[mod] *grrrrrrrrrrr*

[debris_k.livejournal.com]

I've noticed a rather disturbing trend of folks not tagging their posts lately.

I'd like to remind all of you to please TAG YOUR POSTS. (This is not just a suggestion, in case you were wondering.)

Tagging is not difficult nor complicated, and if you don't know how, ask. I will be happy to help and explain things.

Don't make me come up with a punishment system or sarcastic tags to put on the untagged posts. I have better things to do than go around reprimanding every single person who doesn't use tags on their posts.

Just tag your posts to the best of your ability, please and thank you.

Comments

Tag Training

[(Anonymous)]

Actually, I really could use a quick "how to tag" training. Maybe I'm not the only one, could you give us a quick lesson? Thanks so much.

Re: Tag Training

[debris_k.livejournal.com]

Certainly.

Let's start off by quoting from the comm rules on the profile page:

The tagging should look like this: choose between character related or genre, followed by, in order, categories you'd like the stories to match - genre (gen, het or slash), characters and/or pairings, and finally, all the specific themes that apply to your request. If tags that apply don't exist, you can use the other character, other pairing and miscellaneous tags.

Important: The easiest way to tag is to post your request first, then from the resulting options click on the Edit this entry's tags and then choose and pick all the tags that apply to your request. (Remember to tag according to your preference that was voiced in your request, as opposed to all the possibilities you are open to - you can always undertag and later add more tags to match the genre of recs you've received.)

I think that pretty much says it all, basically. If you have any specific questions or problems, please let me know.

Re: Tag Training

[(Anonymous)]

How do you actually have it keep all the tags you've applied? I haven't commented on this com in ages, but I know whenever I use multiple tags, and hit save. It only keeps the first one I picked.

Re: Tag Training

[lavvyan.livejournal.com]

Just hold the ctrl key while you click on the tags you want to use, then it keeps all of them.

Re: Tag Training

[debris_k.livejournal.com]

You need to keep holding the 'control' (or 'Ctrl') button on your keyboard down while selecting multiple tags, otherwise only one will be selected. (I think this rules applies to computers other than PC's with Windows, but I can't be sure.)

Re: Tag Training

[lavvyan.livejournal.com]

I was faster. ;p

Re: Tag Training

[debris_k.livejournal.com]

I was just about to comment a 'Jinx!' but you've beaten me with your wickedly fast commenting skillz once more. :-P

Re: Tag Training

[lavvyan.livejournal.com]

Har! Mine is the power of insane boredom nimble fingers!

Re: Tag Training

[debris_k.livejournal.com]

*g*

Re: Tag Training

[ratcreature]

That method has the disadvantage though that it does not send notifications to people who track by tags afaik. That may not be such a big disadvantage in this comm, but if someone for example posts their stories to a comm and someone picked to get notifications for posts with their author tag rather than watch the high traffic comm, or someone posts a WIP to their own LJ which each post tagged and a reader tracks that story tag to be alerted to the updates, that won't work anymore if you post first and tag later.

Re: Tag Training

[debris_k.livejournal.com]

I was wondering if tag-tracking worked that way, and it is a shame, but I don't think it can really be helped unless the poster is posting from Firefox with the lj-thingy add-on (which lists all the tags of each comm at the new post page, once the comm to post to is selected) as the new post pages otherwise don't offer much in the way of help with choosing the tags at that point.

Re: Tag Training

[ratcreature]

When I post to comms where I'm unfamiliar with the existing tags, I always open the tag page in an extra tab and look there. I can see that it is a bit more inconvenient, so I guess everyone should pick what works for them, I just wanted to point out the downsides of selecting tags afterwards, because I think many may not be aware of the tracking issues, and wonder why subscribers don't get alerts even though they tag. (Of course others might want this intentionally, because they want to discourage topic-tracking and rather want everyone to follow everything.)

Re: Tag Training

[debris_k.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think everyone's welcome to tag however they see best. The advice I offer is heavily MHO and doesn't go further than that. (In fact, tracking tags at this comm until fairly recently would've been pretty useless as I was doing 80-90% of the tagging for a long while before I started asking members to get into the habit of doing it themselves, so.)

Re: Tag Training

[meredith42.livejournal.com]

thanks so much....I'm kinda a big piece of wood when it comes to "how to" computer things. You sorta have to not only lead me to water, but yell at me to drink it too! I really appreciate your help, along with everyone's else's input here.

Re: Tag Training

[debris_k.livejournal.com]

Glad to be of service. And if you do have any problems or question, I meant what I said above - it's totally alright to contact me and ask. :-)

[fanarts-series.livejournal.com]

i didn't know that the members could tags, i know it now and will use it in the future. Thanks for the explanation and so thanks you for your fabulous work.

