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Tag – You’re IT X 5

July 1, 2010 | 1 Views |
 marilyn s muses and musings
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There is a slang expression in English “everything but the kitchen sink” which means one used everything in one’s arsenal, which usually means, one used a bit too much of everything.

When we created the tag categories for blogs, the original idea was to help people subscribe using RSS feeds  and also to help people to navigate to specific: Blogs by Category 

Over the growth of this website and its respective communities, the number of blog categories has grown…..and grown.

What we now see are people using tags indiscriminately (over-using) which defeats the idea of making it easy for people to subscribe and see a more personalized view of content.

To remedy that complaint (of overuse) we have limited the tags to 5.

So please, when creating your post do consider the reader, the reader’s time, the reader’s interest, the reader’s ease of access.

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8 Comments

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  1. Jim Spath
    Marilyn et al:  This seems like a good rule. I just looked back at the 215 or so blogs I’ve written and my maximum category count was 20, although that was for a conference Call For Speakers, so I beg retrospective forgiveness.  I’m mostly been below 5, so meeting this limit should not be an issue for me, nor for any author really.
    If a “novice” blogger is having trouble deciding the right categories, what’s the best way to get in touch with us moderators?
    Jim
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        1. Jim Spath
          Marilyn:  Can you have the entry web form changed from this:
          > Categories / Hold CTRL(Windows) or COMMAND(Mac) to select multiples
          To this?
          > Categories / Hold CTRL(Windows) or COMMAND(Mac) to select multiples (MAXIMUM of 5)
          That may help prevent the error by guiding the user before they hit “submit.”
          Jim
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      2. Chris Paine
        >Have the solution and will show it by day end.

        ???

        Certainly for a beginner blogger like myself, it is hard to decide which tags to use. I have generally looked to those I respect and follow their lead, any sort of help on deciding what a tag actually means would be very useful.

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  2. Chris Paine
    Was just the other day I duped into reading a “megatagged” post – it was getting loads of responses so I thought to have a look – turned out the responses were mainly. “Please don’t spam us with your tagging!”

    As to this – is there any thoughts of retroactively asking bloggers with blogs having greater than 5 tags to clean them up and reduce the tag list?

    I have a slight concern that in the case Jim mentioned where there is a genuine need/want to reach many audiences that reposts/multi posting might start to occur – is there anything that will be done to prevent/address this? Perhaps the ability for a mod (as opposed to the blog creator) to increase/add more tags?
    Chris

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    1. Marilyn Pratt Post author
      We hadn’t considered retroactive clean-up.  This is a progress forward.  And anyone, the feed-burner wouldn’t be affected unless we were to set back to draft and repost and that would just be an annoyance.
      As to allowing mods “extra” tag privilege?  I suggest going forward and just attempting to see how the 5 limitation suits us all.  If there is a need to readjust, recalibrate, rethink, lets cross that bridge when we come to it okay?  For now, let’s imagine 5 to be sufficient.
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      1. Chris Paine
        Thanks Marilyn,

        don’t get me wrong – limiting to 5 is an excellent idea. I was just thinking of the search functionality when suggesting a retroactive clean-up.

        Given how long it seems to take for any improvements  to SCN to make it from suggestion to implementation, I was just trying to be pro-active on the suggestion front, rather than re-active when the issue arises (if it does).

        In the meantime I will imagine that 5 will be sufficient.

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