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Ido Magal

Feature Request: Tag Hierarchy - 27 views

diigo tag feature request

started by Ido Magal on 07 Jan 10
  • Ido Magal
    #1 Ido Magal on 07 Jan 10
     
    please add tag hierarchy and/or relationships.
    I would bookmark more often and more accurately if i didn't have to tag "jquery plugin, jquery, javascript, web design" for every jquery plugin page i wanted to bookmark. note that that link is different than one I might tag as "jquery how-to, jquery, javascript, web design", even though most of the tags are identical.
  • chrisdymond
    #2 chrisdymond on 15 Jan 10
     
    I agree Ido!

    Tagging is absolutely crucial to allow targetted dissemination of information through a community or company and I think there's a great opportunity here to completely re-invent how this is done, both in terms of managing standard organisational tagging schemas (or heirarchies) and in terms of how simple and useful the interface is.

    Tagging for managed communities should be a 2 stage process: firstly applying tags from the standard schema, then applying the specific resource-related ones. So it would be great if the interface reflects this and also provides space and large text sizes for really quick and accurate mouse (or finger) targeting and clicking.

    As an example, I'm looking to use a tagging schema that has 6 categories, each with between 8 and 20 tags, so to be able to see these all at once in their categories (and to have some user-defined buttons for fast multi-tagging) would be great.

    Once that stage is complete, the researcher should be able to use custom tags or choose from lists derived from semantic parsing, community co-tagging and recently used tags.

    TBH, I think more and more SME-type companies are going to realise that web research and dissemination is a crucial function and Diigo is the closest tool I've found to properly supporting this function. It just needs some tweaking :-)

    (And a business model - if Diigo offered really intuitive advanced tagging and tag curation tools, I'd pay a license fee if the price was reasonable!)
  • michael pastor
    #3 michael pastor on 21 Jan 10
     
    Hear Hear to allow users to create a subjective, personal taxonomy/ontology/hierarchy with tags. My bookmark tree folder is essentially one, and it would be nice if Diigo allowed me to use folders as tags and vice versa, when appropriate. Additionally, it would be nice if I could see/use friends' taxonomies if I wish, or to incorporate nomenclatures of specific groups (like geneticists or something), Diigo could end up as the source for the folksonomy or heirarchies, but you have to empower the individual user first.
  • Joel Liu
    #4 Joel Liu on 22 Jan 10
     
    Thanks for all your suggestion. We are thinking about how to re-invent tagging.
    Chris, did you mean 1) Choose tags from tag categories user defined 2) Choose tags from other sources? One challenge for 1) is how to make the process intuitive.

    BTW, could you explain "managed communities" you mentioned?

    Thanks.
  • Joel Liu
    #5 Joel Liu on 22 Jan 10
     
    or to incorporate nomenclatures of specific groups (like geneticists or something), Diigo could end up as the source for the folksonomy or heirarchies, ===> Michael, did you know group tag dictionary?
  • michael pastor
    #6 michael pastor on 22 Jan 10
     
    Joel, responding to both of your posts:

    I don't know what Chris meant, but I see four sources for tags, listed in order of subjectivity to objectivity.

    1) mine
    2) my peers and peer groups
    3) other (authoritative) sources
    4) global (folksonomy)

    with the most subjective always taking precedence.

    I have not heard of "group tag dictionary" and a search on the help site did not return any results.
  • Yoni Blumberg
    #7 Yoni Blumberg on 22 Jan 10
     
    I didn't understand what Chris was saying but I second what Ido and Michael are saying. I think using tag hierarchies would be very nice and the possibility of using tags that work as folders and folders that work as tags. (e.g. what determines a folder may be *Design instead of Design). Then when I want to put something in a subset of a design category, to parallel the example provided by Ido, instead of tagging "Design, information design, infosthetics" a rule or something implementing a hierarchy would recognize whenever I entered infosthetics as a tag to also add the higher tags (information design and design) and place it within that folder/path.

