Tags feature for DG?

question: I tagged the word "pomegranate". Are the articles going to appear in the tag cloud, because it didn't take me there.

Only if you tag an article with pomegranate. :) And this tag system is different than the tag system we have for the article writers, so you'll need to tag an article twice if you're the author.

dave

ahhhhhh :)

Dave, I just tested out the "tag a post" feature, and it works like a charm!

Will there be a way to delete a tag? I just realized that the first time I tried it (before you fixed the problem), I also had a typo in my tag. I misspelled "roasted"--too excited about the new feature to pay attention to my fingers, I guess.

So as we're crusing through the garden, each different forum we're on, we can tag stuff, correct? Neato :)

Sure is easier than carrying a bunch of twist ties around the garden in my pocket...

This is really fun... Thanks, Dave! :-)

I just tagged "the picture dog" with quotations, because that is how it is actually shown. The tag now shows up at the beginning of the list, because of the quotes, rather than alphabetically. Do you think this is okay? Should it be changed? Should we not begin our tags with punctuation?

I know that thread! LOL If I wanted to find it and had to dig through a list of tags, I'd look for it under picture dog. Or maybe the picture dog. But I wouldn't think to look at the beginning of the list for it in quotes (unless it was the absolute first thing on the list, then I might accidentally see it before I scrolled farther down looking for it alphabetically!)

I have another question. Will 'all' our tags be made public? I'd like to be able to tag some things in a personal way, without having the whole world see it. For example, since we can no longer add to our Favorites (not happy about that) I might like to add a tag such as "my favorite GardenGuyKin photo."

Nap, I think Dave makes each group of words within a set of commas a single tag and search term, so the quotes are not needed.

I know Flickr and some other social networking sites have people put multiple-word tags in quotes if they intended for the tag to be searched for that way, so there might be some confusion for people used to that kind of setup.

Having said that, GW, can I delete the tag and resubmit it? (or keep it as such because the author used the quotes)

I don't know if Dave's opened up an edit feature for the tags yet (he said he was going to though). Maybe he could make it so that even if you use quotes, those will get ignored in the alphabetizing? Then that solves the problem. Or if there's a search function so that you don't have to scroll through the alphabetical list, then having it in quotes or not won't matter, but otherwise I think it'll be easier for people to find if it's alphabetized correctly without the quotes. Maybe other people would know to look for it with quotes, but speaking for myself I would never find it that way (but I could always add my own tag without the quotes, that's the beauty of tags!)

Thanks for the input, ecrane. I'm agreeing with everything you said.

Now, what do you think about my second question? I just looked at the rest of my Favorites. I'm glad they're still there because I have saved my own Happy Birthday thread, and I certain that the rest of the World is not interested in seeing that in the Tag List.

I agree, I'd like to still be able to have my own separate favorites list. For me it's not so much about threads that nobody else would care about, it's more about being able to quickly access the threads that are truly my favorites. If I have a particular garden design thread that I use for inspiration, I think I can find it faster by going to my favorites list than by looking through the tags. I like the tags because if there's a subject that I'm looking for info on, now I'll be able to find it much easier than the forum search, or if there's a newbie looking for info on something and I remember there was a thread on it, I'll be able to pull it up for them quickly. The way I would use the two features, I see them as being something different. But if we can't have both, I'd pick the tags instead of the private favorites.

Well said, ecrane3! That neatly sums up how I was feeling about the two options, but wasn't articulate enough to describe concisely.

Thanks!

Holy Cow! I didn't even know I had a favorites!

Favorites: How cool is that? LOL! I never open my DG window wide enough to see that little file folder icon.

Guess I'd better read up on them, favorites and tags both!

Suzy

For the moment at least you don't have favorites--Dave converted it over to tags. If you had favorites saved from before then they're still there, but for now at least you can't create new ones, all you can make are tags.

Another helpful thing would be to add the date that the thread was started. Many threads under one heading on the Tag List can sound alike, just from the title. But if the date were showing, it might help to narrow down which one to select.

I can see where I will need to check tags before I continue making them now - as Hyblaean has tagged a post from Critter (seed starting) that I had marked to tag as well.

Dave - this is SO COOL!!!!!!

http://davesgarden.com/cookbook/
Getting good stuff already :D have no idea how I missed this!?

I don't think it matters if multiple people tag the same thread--different people will use different words to describe it so it can still be helpful.

Dryad57, I agree with Ecrane3. I'm not exactly sure how this all works, but I think that the more paths out there, the more intuitively it will be able to be accessed by people that come later trying to find something.
Oh, and also, if you mark your own path, it will show up in 'view only your own tagged pages', which I'm using sort of as my own electronic filing cabinet:

http://davesgarden.com/tools/tags/
the bottom link on this page- I'm not sure how to get to it any other way?

When multiple people add tags to the same page, it shows that that page is very popular and should deservedly rise to the top.

For example, two people tagged the "picture dog" thread and I hadn't seen that thread in years and I remember how fun it was. I enjoyed going back through and seeing it again. If only one person had tagged that, I probably wouldn't have noticed it.

Oh, another fun thought: I think I'm going to add a "Daily Cloud" feature to the homepage where you can view just today's ongoing tag-cloud of tagged pages. It'll be a way to view what's being tagged "today" at a moment's glance.

This feature is GREAT! Thank you GW for suggesting it! I can't believe how much fun I'm having watching the cloud grow and grow.

Dave

Adding my thank you for tags. I look forward to my personal tag cloud.

Love this already Cindy

My fascination with this feature gives new meaning to "having my head in the clouds"--this is great! Thanks, Dave, for making it happen!

I've added a "Recently Tagged Cloud" to the homepage, although it's disabled by default lest we interrupt the thousands of members who aren't noticing what we're doing here. :)

Go to "My Tools", "Preferences", "Customize Homepage".

Find "Recently Tagged Pages" and then enable it by selecting a position for it. Save your changes and then check out the homepage.

For now, the homepage cloud shows tags added in the last 12 hours. We can change that later. There's also a link from the homepage cloud to your personal cloud, which is convenient.

dave

The problem with tags is I ramble from one subject to another because I find so many things I want to read. Now I will never get anything else done.

Dumb question - not my first :) - why are some tags in a bigger font size than other tags?

The larger tags are those that have been used more frequently, and thus are more popular.

This is the advantage of a cloud; you can instantly see which subjects are most popular based on how large the tags appear.

Lots of daylilly lovers on DG! LOL

Ok, this is addicting and I have things I need to do. Someone push me off of the chair!

*push* :-)

I'm in the same boat here. These tags are incredibly addictive.

I didn't know we had a favorites? If it had said "tags" I would have know what it was! LOL!

yup...fun, fun, fun!

I have been going back through old threads adding tags. I only add to those that I would want to find again because of something of interest. LOL It is amazing how many were fun at the time but just read like nonsense now.

I am also finding a lot of the links are no longer viable. This is caused by a lot of things such as the site linked to is no longer active but a lot of them are links to DG threads which may have been removed or moved? One was to our Dave with his head not in the clouds but in a "wig" of red flowers. So if you find it please tag it. If enough people tag it he'll grow large and I'll be able to laugh at it again ;~}

zany, I just tagged "Love lies bleeding" in photos - **chuckling**

So that's where it was hiding. Thanks Dea!!