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[jough]

I've been noticing a lot that the new web meme seems to be tagging things - Flickr, Technorati, Delicious, etc., all have a means of adding keywords to a thing (photo, web link, blog entry, etc.) for the purpose of... I don't know.  Easier searching?

Anyway, I'm working on a reboot of Poetry X and was thinking about adding tagging for the poems there.  People could add whatever tags they wanted to a poem and then a bell curve may start to form - the more common tags for each poem would start to rise and the less common or graffiti tags (tags that make no sense and are added maliciously just to fuck up the tagging data) would eventually fall assunder.

I'm not exactly sure how to handle this technically, but first I'm interested in seeing what people here think of this tagging frenzy and if it's even worth implementing.  Mostly, though, I'd like to know HOW you think it SHOULD work.  

How would adding tags to something be useful to you?

[pmcd9]

I'm sad because I haven't got the slightest idea what you are talking about.

~Paul

[Max]

It's certainly an interesting idea, I'd like to see you try it out.

While this doesn't bear directly on the idea of tagging poems, it's in interesting view of how tagging can be put through its paces:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/krazydad/sets/140323/

Essentially, this guy makes projects out of organizing tagged images on the Flickr server.  The link above is one that uses time-sensitive words (like 'breakfast' 'lunch' 'dinner') or something to graph photos in a certain way.  He's also made collections of sunsets and neat little things like that, just browse his flickr site.

Anyway, not totally related to written word stuff, but it might be neat to use tagging to allow users to create a sort of visual representation of their favorite kinds of poetry, or something like that.

[Golfhaus]

It's an interesting idea. I've been to your Poetry X site before, but it was a while ago, and I don't recall much about it, but the first question I would ask is this: do you get enough traffic (and more importantly, enough contributing traffic) to create an effective data set of tags? If you think enough of your site users will create tags to offset the graffiti tags, it would probably be a pretty decent way to, at least, categorize the poems on the site. But if you're going to end up with five tags on each poem, and two of them are always "titties" and "goldenpalace.com," it's probably not worth it.

[jough]

I don't know.  I'm willing to start tagging new poems added myself, and I know of at least a few very dedicated regulars who have expressed interest in tagging every poem they read.

At Plagiarist.com we get about 200 comments from visitors a day, and surprisingly few of them anymore are questions about homework help or "asdfskewrlk" type entries.  Of course, I moderate the comments there and only the ones I select get posted.

I'm intrigued by the possibilities of open tagging (i.e. not selecting from a pre-approved list of tags).  I'm just wondering ultimately, even if poems are aggressively and accurately tagged, how useful that meta data would be.

But it's easy enough to implement so I'll give it a whirl.  I'm against the idea of posting a list of the "most tagged poems" or something because that tends to be self-fulfilling success.  I already have a Top 50 poems list and just for kicks when I first built the site I made a relatively obscure poem #1 on the Top 50 list.  Two and a half years later and it's still in the top 10, because people tend to read the poems that are on that list, which means that they'll stay on the list.

Maybe better would be to have a "least tagged poems" list - that way when people tag them they'll fall immediately off the list.

Anyway, I'm just brainstorming.  I was curious if anyone here actually used tagging on any other sites and how it worked for them.

[Gimpson]

That's what Pedro is up to...  

It all makes sense now.

[Pedro Picasso]

That's what Pedro is up to...  

It all makes sense now.

Arr!  I be aheada tha curve!  Hell I was talking like a pirate at NC State long before they embarrassed themselves on the nation's 'weird news'.

Maybe better would be to have a "least tagged poems" list - that way when people tag them they'll fall immediately off the list.

You might want to call them 'poems of interest' or something.  Not just 'unread poems that are crying for attention'.  I haven't really thoroughly understood tagging either.  People talk about it as if it helps with far more than searching, but I'm only seeing searching.  I think the main point is that for the way people use the internet, it's far better to allow random folks to tag things than it is to have a staffer try to categorize them.

The stuff on iStockPhoto.com is thoroughly tagged, and that's awesome.  Search for "Goliath" and you get a stone and sling (among other stuff).  That's good tagging.

