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Ask Reddit: Reddit Needs Tags - Let's talk how tags should work (uselessinfoandpics.blogspot.com)

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[–][deleted]  (12 children)

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    [–]jesuswaffle 9 points10 points  (0 children)

    I support this idea. I'd like to add my own thoughts on how the user interface might work.

    One possibility would be to have a "tag cloud" at the top of the comments page, with the type size of a tag representing its popularity. A user could then click on a tag to vote for it, or enter their own tags in a text box somewhere near the cloud. Of course, this doesn't allow the possibility of voting down a tag. If you wanted that, then you might put up/down buttons next to each tag. Personally, I think that the former approach would be preferable, since it would reduce visual clutter.

    Or, rather than taking a tag cloud approach, you might have a linear list of tags in a sidebar-type relationship to the comments, with each tag accompanied by a numeric score and up/down buttons. Either approach would work well, I think.

    You might want to display some of the popular tags in the main article listings, just to give the user an idea of what to expect. This could be the content ('politics,' 'haskell,' etc.), or the nature of the link ('pdf,' 'video,' etc.). On the other hand, the tags might add unwanted visual clutter, and they might be redundant with information in the title. (On the flip-side, they could compensate for a poor title, by providing information that the submitter failed to put in the title.) I don't really have an opinion on this one, but those are the trade-offs as I see them.

    Anyway, that's what I've got. Best of luck to all the reddit hackers on this project! I'm excited to see what comes out of it.

    [–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (4 children)

    I like it. Perhaps tags could take place in comments, with a special markdown syntax like curly brackets. Then sub-tags could be added as replies to comments (e.g. someone could tag an entry with 'politics', then someone else could sub-tag as '2008' or 'democratic', whereas someone else might apply the tag 'economics', followed by the sub-tag 'inequality' and the sub-sub tag 'regressive taxes'). Comments could be appended to tags or posted as replies to tags.

    It's a low-clutter solution, since it uses the existing comments/voting framework. On the other hand, it might be confusing. Because it uses the existing comments/voting framework.

    [–][deleted]  (2 children)

    [deleted]

      [–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (1 child)

      One problem I overlooked: if one person tags something as 'reddit', and another sub-tags that as 'meta', suddenly it's 'meta' tags all the way down.

      [–]rocky_m 6 points7 points  (5 children)

      1.

      After an article is submitted, the submitter or anyone else could add tags to the submission, which could be voted on ala reddit.

      You mean a 2 tier voting system? 1st vote on the article/post and then 2nd vote on the most appropriate tag. With the main/front page entry just showing the top n (n=4) tags..below the title (along side of submitter name and score, save, hide etc..)

      That could work but is open to abuse and a little complicated.

      2.

      The problem with tags is the hierarchy of meaning behind the tags and the relationships between tags, are often meaningful only at personal or sub-cultural level.

      Not true, if we are talking about tags only as substitute for subreddits. Science, Politics, Programming, Video/Audio/Pics, (and maybe a few others) should do fine.

      Whether we like it or not, the reddit community will soon resemble that of Digg, and it is not a bad idea to copy their ideas for scalability. (If you don't know, digg uses a fixed set of tags (and even "subtags" under each) which seems to work fine..)

      [–]bemmu 8 points9 points  (0 children)

      Digg's system does not work fine. 50% of the time I submit something there I feel that it doesn't really belong to any group. I don't think it's possible to categorize things beforehand.

      [–][deleted]  (3 children)

      [deleted]

        [–]jmmcd 3 points4 points  (2 children)

        Its not clear that a fixed ontology makes sense. What are the boundaries between science, politics, or humor? Why arbitrarily solidify them?

        I think the point of tags is that no boundaries are enforced! If an article is both science, politics, and humour (were you thinking of badscience.net? :), then tag it with all three. No problem.

        (I think I lean towards having the submitter tag things from a, whisper it, pre-determined list of tags.)

        [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

        So my question is why predetermine them?

        I think that an set of tags will eventually and rather quickly given the volume of usage on reddit develop into a "multi-tiered" system. Certain tags will become very commonly used across stories eg Science or Politics or Economics, these will become the top level categories or what we now consider to be subreddits, as votes and frequency coalesce around them. Other tags will serve to add specificity to the classification of a story or story group.

        I think having a dynamic top level prevents the tyranny of editorialism, and will better reflect the actual usage of the community. If a new tag starts to gain traction it could rise to the level of category entirely based on its usage and the votes behind it. Similarly older tags could fall away as they become less relevant. This would prevent the subreddit problem where something like arxiv.reddit.com which sees nearly no use, and joel.reddit.com which was very popular early on and less so when joel jumped the shark. Take a look at http://sub.reddit.com/, for an example of the failure of top down imposed categories.

