Post-post tag alteration?

January 25, 2005 12:42 PM

Is there a way to alter the tags once a post has been made? I posted this with the tags "new orleans jazz funeral" and in hindsight, New Orleans and jazz funeral are single entities. Should they have an underscore? Should there be a way to group them? Suggestions?
posted by Igor XA to MetaFilter-Related at 12:42 PM (22 comments total)

Not yet, but it's coming.
posted by Vidiot at 12:44 PM on January 25, 2005

New Orleans, I agree, should be tagged either "new_orleans", "neworleans", or "nawlins", but I think it's appropriate to use two separate tags for jazz funeral.
posted by rocketman at 12:51 PM on January 25, 2005

But what about all the other posts about jazz funerals?
posted by smackfu at 12:55 PM on January 25, 2005

what other posts about jazz funerals? and i suppose you're right, rocketman, a jazz funeral should probably be categorized under both jazz and funeral.

but "nawlins" is right out. no one really says that here.
posted by Igor XA at 1:02 PM on January 25, 2005

oh, wait, was that the joke? sorry, smackfu. it's been a long day at the office (as is readily apparent by my continual escaping to metafilter).
posted by Igor XA at 1:03 PM on January 25, 2005

I'm still waiting patiently to be able to change my creatively-typed tag "any rand" to one that references a specific well-known author.
posted by soyjoy at 2:03 PM on January 25, 2005

I may be wrong, but in my experience the convention with tags is to use alloneword not all_one_word. So neworleans jazz funeral. That said it doesn't hurt to go crazy with tags (in my opinion). If I were to post about the Sony PSP I'd probably tag it sonypsp sony and psp.

It's easy to get obsessive about tags, though, so be warned!
posted by nthdegx at 2:16 PM on January 25, 2005

That said I was a bit surprised to see tags turn up at metafilter. They make sense to me at Flickr and del.icio.us, but here? I mean -- does the post search feature work properly yet? If so then the text sort of tags itself, provided the content is descriptive. Tagging text seems redundant in light of where search technologies are today. (Apologies if this conversation has been had).
posted by nthdegx at 2:23 PM on January 25, 2005

nthdegx, there are no categories on metafilter, but tags serve as a good way of organizing around subject matter that might not necessarily be mentioned in a post.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 2:27 PM on January 25, 2005

holy crap. all this time and i've just now realized it's the nth degree of x, right? am i right? do i get a cookie? why did that take so long?
posted by Igor XA at 2:33 PM on January 25, 2005

Plus the content on Metafilter has never been descriptive.
posted by smackfu at 2:35 PM on January 25, 2005

Yeah. x^n to put it another way. "Nth Degree" was my nick when I used to hang out on hip hop forums in my teens. nthdegx holds a certain aesthetic appeal for me, and since it is unique I keep it around.
posted by nthdegx at 2:40 PM on January 25, 2005

*sigh* I'm done tagging.
posted by nthdegx at 3:05 PM on January 25, 2005

in my experience the convention with tags is to use alloneword

I thought our instruction was to use this format? Or did I dream that?

I mean -- does the post search feature work properly yet?

No. The tags seem more useful to me (and certainly more interesting for those who like to browse).
posted by rushmc at 6:05 PM on January 25, 2005

I think you need a jazzfuneral tag as well. Jazz Funeral NewOrleans Jazzfuneral.

Or should it be jazzfunerals? I never know what to do about plural/singular.
posted by CunningLinguist at 7:15 PM on January 25, 2005

I just finished tagging my "oeuvre" as well, and I'm glad to see that I'm exceeded in "silly" only by some mathowie character.

For the moment, of course. I'm sure there are sillier members who have yet to tag their old posts.
posted by yhbc at 8:44 PM on January 25, 2005

Here's the link I forgot to attach to "silly" in my immediately preceding post.

Pretty silly of me, I must say.
posted by yhbc at 8:49 PM on January 25, 2005

The plural issue is a toughie. The only solace I take from my inconsistency on this issue is that I can revel in its completeness.

Friends, shortcuts, standards, events and games vs. photo, guide, download, church and mp3. Help me.
posted by nthdegx at 1:38 AM on January 26, 2005

I used all singular tags. Seemed the only sensible way of achieving uniformity and not diluting the usefulness of the tags.
posted by rushmc at 8:47 AM on January 26, 2005

I thought plurals were generally better. I think someone said the tag should be a plain adjective or fit into the sentence, "This post is about  _ _ _ _ _ _."

For the time being, it doesn't hurt to tag with both singular and plural forms. Hopefully the other forms would show up as related tags. Even if we never reached a consensus it would still be possible then to browse through the other forms.
posted by stopgap at 9:13 AM on January 26, 2005

I used all singular tags. Seemed the only sensible way of achieving uniformity and not diluting the usefulness of the tags.

Because if everybody used plurals... it wouldn't be uniform... or useful... because...? Help me out here.
posted by languagehat at 12:11 PM on January 26, 2005

Because using both plural and singular forms is bad (duplication and dilution), and so the choice is either to use all plurals or all singulars, and not everything is plural, but every plural contains a singular element.

Glad to be of help.
posted by rushmc at 1:32 PM on January 26, 2005