Lemmy: Post tags

[MatteoGgl]

Is there an interest to develop a post tagging feature? I remember seeing an issue about it some time ago, but I can't find it anymore so it's possible I'm making this up.

A post tag would be defined as a "subtitle" of the post inserted by a mod of the community (or an admin) after the post is published, with the purpose of categorizing or adding flair to the community post. It would be displayed in the post listing alongside the title in a smaller font, inside a bordered box, reddit style.

Possible secondary additions could be:

• Letting the user tag his post freely
• Letting the user select a tag from a mod-defined list to be applied

[dessalines]

I'm not sure about tags, mainly because of the annoying and complicated mess of community owners having to maintain systems of them.

Also, the main usefulness of tags, is being able to list / filter on them, which already works with searching.
Lets say a music community requires a [Genre] tag, so if you wanted to list all the rock posts, you could just this: https://dev.lemmy.ml/search/q/[rock]/type/all/sort/topall/page/1.

[MatteoGgl]

Could you expand on the mess of maintaining the system? Since I have no experience in managing a community it's possible that I'm missing something very obvious =)

Also it could be an optional mess: it should be an opt-in feature for each community.

And yes, I see your point on search; I still feel a strong point about post filtering since it's a feature I use daily on reddit to exclude some content on a subreddit level.

[dessalines]

Its just very tedious for moderators. Also another point, but the tags / flair for most other platforms, are hashtags, which are completely unmoderated and don't require anything more than the user to type it out. Then these flair are cross community also.

I'm not ruling out adding tags in some form but this would be way down on my list.

[Nutomic]

Other activitypub platforms already support hashtags, so it would make sense to implement an (optional) tagging feature that is compatible with eg Mastodon hashtags. But that is still far in the future.

[NOTtheMessiah]

Have you considered tags as an alternative to sub-communities? It seems to work pretty well for lobste.rs, this is where they discuss their reasoning: https://lobste.rs/about#tagging

When looking at most "reddit clones" I can't help but notice how most comment sections are deserts, and as I look into the history of reddit, the only way they were able to get to a critical mass of users was to populate the site with fake users to present an illusion of a community. Getting to critical mass would less of an issue through a tagging system (as centralizing discussion would eliminate redundancy and encourage people with interests to discuss).

Of course, a tagging system might force you to rethink moderation, but I think the idea of having "benevolent dictators" determine sub-community policies (however transparent they may be) is an idea worth inviting critical thought (the structure is fundamentally neo-reactionary, in which an moderator/vassal presides over some (abstract) territory, having dominion over it).

[dessalines]

There's a lot of things I disagree with about the unmoderated tag vs moderated community model, but if I were to boil it down to one thing, its ownership. In the tag model, no one has any control over any of the content in those tags, and if there's any work being done to clean up content in there, all that work is put on the admins. No one except the admins control tags.

Whereas with a community, anyone can start one, invite people to it, and have full moderation abilities to keep things the way they want. It gives a sense of ownership, a vested stake in its success, and gives the community creators / moderators the power to keep the sub how they want it.

Obvi a huge part of reddits popularity (ignoring the first mover thing) is that people can, and still do, make and grow communities. If anything it got to critical mass because of that killer feature.

[NOTtheMessiah]

Moderation need not be a task left only to admins; Slashdot has a meritocratic system of enlisting moderators. Another option could be elected moderators. Users can also be enlisted in a limited sense to perform some roles.

I get that Reddit gained popularity from making use of an entrepreneurial settler-colonist mindset in regard to community development, but it needn't be the only means of cultivating a community.

Tildes.net seems to take the approach of having communities each with their own set of tags. Seems like that's what you're going for, but I feel that having federation is redundant.

[kolgza]

Copied from #771
Hierarchicial tags — a cool feature to borrow from Tildes!

EDIT

In hindsight, this would be a terrible idea, as it would break compatibility with tags on other fediverse services.

---

What are hierarchical tags?

Tildes uses hierarchical tags to establish post categorization beyond which group (the Tildes equivalent of a subreddit or a com# What are hierarchical tags?
Tildes uses hierarchical tags to establish post categorization beyond which group (the Tildes equivalent of a subreddit or a community) a post is in. The closest Reddit analogue for them would be post flairs. There a few key differences between them and flairs, however:

• They can exists on posts across multiple groups.
• Multiple tags can be applied to the same post.
• Their hierarchical nature allows for increasing levels of specificity the longer each tag gets.

Why should they be implemented?

• They would make searching for posts easier.
• They would make finding similar posts easier.
• They would help differentiate Lemmy from Reddit

What might be some problems with them?

• User apathy: many users just don't use them, or don't use them to their fullest potential.
• Potentially redundant tags could exist.

Other resources

• Tildes Gitlab page
• Tildes Documentation of hierarchical tags
  munity) a post is in. The closest Reddit analogue for them would be post flairs. There a few key differences between them and flairs, however:
• They can exists on posts across multiple groups.
• Multiple tags can be applied to the same post.
• Their hierarchical nature allows for increasing levels of specificity the longer each tag gets.

Why should they be implemented?

• They would make searching for posts easier.
• They would make finding similar posts easier.
• They would help differentiate Lemmy from Reddit

What might be some problems with them?

• User apathy: many users just don't use them, or don't use them to their fullest potential.
• Potentially redundant tags could exist.

Other resources

• Tildes Gitlab page
• Tildes Documentation of hierarchical tags
  

[kolgza]

I think the idea of using nsfw, cw, and spoiler tags for labelling objectionable content should be considered. This idea originated from Tildes, where hierarchical tags are used to add specifics. I no longer think hierarchical tags are a good idea, however, as they could potentially break compatibility with services that use tags differently.

[dessalines]

We already have nsfw for posts and communities, and spoiler tags for comments.

[kolgza]

What I meant was that if, in the future, you were to allow users to freely add tags to their posts, it might be a good idea to implement a designated nsfw tag to mark posts as nsfw, instead of the way nsfw posts are handled currently.

This idea hinges on post tags being implemented in the first place.

[kolgza]

On another topic, it would be awesome having Mastodon-style featured tags, but for communities.

(I'm probably getting ahead of myself.)

[kolgza]

I think I just need to leave this by saying that there are so many different ways that post tags can be used to benefit Lemmy, that their development should be a higher priority.