I want to discuss a better means of organizing tags for websites that use a generic tagging system. I propose a tag hierarchy.

Basically, if I search for #dog, I should find posts with #puppy, #pug, #baby_pugs, #cute_dogs, etc.

But, if I search for #pug, I should only get posts with #pug, or other tags like #baby_pugs, #cute_pugs, etc.

This would make adding 50+ similar tags to a post irrelevant and allow for normal people to put a single obscure tag and still gain visibility.

I want to bring this idea up to more people. Where should I discuss this? You can suggest any website, community, or Lemmy instance where I could possibly develop this further.

I’m happy to discuss this here as well.

[Edit for clarity]: I am not just talking about tags for the federation and Mastodon. I am talking about improving any and all websites with a generic tagging system. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. etc.

  • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
    0·
    10 months ago

    I don’t think Lemmy or Mastodon would be a good place to start necessarily. Don’t be discouraged, I just mean that I think this should be something separate, like a library, that other systems like Mastodon or Lemmy could then use. As a code library it could be maintained elsewhere and let these folks keep working on their projects.

    However, the large architecture issue is that those tags must be added in secret - or dozens of queries would have to go off. Either:

    • When someone comments #pug you also need to add on all possible permutations of pug so it’s queryable or
    • When someone searches for #pug you need to do a much more complex query for all possible permuations of pug.

    It would be possible to do a lookup table in sql for this, but again that requires maintenance and again every instance keeping track of their own set of known lookups. Anyone else have alternative architectures?

    • Actual@programming.devOPEnglish
      0·
      10 months ago

      I don’t think Lemmy or Mastodon would be a good place to start necessarily. Don’t be discouraged, I just mean that I think this should be something separate, like a library,

      True. I meant suggesting this idea for generally any website that uses tagging. Will update post to show this better.

      As a code library it could be maintained elsewhere and let these folks keep working on their projects.

      We would need a group like the Wiki Foundation to set this up. Though I wouldn’t know how to pitch this.

  • neidu2@feddit.nl
    0·
    10 months ago

    I don’t have an actual answer to your question, but imma use the opportunity to let my age show.

    Seeing as we’re not on instagram or twitter, and seeing as this space is somewhat more techy than the average platform, could we please do tagging without precomiler instructions (or perl inline comments if that’s more your thing)?

    deserves better than being referred to as “the hash tag sign”.

    • Actual@programming.devOPEnglish
      0·
      10 months ago

      This place is more techy, but please don’t assume. I have no idea what you’re arguing for.

      • Helix 🧬@feddit.de
        0·
        10 months ago

        I think they meant that # is used in many other ways than “the hash tag sign” and you should refer to it as such, e.g. as hash sign, pound sign or number sign.