[Tagdb] Over tagging fields?

Tue Mar 21 19:09:48 GMT 2006

I am 100% with you.  We are obviously all fighting an uphill trend when it
comes to user experience and expectations, Web 2.0 architecture and tagging.

As I am sure some of you have experienced, when I talk to a normal "user"
about a tagging structure they immediately lean towards "oh well I want to
be able to search by that so you should let me have a custom field for that
and I want a custom field for this, etc etc etc).  Trying to explain to them
the idea of essentially, "free thought," is very odd and often difficult.

I most confess that I am having the same problems - I guess.  An example
would be a restaurant app.  I could let users tag the meal as a whole OR the
dish they were eating OR the dish as part of that meal.  I would argue that
if I just had a meal tag field but liked the steak and not the dessert, I
would want to put things like "loved the décor, cheap silverware, fast
service" into the meal field but might want to put into the dish field for
steak something like "over cooked" and dessert "I love chocolate, best with
ice cream."  

The question is, is it overkill to have a user but tags into EVERY dish they
have while eating?  Will they do that or view it as too much?  

The general Web 2.0 question being asked here is what rules do you apply
when deciding what should and should not be tagged?  Is it as simple as, one
group of items, one tag field or do you look your application, the items you
are grouping and the sub items within it and decide that IF the item's tags
don't accurately or easily reflect the tags that would be used on the
sub-items without having to restate the sub items (ex. "the steak was
overcooked") then the sub items and main item should have their own tags?

Thanks,

Josh

-----Original Message-----
From: Nitin Borwankar [mailto:nitin at borwankar.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2006 8:46 AM
To: Joshua Lippiner
Cc: tagdb at lists.tagschema.com
Subject: Re: [Tagdb] Over tagging fields?

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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