Tags feature for DG?

The personal cloud is in a link below the DG cloud.

OH, thanks! I didn't realize it was already implemented.... I need to catch up!

Ric, Google Picasa lets you ad labels, which are akin to tags. Most photo organization software has a means of tagging, as Cactuspatch says of Adobe Elements. Windows Vista has great multimedia support, including tagging photos. Still, I prefer Picasa.

Who has more questions or suggestions of how tags can be used to your advantage? I'm working on an article and I'd like it to be as complete as possible.

What about as a reminder for things you said you were going to do?!!! Oh, maybe that's not what they are supposed to be for. LOL! I was looking forward to getting rid of the dirty strings around my fingers.

Gawd I feel so old...all the people talking about tags and clouds probably don't even get the "string around the finger" analogy.

Suzy

Yankee cat, please explain...the personal cloud is in a link below the DG cloud.

Go to the Tags page and scroll down to the bottom of the page and you will find this link. (It is in green.)

Oh, I see, but I thought you meant something different. The situation you just described shows me which tags I personally created, but they are also in the public list. I thought you meant I could have my own "private" selection of tags, which were for my eyes only. That is the thing I would like to have available. (As it was in Favorites)

In other words, if I assign a tag to something, the entire site sees it also. Earlier in this discussion, I mentioned that I wouldn't want to tag my birthday thread for the main list, just for my own.

There are definitely reasons to have some items tagged in a private folder.

But keep in mind that your public tags won't lead anyone else back to you, so if it's in a public thread and you think it's interesting enough to tag for yourself, please consider sharing your tag as "public", too.

(If you're worried about being able to find your own tags amid the big list, you can limit your view to just the items you've tagged.)

Being able to tag "for my eyes only" would be nice in some instances where I want to give it a tag that would only make sense to my warped mind ;~P

But I agree that most of what I tag should be included in the public cloud so anyone else can locate those items of interest without having to search for them on their own.

Thank you, Dave.

Conversely, if someone finds an interesting tag in the public cloud, they may want to add it to their own personal (not private) cloud. Is that what you had in mind, Terry?

yes, nap - that's it exactly ;o)

Will we be able to search for tags that are no longer visable in the cloud? If so will it be a seperate search feature or are we left using the existing search?

tags are labels. You label a thread or post in a descriptive way so that you can find it again. So if it is a composting thread you may label it compost but you might add a label such as "microbial heat" or "leaf mold" or even "rotten stuff" if that will help you find it later when you want it.

Then if I want to find out about how microbial heat works in composting I can find it because you had already tagged it. If I tag it again it will get a larger font in the cloud showing it has been tagged by more people. The bigger the font, the more popular that tag is and the more apt I am to check out what everyone is looking at!

Well, now. I think a strange thing just happened. I added the latest tags to my homepage, and clicked on one I wanted to see. I read it, then went back to my homepage and looked for that tag to see where I left off. It was gone. Is that possibly because it was no longer considered "new"?

Equilibrium, it just takes a little getting used to. Please try it out and I think you'll feel comfortable with it soon.

(edit...) Did you used to use the Favorites folder? Now it's just like adding favorites, only everyone else gets to take advantage of your favorites too. And you get to see what the others have chosen also. It's sort of like an Index.

This message was edited Jan 12, 2008 8:34 PM

I think in many ways tags are a little more intelligent than a lot of search engines--the search engine just looks to see if a certain word or words are present on a page, but it doesn't understand the context or what the main idea of the thread is. Since we're putting the tags in and we know all the context of the thread, they are more likely to be relevant. If you're looking for info on how to start tomatoes from seed, you'll have to weed through less bad/irrelevant information if you click on a tag "starting tomato seeds" than if you plug starting tomato seeds into a search engine.

Also from a programming standpoint I imagine tags are much easier to program than a sophisticated search engine that would do everything we wanted it to, and since DG is not primarily a search site it doesn't make sense for Dave to spend his time on that. For Ebay, search is very critical to their success because if people can't find the items they want to buy, then they won't buy them. But that's not really the case here--having search capabilities is nice, but I doubt if there are too many people leaving the site because the search engine here isn't best in class.

I'm going to have to bond with this thread a bit and read it over again and start experimenting a little bit until this starts sinking in. I'll catch on, it may take longer for it to sink in for me than it is for all you computer whizzes but it will eventually sink in. I found the little manilla folder in the upper right hand corner for this thread and clicked on it and added the word tags. I have no idea what I've done so I think I will refrain from adding anything else lest I mess up a system that people will be relying on to search for information.