I was actually thinking of putting together a small app for the Achewood archive.  Something that would allow myself and others to type the dialogue from the strip along with some tags so that the archive would be searchable.  Once it worked I could branch it out to accomodate the archives of other online comics and serve text ads on it.  I think it would be only natural to call such a system "Jstr's Brain" or some such.  That guy's awesome.

I don't know if it would help much with poems which are a text based medium.  You don't really need to introduce them to the text world to make them searchable.  Of course theme, feelings evoked, allusions, and the like don't show up in the poems themselves.  How much time do you think it would take you to put this together?

Titties.

[CortJstr]

I was actually thinking of putting together a small app for the Achewood archive.  Something that would allow myself and others to type the dialogue from the strip along with some tags so that the archive would be searchable.  Once it worked I could branch it out to accomodate the archives of other online comics and serve text ads on it.  I think it would be only natural to call such a system "Jstr's Brain" or some such.

RStevens would probably sign up. Pretty frequently I remember seeing him ask the dumbrellites to find all the animated gif strips for him or to track down apparences of the cats since he doesn't really have a structured archive or any kind of searchable system. And Achewood's title-based archive is sometimes less than helpful. I know I frequently have to remember what strips appeared around the one I want and search for those because the title is barely tangential.

[Gimpson]

I was actually thinking of putting together a small app for the Achewood archive.  Something that would allow myself and others to type the dialogue from the strip along with some tags so that the archive would be searchable.  Once it worked I could branch it out to accomodate the archives of other online comics and serve text ads on it.  I think it would be only natural to call such a system "Jstr's Brain" or some such.  That guy's awesome.

If you would like help working on this sort of system, I've been looking for a web project of some sort to work on.

[Golfhaus]

I was actually thinking of putting together a small app for the Achewood archive.  Something that would allow myself and others to type the dialogue from the strip along with some tags so that the archive would be searchable.  Once it worked I could branch it out to accomodate the archives of other online comics and serve text ads on it.  I think it would be only natural to call such a system "Jstr's Brain" or some such.  That guy's awesome.

I, too, would love to see something like this... something where one could type in "Tenmen" and get their appearance at the Smoke and their appearance at Ray's party. Or something like "crowd" and get all the strips where the masses congregate, like outside SaniTaco after Lyle's story got published. I would also be willing to contribute some time to data entry or whatever else was needed.

[Pedro Picasso]

If you would like help working on this sort of system, I've been looking for a web project of some sort to work on.

Great what kind of language/system would you like to use?  I'm familiar with Perl, but I'd like to get into JSP.  PHP would also be okay, and we'd want to use a MySQL database.  I don't really have the time to do it myself, but I have extensive experience with web applications, so I'd be able to do initial design with you and help you when you need it.

If you really want to do it, we could split this off into a new thread and bandy about ideas.

Exciting.

[Bozack]

Goats.com has a very similar system. Aaaavery nice.

[jough]

I would be amenable working on (and hosting) this Achewood tagging idea.  That would be useful to... us.

At least it would be on days when CJ is offline.

[CortJstr]

I would be amenable working on (and hosting) this Achewood tagging idea.  That would be useful to... us.

At least it would be on days when CJ is offline.

With Comcast acting the way it has been this could start to become more frequent.

[slink]

I have to say, this kind of thing does really interest me. I certainly wouldn't be able to give it any time (re: the other thread), as I am hugely busy for the next couple of weeks as well as work, which is all doing this kind of crap but unfortunately not in an overlapable way (I am mostly working with ASP at the moment, which I despise).
I was really interested in Flickr and how cool it could be, but in the end it disappointed me. Maybe I need to let it grow, but for now, it's a nice idea not being used anywhere near to it's potential.

But given how much hassle it can be finding a Penny Arcade you are looking for, I can see it being useful. I'm generally not too bad looking for the Achewood I'm after as I kind of know where to look, but it would mean not having to think, and it would no doubt come in useful to those who can persuade their brain to remember more important things (oh, what I'd give for a self-help book about that)!