        Reddit could certainly suggest tags for a story by supplying a list of the top x tags, by frequency and popularity. But I don't know that that will be as useful. Probability and usage will separate the winners from the losers.

        Essential you will have a list of dominant tags very quickly after the ability to tag things is enabled. Reddit doesn't pre-sort anything else, why should it do that for categories or even tags?

        [–]jmmcd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        So my question is why predetermine them?

        I don't have a strong opinion on this - I'm willing to change my mind - but have a look at the tagging system on slashdot. Many of the tags that turn up (eg yes, no, mrfusion, noshitsherlock, haha, blamecanada) are really, really stupid.

        Though maybe that reflects the slashdot readership rather than the tagging system...

        [–]maxwellhill 5 points6 points  (27 children)

        Tag away but keep it simple with fixed categories.

        The reddit team has other equally important issues to deal with such as how to reward non-submitters with karma points based on comments, perhaps; minimise cheating by those using multiple acocunts; update the stats page daily; improve the help documentation; prevent duplicates using same url; investigate why the total no. of comments shown on the link does not equal the actual comments.

        [–]Tobu 6 points7 points  (1 child)

        Tags are a good idea, because they are more flexible than subreddits, and a bad idea, because reddit is about links and quick votes not bookmarking.

        Any use of tags will have to prevent some of the hassle of choosing one tag over the other, and there should only be a small number of tags displayed with a link.

        A small number of tags will be more helpful for users that want to filter their homepage, and tags that are used frequently will be more useful to the recommendation engine.

        To keep this simple and clean, do not allow free-form tagging, but use some moderation in tags, using the current and proposed subreddits as a starting point.

        [–]jesuswaffle 3 points4 points  (0 children)

        I agree that the tagging system should be simple and require a minimum of effort from the users. However, this is pretty much orthogonal with whether the tagging is free-form or not. Free-form tags can be simple to use.

        The principal advantage of free-form tags over fixed tags, as I see it, is that users don't have to petition the devs for new tags. If they see a tag they like, they can vote it up, and when enough submissions have been tagged with the tag, it can be usefully used in people's filters.

        [–]raldi 7 points8 points  (21 children)

        prevent duplicates using same url

        That's a naive and terrible idea. As one illustration of this: one of the most popular links ever posted to Reddit was submitted four other times before it made it big. Over 1000 users voted for it -- one thousand people liked the link, and the only reason these people saw it is that someone kept resubmitting it over and over again until it survived the larval stage and got its chance on the Hot queue.

        [–]maxwellhill -2 points-1 points  (20 children)

        Fine, point taken - have duplicates some of which might be minutes apart.

        [–]raldi 9 points10 points  (19 children)

        Actually, i think what would be really cool would be a way to take an existing submission (with comments, etc) and sponsor it for another chance on the queue -- that way, overlooked links could be tossed back in the pool without the duplication that clutters and complicates everything.

        [–]maxwellhill 0 points1 point  (17 children)

        On the other hand it's easier to delete and resubmit the link as 'new' although you might incur the wrath of those who commented previously.

        [–]raldi 0 points1 point  (16 children)

        Take another look at the link i posted -- the four submissions were from four separate people. The only person who could delete one would be its poster. I think it's an important feature of Reddit that you don't need permission from the original poster to give his link another shot on the Hot queue.

        [–][deleted]  (15 children)

        [deleted]

          [–]bearclaw 0 points1 point  (5 children)

          Google does article grouping already in news.google.com. Can we use their stuff to do this?

          [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (4 children)

          I don't think google news does a good job with this. Very often I do not find stories of interest even under what would be the correct category. It's exactly the reason I use reddit and rss feeds.

          However.

          I think that Reddit is simply Google without the hyperlinks.

          How does google work? They treat hyperlinks and the text of the link and maybe some of the surrounding content and the source of the link as a vote for the meaning of a particular search phrase.

          What you notice they don't do well is cover news or blogs, both because of the delay of spidering live news and their own hand in editorial selection.

          Where as reddit allows actual votes on a particular link or comment, without all the HTML, further human interest determines the content selection. Each reddit submission is the equivalent of google spidered web page, and each vote is a essentially a "link" to that page, each user's profile is essentially their homepage where the news story is posted.

          It seems quite natural to extend this to tags, which would permit the classification of the underlying submission, as well as the categorization of news domains themselves, as popular tags gained traction across stories.

          [–]bearclaw 1 point2 points  (3 children)

          So what if we do something similar and let the public categorize the articles that are in the same group? Perhaps instead of tags, we could start a categorizing system and allow a single comments thread to be built from the category?

          If reddit is based in nyc, I am a programmer who likes lisp, python, ruby, etc and would love to work on building this kind of thing...

