In theory they are great, you attach some meta information to the item you are posting to help others determine whether it might be something worth reading or worth ignoring.
The reality in my opinion is that they are broken and its probably my (our) fault.
Take a second and look at the popular tags and try to figure out where the hell an article about someone reminiscing how a mistake they made years ago which mirrors some of todays events, had international impacts that are still around today. Take a look at the list below of our most common tags and see where you think it fits, remember you can only pick 2.
#music: 2868 #politics: 1523 #technology: 1328 #science: 1297 #askhubski: 1015 #history: 835 #news: 812 #thehumancondition: 698 #uspolitics: 658 #economics: 619 #privacy: 581 #books: 549 #art: 508 #space: 499 #hubski: 479 #internet: 459 #society: 445 #education: 432 #philosophy: 423 #goodlongread: 405 #humor: 403 #poetry: 392 #gaming: 358 #programming: 332 #bitcoin: 321 #photography: 317 #food: 317 #funny: 307 #business: 278 #media: 242 #film: 236 #environment: 235 #design: 227 #games: 215 #architecture: 199 #religion: 197 #psychology: 196 #comedy: 195 #sports: 190 #bugski: 184 #math: 184 #physics: 175 #medicine: 167 #world: 163 #feminism: 150 #sex: 138 #drugs: 127 #war: 126 #culture: 123 #israel: 121 #detroit: 113 #anthropology: 108 #racism: 96 #race: 95 #police: 92 #videos: 91 #writebetterdammit: 90 #travel: 87 #linguistics: 87 #blog: 85 #language: 82 #articles: 81 #weeklymusicthread: 81 #russia: 78 #government: 75 #animals: 71 #queer: 68 #baseball: 66 #ukraine: 64 #military: 62 #crime: 60 #entertainment: 59 #startups: 58 #recipes: 57 #feelgoodhubski: 56 #islam: 54
What did you pick? I went with #articles and #thehumancondition even though I know those are not right. #articles tells you absolutely nothing at all but I use it as a general "ooh thats interesting, not easily categorized article", #thehumancondition is not correct either as its not a clean 'fit' but #thehumancondition at almost 700 submissions has become a kind of catch all for things that don't fall cleanly into another category.
To make it just that little bit harder to correctly tag a submission, the form doesn't help me in anyway, there is no dropdown for existing tags as suggestions, there's just 2 empty boxes sitting there, waiting...
I get the appeal of tagging as it gives us a box to put something in but many of the things I have found interesting would never have been found if they had be tagged in any specific way, the over categorization works against any organic discovery.
What if there were default unchangeable categories, where you can break them down and follow them at whatever level of the breakdown you want, but you would automatically follow everything below the level that you chose. For example: News, News.Ukraine, News.Ukraine.Username
or Music, Music.Electronic, Music.Electronic.Free If someone follows Music.Electronic, they automatically follow Music.Electronic.Free as well.
If someone only wanted free electronic music, they could just follow Music.Electronic.Free. And when you make a post, as suggestions, the subsequent tag additions will pop up somewhere in a box listed based on most used. This way, we can be precise, but we can also not limit the exposure by being too obscure, because users can choose to follow one of the larger branches. I think the current problem with this site is exactly what you said, things are scattered everywhere not necessarily in the right place. The only reason why we can catch everything is because currently there isn't a huge userbase. Edit: Or maybe that's how it already works, I can't really tell.
This is an interesting idea. But mostly I wanted to comment on how that tag functionality would bring us full circle to the near beginning of internet discussion - usenet. However, I feel that the larger problem being outlined is one of language and not necessarily the functionality of tags.
I think something that has happened around here more than once is that users mistake the lack of encouragement that a feature may provide for discouragement. It's a subtle different, but present. For instance, the tag system does not necessarily make it easy to find all easily-grouped content under a given header right now. However, I do not believe it discourages discovery. It just does not provide complete discovery nor does it encourage discovery of additional, potentially related tags. I feel that the concern of improper tagging is alleviated by a) the editable community tag (although 2 of those might be cool) and b) the follow/share structure, as long as you have confidence in who you follow. I often feel "stuck" on tags. Sometimes I can't come up with one and sometimes I come up with four. While it's not ideal, and for instance "tag suggestions" that pop up might be nice, I don't think it's "broken." I don't like the idea of set categories that must be used, I do enjoy the flexibility of tags as they are currently.
