A new feature suggestion for Dave.

Hello Dave,

I really love your site, here is a suggestion to deal with a problem I'm having and presume others have it too, because DG is huge and navigating it is a challenge.

here is the problem:

User makes a post, posts a picture, writes a reply, adds to the plants database, etc. Unlike tags, blogs, davemails and journal entries that are saved for the user automatically, these activities disappear in the sea of info which is DG. User can search for them if he/she remembers words he/she posted but this is way too cumbersome and often leads to false or no results.

I have bypassed this problem by tagging each and every taggable page, entry I made, etc, with the same string of words so they are assembled under my own "tags" heading. As I stated it elsewhere, this is really not what tags are supposed to be used for but you CAN use them for this so might as well make it more useful. Tagging is not a very difficult process but tagging every page manually, having to type in the same word over and over again, is not very cool.

So here is my suggestion:

A: Any forum posting, database contribution and similar untracked activity should result in the post/entry being AUTOMATICALLY private-tagged with a specific identifier, logically the username, PLUS the term defining it as an auto tag, e.g. [[dguser-auto]]. These would automatically assemble under a "My Contributions" or similarly named link in My Tools.

B: Anything else the user wants to save for him/herself would be SELECTIVELY taggable for saving it the "personal bookmark list" by private-tagging it with another specific identifier: username + the term defining it as a selective tag such as [[dguser-select]]. These would automatically assemble under a "My Bookmarks" or similarly named link in My Tools.

C: The user can still manually assign any arbitrary tag for anything, private or public, for any other purpose his/her hart desires, just as it is now.

So what do you think?

I think part A of what you're asking for already exists--if you go to "My Info", you'll see all of it. Under "My actions" you'll see links to go to all the threads you've made or all the posts you've made (which you can then narrow down to only things in certain forums, etc). And a little farther down the page you'll see a section of your contributions which lists how many plants, pictures, comments, etc you've added to Plant Files, just click on "xxx plants" or "xxx pictures" and it'll take you to everything you've added. Same goes for the other sections of the site where people input info like Watchdog, Bug Files, Go Gardening, etc.

I'm not sure I understand how part B of your request is different than making a tag private?

Well, I'll be darned - it's all there!

I expected a feature like this to be in "My Tools" and since it was not there I thought it did not exist. So part A is a mute point.

Part B is simply a feature that would allow the bypassing of the manual typing in of a tag, instead a button would enter a fixed private tag (such as username with/without some extra identifier, maybe "username-fav"). It is because if one tags a page as his/her favorite, than it makes sense to alway use the same tag. The button would just speed up the process. Right now when I tag a page as my favorite, I have to wait until all the tags load into the big window then type in the same tag into the small box. It is a minor inconvenience.

Part B of your request is how the old favorites used to work, it's now been replaced by the tags so I wouldn't expect that it'll come back, but you never know!

I'm saying this with continued appreciation for the greatness of GD as an info source and community: the replacing of a feature that was able to accomplish a task with a single click, with another that requires going to another page, waiting for a huge tag list to load then manually typing in of a word so as to accomplish basically the same task, seems like a step backward.

I am not suggesting the replacement of the tags with something else, it would be still be exact same tag feature, except that tags would be assigned with a single click of a button.

I do not like the tags at all, in any way. The favorites option was wonderful, but after locking up my computer the last three times I tried to use tags, I've given up. It's back to the old fashioned "DG" folder in my internet explorer favorites. I hate that, too, but at least I can use it without it locking up my computer.

nomosno...if the sole purpose of tags was to create a list of favorites then you're right, it was a step backwards, but the idea of tags was to add in categorization...if you had a list of 500 favorite pages before, there was no way to sort or categorize them, but tags allow you to do that. And then there's the additional benefit of the public tags, where you can use other people's tags to help you find things. Some people prefer the old favorites vs the tags, but there were a lot of added benefits to the tag system so it's not just taking something that used to be one step and making it two. And since Dave removed the favorites feature when he put the tags in place, I have to think there's a good reason why the two can't/won't coexist, and what you're asking for is basically to go back to the old system of favorites, that's why I expect it's less likely that change will be made since that system used to exist and was discontinued.

Seems to me like the number of folks who would like to see the Favorites return is quite large. Maybe one day Dave will make a lot of us happier by bringing it back. Unlikely, since he likes tags so much. I still don't understand why there can't be "either or" or "both" systems.

Since the thread seems to have stayed alive, let me approach the issue from yet another angle.

There is no logical reason why a Favorites feature could not be retained where the users could tag, and thus categorize, their favorites like any other page on DG

The tags would help the person with 500 favorites pages, the Favorites alone would be useful for the person with only a few such pages.

But even without explicitly dedicated faves pages, DG could recreate the same functionality by putting a second button next to the open tag button, this second button would auto-assign the private tag of the user's name to a page, in essence recreating the Favorites function without dedicated Favorites code on the website. Additional tags could still be assigned the usual way.

Recently Tagged Pages at DG and you have the option to view your own tags. I like this list cause I can find things faster. But I also like the large tag cloud.