On Mar 18, 2009, at 3:06 AM, Kirrily Robert wrote: > On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 1:57 AM, Azalais Aranxta <[email protected]> > wrote: >> On Tue, 17 Mar 2009, Mark Smith wrote: >> >>> People use "foo: bar" right now because that's all they can do. >>> Allowing them to continue doing that as-is would be fine, but >>> codifying it seems like the wrong approach. >> >> Pardon me if this is an idiotic question, but what exactly is >> wrong with "foo: bar"? >> >> It's super easy to figure out what it means and it doesn't take a >> lot of figuring out to adopt. I use it even on Delicious now. > > *nodnod* to this. Any argument against "foo: bar" can be used against > tags/folksonomies in general; likewise, the arguments *for* "foo: bar" > are the same as those for tags themselves: easy to create on the fly, > low management overhead, etc.
I think Mark is 100% right, from a code and meta-data perspective. The problem with "foo: bar" in the current system is that it does *not* create a relationship between "foo" and "bar". It's a completely separate tag of it's own, distinct from either "foo" or "bar". On the "we need something right now" level, I do actually think this should be cranked into all styles as an option. It's what we have. On the other hand, it's only what people use because, on LJ, there is absolutely no other way to do it. If you want hierarchical tags, you use the workaround. Alas, it is only a workaround and it functions purely by (brilliant, by the way) text replacement. So, yes, use it now, even to codifying it for ease of insertion for as long as we need it and because some people will want to continue using it. But, yes, please, please, please, also put it on the list that we need something that will create a *genuine* relationship between "foo" and "bar". Not least because if you have "reviews" and "reviews: movies" and "reviews: books" etc. and you want to change "reviews" to "critiques" or whatever... you have to go through by hand and change every single one of "reviews: $thing". Because they are all (all together now) completely separate tags with no relation. Incidentally, when we get the real deal running, I think it would be a good thing to have a user option to either display hierarchical relationships or display as a flat list, in actual entries. But that's for the future. --ER _______________________________________________ dw-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.dwscoalition.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dw-discuss