I think I understand why Flickr might be using tags because they're mostly photos aren't they? In the case of microbial, I think I'd still like to find all threads that use the word microbial but I'd like to be able to limit my search results to threads that contain the word microbial and the word enzyme or maybe microbial and the word genome to get to more specific information as opposed to getting to information that was popular enough to be tagged. Does this make sense? Maybe these tags do this and I'm just not getting it yet.

Sorry, posting when you were posting ecrane.

ecrane, you're hired to help me. You poor person you.

We used to have a decent search engine here.
http://davesgarden.com/search.php
Now when you go to type in a word or words, DG articles come up. I don't know what happened to it but it used to be better than the one in each forum because you could search for more than one word.

I'm wallowing in happiness with these tags!

Equil, it may help to differentiate between tags and searches - I think of searches as the start of looking for things, and tags as a way to stick a personal electronic sticky on the results I've found that I don't want to lose (or search for again).

OK dryad57, you're hired to help me too you lucky duck you. Maybe with a little help from friends I'll figure this out. I'm still not going to add anything more to those little manilla folders until I get the hang of this.

happy to help...jes' holler!

Robin

Right now tags are sort of a popularity contest because things are just getting started, so the more popular topics are more likely to be tagged, but you eventually get to a point where most threads (except maybe the strictly chatty ones) would have tags describing their content, so eventually you should be able to find the info you're talking about with the tags.

I look at tags partly as a way to "sticky" things you want to find again, but also I look at it as a way to help people in the future who might have been looking for the same thing that I was. Using your microbial example, let's say you did a search for microbial enzymes and spent hours weeding through a bunch of results to find one or two relevant threads or posts. Then you give those good threads a tag "microbial enzymes". Then let's say a month later I come along looking for info on microbial enzymes. I find your tags, and I can click on those and get straight to the good information rather than having to repeat the hours of searching that you already did in order to get to the right info.

I'm not sure about this. I have a number of favorites saved, and I used the Edit feature to name them in a way that is meaningful to me (i.e., Elizabeth's apple crisp recipe - OK, not great).

Do I have to convert all these now to tags, and put them into a public "tag" base and then search all through them to find my own stuff?

Confused.
June

You don't have to convert them to tags...although if there are threads in your favorites that you think other people might find useful too then it would be nice to tag them. Even if you do tag them, they'll still stay in your favorites (at least for now).

Also, whenever you tag anything, there's a link on your "my info" page that will let you just look through just your own tags so you can find your own without having to dig through the whole public tag list.

Ah hah. Thanks, Ecrane.

June

I've been "stickying" things I don't want to lose by posting links to the threads in either my gardening journal or maybe it is my diary or blog deal. I love those areas of the site. Mostly instructional threads and such. I honestly can see why tags are great for a site that has all photos but I'm still struggling to understand why it's going to be great here for a gardening site with mostly text plus supporting images. Back to the microbial enzyme example, let's say I did get too many hits and was staring down hours of reading online. I'd just narrow down my search by adding the word technology or production after microbial and enzyme to reduce the time element. So how with tags can I zoom in to get to the information that I want to access not what is popular as you call it? In other words, what if no one bothers to tag a mircrobial enzyme thread as such in favor of just tagging it microbial? How do those who will be tagging know what others will need to be looking for in the future? Can you tell I'm not a member of Flickr and have never even heard of tags before this thread?

Tagging use has a BIG SLOW time gap.
At Flickr, when it first started, hardly anything was tagged correctly.
But Tagging was just in it's infancy then.
As time went on and it got comfortable the use picked up.
But still a lot of things are either over or more usually under Tagged.

For a very specific thing like microbial enzymes I don't think you ever will get a lot of hits.
Text Search may still be your best bet
But looking for a Chocolate, Cake, Recipe..... tagging THAT will .

Ric

I think you need to play with tags and get used to them, then they start to make more sense. Where I think I'll use them the most is those cases where someone comes along asking for advice on something, and I remember that there was a really good thread on that subject several months ago--I've often tried using the forum search to find those threads again, and sometimes I'm lucky and find them but more often I don't, or have to spend way longer than I really wanted to looking for them, and I think the tags will really help with that.

