[Tagdb] Over tagging fields?

[Nitin Borwankar]

Joshua Lippiner wrote:

>Thanks Otis - but I am still more curious about all your opinions on whether
>or not a system should really ever HAVE more then one tag associated with an
>item.  If the item is a book, should there only be one tag field that is
>used to describe the book, the author, everything about it OR are users
>better off in the end of the day having TWO fields, one for the book overall
>and one for the AUTHOR.  
>
>This is more a Web 2.0 architecture question then anything else.  Should
>there ever be more then ONE tagging field associate with an item?
>
> 
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: tagdb-bounces at lists.tagschema.com
>[mailto:tagdb-bounces at lists.tagschema.com] On Behalf Of
>ogjunk-tagdb at yahoo.com
>Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2006 7:54 AM
>To: tagdb at lists.tagschema.com
>Subject: Re: [Tagdb] Over tagging fields?
>
> If you prefer power and flexibility, keep things separate.
>If you are using RDBMS for your system, also think about how large your tags
>table(s) will be.
>Even if you have a common place/table for your tags, you could add a 'type'
>identifier to each record, so you can narrow searches/joins to a specific
>type, which may or may not speed thngs up, at least in RDBMS world,
>depending on your DB, your indices, etc.
>
>Otis
> 
>----- Original Message ----
>From: Joshua Lippiner
>To: tagdb at lists.tagschema.com
>Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2006 10:27:39 AM
>Subject: [Tagdb] Over tagging fields? 
> 
>    Hello  All, 
>   
> I am new to this  group and checked the archive but didn't really find any
>direct answers to this  question: 
>   
> In Web 2.0  Applications, should any group of items ever have more then one
>tag field? 
>   
> In the last post,  Colin mentioned tags for articles, sponsors and
>products.  It made me start  wondering about rules for too much tagging.  As
>an example, take book  cataloging.  When developing a tag system for books
>should you only allow  tags on the book level or should you also allow tags
>at the  author level?  Doing both would allow users to describe a book AND
>authors separately but then how do you deal with tag searching?  Does the
>user have to specify that they only want to search the book tags or author
>tags  or do you search everything together?   
>   
> Before figuring out  the schema for my tagging system, I need to figure out
>this more fundamental  issue.  It seems it is a critical aspect of Web 2.0
>tagging  applications.    
>   
> What is everyone's  thoughts on this? 
>  
>

Some of this depends on your application - tagging authors seems to be a 
different
application concept than tagging books although in the database they are 
just entities.

Before deciding your schema you could also think about what are the user 
interactions with your app -
what do you want to gain by tagging authors rather than just books.  
Does your application become better or more cluttered.
Also, if you want to use tags purely as search hints then you may miss 
out on the social aspects of a tag based application.
Is there some social angle that is enhanced by tagging authors rather 
than books ?
Will users be able to discover new authors if authors were tagged, 
rather than if just books were tagged?
Will users be able to discover other users with common interests if 
authors are tagged rather than just books?

All these factors should aslo be given some importance, IMHO.

Nitin Borwankar

>   
> Thanks, 
>   
> Josh
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