[debris_k.livejournal.com]

No problem, but you definitely need to read our community rules (http://community.livejournal.com/sgagenrefinders/profile), the sooner the better; all the do's and don't should be explained there, and if you have any questions it's always OK to ask. :-)

[fanarts-series.livejournal.com]

i read it !!!

[lavvyan.livejournal.com]

First of all, I love your little mood thingy up there.

Second, I was half-expecting a "don't make me sic lavvyan on you" by the end there. ;)

♥

[debris_k.livejournal.com]

♥ right back atcha!

Also, I value your modly skills around here way too much to add to your duties. _{Though I'd love a pithy '!too sumfink to tag by myself' tag. I'd last about 15 seconds before tagging the posts with it, of course, but I'd really love it, in theory.}

[lavvyan.livejournal.com]

You know I have no such qualms. *g*

But I appreciate not having to do the tags. I hate tagging.

[issaro.livejournal.com]

If I may ask, what might be a stupid question...

I notice that a previous post of mine has had tags added to it. Specifically, [-john sheppard] and ['character related]. In an effort to better understand the tagging system - could you explain what those two tags are used for?

I've never used the [- john sheppard] tag because it seems like 99% of fic has John in it somewhere/somehow, which would mean every request would use the tag. Seeing as that would make the tag ubiquitous, I kinda felt like I must be missing something about when to use it properly. So I guess I'm confused as to when to use a [ - main character] tag. The same goes for the ['character related] tag.

If you could give me a brief rundown of the rationale for those tags, I'd be happy to try to use them in any requests I make.

Thank you for all your hard work on this! I really appreciate this resource and would hate to see it decline.

[debris_k.livejournal.com]

Like it says in my comment above and the comm rules, 'genre for general genre requests (meaning, not single character specific) and 'character related is for single character specific ones.

If I've added the 'character related and john sheppard tags to your post then it's no doubt because your request mentioned him by name as a character your request at least heavily leaned towards, if not directly centered on, specifically.

Basically, when I started the tagging system about a small age ago now, I had high hopes that lj would improve it's tagging system towards being more like delicious.com's was even back then, where [tag]+[tag] in the URL would list all the posts that matched BOTH tags, for example. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened, but as I've been tagging the comm's posts in a way that coincides with that logic (e.g. [character related]+[wraith] would in a perfect world show posts that asked for specific characters having something to do with Wraiths or a specific Wraith, let's say) I don't much see the point of stopping now. For one, there's hundreds of posts whose tags would need to be redone altogether, and for another, if my ADLS line (which might as well be mythical by this point) ever gets installed my vague plans towards archiving all the posts on delicious should become less vague and more a work in progress, and that process will have been made much easier by the existing tagging system.

Less than perfect reasoning, I know, but lj is what it is, and I guess it'll always be mea culpa for hoping it will improve any day now.

[issaro.livejournal.com]

Less than perfect reasoning, I know

Not at all! This helps a lot. Just to be sure I'm on the same page - using the rationale above then you would expect every post to be tagged either ['genre] or ['character specific], correct? (In addition to whatever other tags are appropriate)

[debris_k.livejournal.com]

Yep. :-) Also, I think this should be fairly easy to deduce by looking at previous posts that are older than a day at any time, as I try to get the tagging done properly at least once a day, if not more often.

[kaworu-renritsu.livejournal.com]

I'd love to see a sarcastic tag for untagged entries <3

[debris_k.livejournal.com]

"!if this post was tagged this tag wouldn't be here"?

Also, you mean. Me like! :-D

[kaworu-renritsu.livejournal.com]

Something like that ) Or maybe something meaner, McKay-style >]

Thank you, I try ))

[debris_k.livejournal.com]

"I'm surrounded by idiots!" does have a nice ring to it, even though it's a bit ambiguous... *g*

[kaworu-renritsu.livejournal.com]

Hmm... "One of the idiots"? ))

[debris_k.livejournal.com]

There should be a poll. Of course, I'd be unable to resist a badly tagged post for 15 minutes, let alone however long it takes for the poster to notice their cannot-tag!tag, so it's a moot point, really.

[kaworu-renritsu.livejournal.com]

There should be. I'll be sure to vote ))) Restrain yourself for at least a couple of hours? Or there could be another tag like "I'm slow" that could be removed later )

[debris_k.livejournal.com]

Heh, if only I was less weak willed, and the world was a less wankfilled place...

[kaworu-renritsu.livejournal.com]

The world is 95% wankfilled, but at least it'll be fun )

[debris_k.livejournal.com]

Thank YOU for the lists - I'll give all the posts a look and decide from there. No promises for speed, but it will get done. :-)