I feel that the concern of improper tagging is alleviated by a) the editable community tag (although 2 of those might be cool)
The editable community tag is a good feature but it is still limited to the list of tags that are currently out there now. You could create a new tag just for one post but the chances are that you will prevent people from ever seeing it rather than creating a new and useful category.and b) the follow/share structure, as long as you have confidence in who you follow.
Right and thats probably the most important factor in the limitations of tags right now, because they have less power to filter for things you find interesting (we have generic buckets like #thehumancondition rather than targetted tags) you need to rely on the people you follow which causes its own problems (Users with the most followers decide the content for everyone else). I know hubski is intended to be a person follow based site but tags (could/should?) provide a balancing force against that power struggle. I often feel "stuck" on tags. Sometimes I can't come up with one and sometimes I come up with four. While it's not ideal, and for instance "tag suggestions" that pop up might be nice, I don't think it's "broken."
Yep, I feel stuck so I lump it into "something" in most cases. Tag suggestions are needed I think. "broken" is debatable, I don't think they are as powerful or as useful as they should be.
Tagging can help you if you set out to find something related to a specific topic. Or at least it would if our tags were more focused. For example #civilwar. But thats not 'discovery' in the way I meant. On the other hand it can work against you by hiding interesting topics that have been squeezed into an ill fitting tag which you do not follow. Right now I tend to ignore tags and instead go fishing in global, ranking by mid to high votes.
_refugee_'s point that the lack of encouragement (circledots & comments) is not the same as discouragement is a good one. Things are easily missed for a variety of reasons. 1. Following people or tags isn't the same as actually seeing what is posted. 2. Just because I follow 75 people, 13 tags, and 2 domains doesn't mean I'll actually see all the good stuff posted by those people, tags, and domains simply because there is just too much brilliant fabulous interesting things to read, music to listen to, videos to watch, and too little time. 3. Shout-outs are more likely to get a target audience's attention, but shout-outs imply an awareness of a particular user's interests. 4. Also, just because an item has no shares and no comments doesn't mean it has not been seen and appreciated. 5. I'd love to see the top 20 most shared and top 20 most commented items over the entire hub. My guess is that they are of the "text" variety and involve people chiming in on some personal issue, current music, or favourite quotes -- but maybe that's only what I see in my feed. 5. Final note: This item for example, had 147 comments and 16 shares. Most of the comments were on topics totally unrelated to the post. I'd say it's pretty typical. So even if you post something on a topic of interest to a specific tag, there's no guarantee that the topic will be addressed.
I have thought the tag system needs an overhaul for a while now. hubski's gone through a lot of iterations so I figure it's basically inevitable. Would it be too subreddit-like to have one tag box include a dropdown menu to some of our most popular/most general tags (hubski, uspolitics, music, goodlongread, etc -- maybe 30 of these) so you have to use at least one of those (and this way new users have an idea of what tags they should use on their posts to gain attention). The other tag could be what you want it to be, or blank, or a second one of the "default" tags. I've always thought that one of the weaknesses of the tag system is its complete lack of codification. I saw someone use the tag 'goodlongreads' the other day -- they were probably relatively new; how are they supposed to know not to add an 's' and cost them a few hundred viewers? But of course that freeform nature is also a strength. So maybe half and half is the way to go? There are several obvious drawbacks but I'd like to hear what you guys think.
Maybe if we had a similar design to twitter's mention finder thingy, so that when you start typing it will come up with suggestions (I'd show a picture but can't think of how to do that on iOS) with the tags we follow at the top and ones ordered by
most followers from that? for example if I typed goodlog it would come up with
goodlongreads then goodlongread below it due to fewer followers.
and if I typed "p" it would come up with "programming" above "penispains" even if peniepains had more followers, because thankfully I don't follow "penispains" but I do follow programming
While I hate the reddit inspiration, subhub almost sounds too good to pass up
It's definitely not the first time someone has mentioned that phrase :)