If only one person has tagged something, the chances that they used the exact same language you used to describe something are not that great and then you may find using a search engine finds you what you want faster, but then time goes on and eventually 100 people have tagged it, and chances are at least one of them thinks like you and you can find the exact thing you want very quickly. The trouble with less popular subjects is that it'll take longer before they get a lot of tags, so it may be a while before those subjects can effectively be found using tags. But given enough time, they'll get there too.

Here's an example of a plant-related thing that would benefit from tagging. Say you want to find some yellow-flowering plants for that front bed. You notice a few you like, posted in a the middle of a long thread. With tags, you can create a tag saying yellow flowers and label every instance of them you run across and like. Now, instead of having a list of ten different URL's, you have one tag that says "yellow flowers".

Great discussion, folks!

For those who are tag impaired like me, gardenwife posted a link explaining tags visually way up at the top of this thread-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/260004685/

I guess their whole site is down temporarily because I keep getting the message that Flickr is having a massage but I suspect the visual explanation may help others like me.

That link is really good Equil! I like the visual.

How I see tagging is an electronic version of a file cabinet.

Here's an example:
Daylilies: Seedlings Converted to Tet with Colchicine
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/487122/

If I wanted to save this thread into the filing cabinet, I would click on the yellow folder button at the top and put this "Hybridizing, Propagation, propogation, Seedlings Converted to Tet with Colchicine, daylily, daylilies, daylily seed, seeds, daylily conversion, colchicine" in the assigning tags box

hybridizing, because that is how i'd most likely think about it
propagation, because it is a way to propagate daylilies
propogation, because I commonly misspell propagation, and am probably not the only one
Seedlings Converted to Tet with Colchicine, because someone might remember the thread name
daylily, because if I didn't know what I needed to know, but wanted to know all about daylilies that is how i'd search
daylilies, same reason as above
daylily seed, same reason as above
seeds, same reason as above
daylily conversion, is pretty specific and this would be a great article for that subject
colchicine, because i might have heard it mentioned or seen the chemical name, but not know what it's used for

is that just more confusing?
I'm off to bed- sleep well all :)

Equil,

Last night I went through my watched threads list and tagged threads, photos, and individual posts of interest. Many of the things I tagged were in other people's threads. For instance, I tagged some of Floridian's photos of 'snowy egrets' (using the words in quotes). I also tagged the Mr T threads with 'titmouse', 'tufted titmouse', and 'Mr T'. Today someone in one of my other threads, someone who had never seen the Mr T threads before, commented that while looking through the Tags cloud she found the titmouse link, started reading about Mr T, and ended up staying up 1/2 the night. So, there is an example of how a tag which I added for my own use led someone else to find something of interest to them - even if it they weren't actually looking for it at the time.

I also have a group of about a dozen threads that are part of an ongoing saga about raccoons. Every year, when we are waiting for the new babies to arrive, we always end up scanning back through the old threads trying to find the information on when the prior litters were born so we'll know what to expect. Now I can just tag the individual posts that contain that information and any other information that we end up looking for often as new people join the discussion and start asking questions about past events. I doubt we would have a lot of success finding that kind of information with the search tool.

I also tagged some of the rat zapper related threads with 'rat', 'rat trap', and 'rodent problem'. (I probably should go back and add rat zapper.)

I hope that helps to provide some examples of the 'why'. I love the Tags feature. Last night I was on a Tagging mission!

Flickr is done w/ it's Massage.....

Rat Zapper eh.... lol!

Ric

Hey, you made it to that link before I did. Flickr was having a "massage" everytime I clicked on it. I don't get credit for finding that. Gardenwife found it and since it was visual, I figured it held the keys to figuring out what direction we were going with all these tags. Looks as if it is time for me to go get my buns in gear over to that link.

Yes, the "scutler" threads are riotous. I've not posted in the Heidi threads but my MIL and me read them. Yup, I'd tag the rat threads with ratzapper (all one word).

I just meant those as examples of how some of the ways that I was using tags. I had no idea you and your MIL were reading the heidi threads. Oops. I already tagged it with 2 words. Don't know if I can change it. I'll see.

Ok, I fixed it - ratzapper it is. That was an interesting exercise in how to change a tag. Looks like the system automatically temoved the old tag once i moved all of the items to the new tag. Good deal.

I still haven't figured out HOW TO ACTUALLY TAG SOMETHING.

Can you explain it one more time for my feeble brain?

susan
=^..^=

Yup, the two of us made our way over to the "Heidi" threads ;) You can run, but you can not hide! We've laughed until we've had tears coming out of our eyes at some of your posts.

I wouldn't change it from two words to one, just add another tag with it as one word.