    I see the benefit of this as allowing me to find all my links that fall under a broader category without having to enter all the names of each level whenever I tag a site.

    I know that google and diigo both are shifting the philosophical framework of digital organization away from folder-based hierarchies to keyword/tag based systems and I applaud most of this shift. However, there are some very beneficial aspects to hierarchies that have endured the test of time and attention should be paid to preserving these aspects if the goal is to enable users to organize most effectively and efficiently (i.e. most "smartly"). Thanks :-)
  • michael pastor
    #8 michael pastor on 22 Jan 10
     
    I second Yoni's post 110% and add this as well:

    There is value to both flattened tag folksonomy and heirarchical taxonomies - they are two fundamentally different approaches to the same topic. What a flattened tag structure allows for is that I may "information design" at the top (broadest term) of my structure while Yoni puts "Design" - if we were strictly taxo oriented, we wouldn't match up. Particularly since infosthetics isn't in my taxonomy at all (but hey, at this point I like it and want to use it, but make it point to "visualization" in my taxonomy.

    A system without both will always be half-baked. Systems like Diigo must provide the technological means to translate from one source to another.
  • Ido Magal
    #9 Ido Magal on 23 Jan 10
     
    You guys are discussing this way over my head, but I'd like to hopefully add to the discussion by clarifying what I'm looking for. I "simply" want to be able to tag implicitly to reduce the cost of adding links and increase the categorical information. Most often the relationship implied is a hierarchical one but that doesn't mean that the representation of tags needs to be so. A simple iterative solution would be to present a tag cloud of all tags that correlate with the tags that I've added to a link so I can click on them. Example: I tag a link to cat physiology with "cats animals biology zoology" The next time I enter the "cats" into the tag field, I'm presented with all other tags that are shared with "cats" so that I'm reminded of the other tags, and can easily click on them to add them. Of course, the presented tags could be mine, the community's, inclusive or exclusive, weighed accordingly, etc. But I believe that what I'm looking for can be solved with UI, doesn't need to affect the back end, and can be done in small iterative steps.
  • chrisdymond
    #10 chrisdymond about 6 hours ago
     
    Wow - what an excellent debate! :-)

    I'll try to clarify what I meant about 'managed communities' because that should explain where I'm coming from.

    Basically, a managed community is a group of people (say the employees of a company, or the members of a club or book-reading circle, etc.) who are all tagging resources but who need to be consistent in the tags they use. The leadership of the group want to dictate the main tagging schema because they want to control how the resources are published.

    For example, I am the manager of a company's knowledge gathering function. I have 70 staff who work in 5 different departments and in 20 different job functions and we have additionally identified 12 important topics that we want to gather knowledge about. I want items that are relevent to a particular department to appear on a wall display in that department's offices, and on their dashboard on the company intranet. I also want resources that relate to our strategic topics to be published internally to the intranet and externally on a netvibes page, with a seprate feed for each of the 12 topics, so our clients and partners (and anyone else who's interested) can see it.

    So, in order for these feeds to work consistently I want to be able to dictate a tagging schema (or hierarchy) to my staff and make it very easy for them to assign tags. They should also of course be able to additionally add tags that are specific to the item they are bookmarking. This is why I mentioned a 2-stage process with the standard tagging schema first, followed by specific tags they can draw from various sources including semantic analysis of the resource, tags taken from the wider folksonomy, previously used tags, etc.

    The other point I'm making is about the tagging process - that it is so important it shouldn't be relegated to a small portion of a dialog box, but should be expanded to provide enough screen real estate to allow for a nice user interface with a clear overview of the tags and nice big buttons to click on. Otherwise it will be too confusing and timeconsuming for staff to effectively add to the knowledge pool in an effective way.

    Hope that sheds some light!

    (One other thing - I am an innovation professional, but I have no formal training in librarianship or taxonomic systems, so I'm sure there are proper terms for some of the things I'm talking about but I don't know what they are.)

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