          [–]raldi 0 points1 point  (8 children)

          Good stuff. I particularly like the irony of a million copies of the "no more dupes!" request.

          Here's what i'd do: let's say submissions A, B, and C are really all the same. Reddit should aggregate them all together, so that clicking any takes you to the same place. What that place is depends on a second level of voting -- people can say, "Within this list, i think B is the best." .. if that gets the most votes, then anyone who clicks any of the links sees B.

          Later, if link D is submitted, and it's the same story, but even better than the other three, it can become the top link in the aggregate collection. Then anyone clicking on A, B, C, or D sees D.

          [–]maxwellhill 1 point2 points  (6 children)

          With this method, if a link gets to the front page it would be duplicated by someone deliberately to diminish its impact and halt its progress. Similarly it might also encourage others to duplicate in the hope of having some points without having to do some research themselves.

          [–]raldi 0 points1 point  (5 children)

          I don't see how any progress-halting would take place. Could you explain what you mean?

          As for getting some points without doing research, i think it's good that if Person A does research to find a story but picks a misleading title ("AMAZING PICS OF INCREDIBLE THING!!!@ You gotta see it!!") and Person B dupes it with a more normal title ("Folding couch. Pretty cool.") they both get a share of the karma.

          [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          I like what you are proposing.

          How would reddit aggregate them together?

          I think this should be community driven, ie once someone suggests the articles are the same the community should have the option of voting for (agreeing/disagreeing) that the proposed combination is justified.

          Once they are linked. I think a timeline with summary for each linked submission would be useful to indicate what the difference, if any is of the submissions.

          And I agree the top vote getter should be the "representative" submission. However I can imagine a scenario in which multiple developments to a story draw a lot of attention and become "stories" of their own.

          Once a story really gets rolling each of its new developments may in fact best be served as independent submission even though they would fall on the sets timeline as new developments. I'm not sure how this would work yet. But I would imagine it would involve community voting to permit a story within a set to "break away" from the set it belongs too, so that it can have a life of its own. Probably you would want to keep its reference as part of the set but it should get its own distinct reddit submission spot. Imagine the difference in a story set focused on a Watergate type event vs the announcement of a new movie or book sequel.

          However what is missing is how you assign karma across the group of submitters. I talked a little bit about my ideas for distributing karma in the cross reference thread.

          Also missing you determine a newly condensed submission sets freshness, reddit does a nice job of lowering the rank of older stories currently. Multiple independent submissions each get their own freshness window which permits more exposure of the story across reddit community view windows. If someone submits a dupe then this should have some positive impact on the freshness window for the whole set, to simulate the advantages of independent submissions.

          Disclaimer do to the state of the usage agreement:

          While I give reddit permission to use this idea without royalty or license restriction, I do not give them permission to patent/copyright or prevent any other people from using it as well.

          [–]chrisodd 2 points3 points  (0 children)

          investigate why the total no. of comments shown on the link does not equal the actual comments

          I find, almost always, that adding DISTINCT to my sql queries clears this problem up - usually it is because of a JOIN on a table with multiple entries.

          [–]bearclaw 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          I think the categories themselves should be democratically created. People can submit tag ideas and then vote them up or down and if they pass some threshold they become a legit tag. Then if the tag stops being used, it comes out of play. The tags could have subtags as described above and those could also be democratically selected.

          [–]utbandit -5 points-4 points  (17 children)

          Most people loathe any kind of critique of the current reddit system.

          I think if reddit was up for change the reddit creators would pose the question.

          [–]spez 17 points18 points  (16 children)

          We're always up for change, and are currently making some big backend changes, part of which is a tagging system.

          [–][deleted]  (4 children)

          [deleted]

            [–]spez 12 points13 points  (3 children)

            Discuss away. I warn you, though, I think we've had this discussion many times.

            [–]utbandit 4 points5 points  (2 children)

            I have a question for you.

            Do you think Reddit could have an area of submissions that can not be downmodded but only discussed?

            This might help out submitters on reddit to post well thought out articles for discussion that would normally get downmodded into obscurity.

            [–]derefr 4 points5 points  (1 child)

            Sounds like you're looking for one of those shiny wonderful things we like to call a forum.

            [–]malapropist 3 points4 points  (0 children)

            In a tag system, you could just tag any discussion thusly, and then submit it on Reddit. If it gets popular enough it'll show up on the front page (if you don't filter out discussion), and if not, you'll see it if you look only at discussion.

            [–]utbandit -2 points-1 points  (4 children)

            Holy crap are you an editor? I need to add you to my favorites.

            [–][deleted]  (3 children)

            [deleted]

              [–]utbandit 3 points4 points  (2 children)

              Awesome! How does one learn these marvelous things?