weekend, and seeing that story on the web is what brought me back a day early... "My friends at MeFi must be going apeshit over this." So I scrolled through the recent posts...just back to the start of June 7, because Pastis's blog post was on June 7, and I naively assumed that's when the post would have been made.

The post wasn't there. I couldn't believe it. I double- and triple-checked the posts back to the start of June 7, and there was nothing there. "I get to post this??!!" I said to myself.

Then it occurred to me that it could have been posted before Pastis's blog post, possibly as early as the first Watterson strip (June 4). So I looked further back and there it was, on the afternoon of June 5.

So another contributing factor may be that it was posted earlier than the double posters might have expected it.

I have to say, it was fun reading all the beanplating "is it or isn't it" analysis of minutiae in the panels, after the reveal and already knowing that it is.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:54 AM on June 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

Since we're talking about tags, is there a reason you are limited to two at a time when searching? Is this a technical limitation like a too much load thing?
posted by Big_B at 8:51 AM on June 9, 2014

Five.
posted by Curious Artificer at 10:18 AM on June 9, 2014

I have to say, it was fun reading all the beanplating "is it or isn't it" analysis of minutiae in the panels, after the reveal and already knowing that it is.

Yeah, I took some (extremely petty) pleasure in the "it's *clearly* not him, duh!" from some folks.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:04 AM on June 9, 2014

What's a seal ion?
posted by blue_beetle at 2:51 PM on June 9, 2014

A seal with an electric charge due to the loss or gain of one or more electrons.
posted by maryr at 7:35 PM on June 9, 2014 [1 favorite]