Author Topic: What kind of tagging system would be appropriate for DC? (Read 86812 times)

Liquidmantis · « **Reply #75 on:** January 11, 2008, 02:29 PM »

I've been a lurker on these threads and since the Lurkians have been called out, I'll throw in a couple of Lincoln tokens.

First of, I'm not going to touch the NSFW aspect as I am left-leaning enough to even be left-handed. I can't believe this is even a concern on DC but then I don't really go into Living Room so for all I know it might be full of Roman orgies and Paganesque cavortings. (If that's the case let me know so I can start frequenting it more.)

As for backing the tagging idea, Mouser's explanation of his concept really has me intriqued. I find a lot of useful software on DC and also when looking for reviews or comments on something a literal search isn't always the best method. If tagging can be implemented for this idyllic usage then I'm all for it. My only concern is the high probability that I'll start on a tag trail only to find myself missing an hour or two and no idea of what I was originally trying to find.

CodeTRUCKER · « **Reply #76 on:** January 11, 2008, 02:35 PM »

The very fact that a position I am suggesting is mocked and ridiculed demonstrates (quite admirably) the callous disregard for others that are not as "adult" as many who are commenting.

CodeTRUCKER · « **Reply #77 on:** January 11, 2008, 02:38 PM »

Can we get this discussion back on track?

wraith808 · « **Reply #78 on:** January 11, 2008, 04:10 PM »

First of, I'm not going to touch the NSFW aspect as I am left-leaning enough to even be left-handed.
-Liquidmantis (January 11, 2008, 02:29 PM)

NSFW has nothing to do with which way you lean (or even which way the wind causes you to lean) IMO. I'm not talking non-morally objectionable, but safe for work which some links/conversations/words are. I personally don't choose to take offense at much of anything, but being a consultant and working with clients they think (and deserve from a service provider) different.

Which brings up an earlier question I had in response to all of the people that say none or nothing disturbs them- is this a Safe for Work environment? I.e. I'm sitting at my desk, eating lunch, and browsing. Am I supposed to be able to come to Donation Coder forums? I think the answer is yes, but... ?

mouser · « **Reply #79 on:** January 11, 2008, 05:37 PM »

Is DC safe for work?

I think the answer is clearly yes.

There are no naked pictures on DC forum or site. You might find the occasional curse word here and there, and you may find a discussion of some technological issue relating to sexuality, but nothing that you wouldn't read in any newspaper or magazine. There are probably a handful of posts on the forum in three years that refer to some sexually themed site, and link to them -- in such cases the links should clearly be marked as NSFW.

I think that's where this forum has found it's comfort zone, and it seems to be a reasonable approach, and I don't think we should try to change that.

mouser · « **Reply #80 on:** January 11, 2008, 05:47 PM »

Guys and gals, please try to keep this thread civil -- i see some people arguing with each other needlessly. Everyone is making good points, there is no need to get personal.

At this stage, a variety of ideas about different features of a tagging system is welcome.

As has been noted, I have reasons that i think an internal tagging system would be useful, and have wanted to put in such a system for quite some time. Mostly this would be a more general system to help in the creating the blog, newsletters, and year end reviews. The blog system I wrote is a kind of specialized restricted tagging system, and i think a more robust tagging system would be useful.

Being able to tag threads/posts for content and let people browse the forum using a tag cloud or by content could be very useful if we could get help tagging things, either by authors, moderators, or readers.

In my opinion, the NSFW tag is the *least* compelling reason to implement a tag system, at least for our forum (for others it could be very useful), but having said that, if we go to the trouble of writing a tagging system, adding the NSFW would be trivial, and offering the general ability for people to filter out threads based on their tag would be useful. Some people could filter out NSFW threads, others might filter out programming-specific threads.

So at this point we are in the stage of brainstorming, so feel free to let your ideas flow. Do keep in mind as has been suggested by others that eventually we will have to balance the work required to code this with the benefits, and figure out if it is something (the tagging) that can be done fairly painlessly and without adding much to the workload in terms of every day tagging.

Veign · « **Reply #81 on:** January 11, 2008, 05:53 PM »

Is DC safe for work?

I think the answer is clearly yes.

There are no naked pictures on DC forum or site. You might find the occasional curse word here and there, and you may find a discussion of some technological issue relating to sexuality, but nothing that you wouldn't read in any newspaper or magazine. There are probably a handful of posts on the forum in three years that refer to some sexually themed site, and link to them -- in such cases the links should clearly be marked as NSFW.

I think that's where this forum has found it's comfort zone, and it seems to be a reasonable approach, and I don't think we should try to change that.
-mouser (January 11, 2008, 05:37 PM)

Well put...

CodeTRUCKER · « **Reply #82 on:** January 12, 2008, 03:20 AM »

[Note to the Reader - I removed a graph that I had hoped would have at least provoked more serious discussion, but only added more fuel for the ridicule. I also removed it because as it could offend the very ones I am concerned about and I would find myself guilty of the same thing I am suggesting we consider tagging.]

Eóin · « **Reply #83 on:** January 12, 2008, 04:48 AM »

There are lies, damn lies, then statistics. CodeTRUCKER, your graphs are absolutely meaningless presented as they are

You HAVE to show an increase in these terms against an increase in other terms. All those graphs show is a general increase in activity here on the forums.

As a second point, we're not children here and not one of those terms is hurtful or offensive. Asking people to show a little restraint is fine but I am beginning to think you want to gag people from expressing themselves naturally.

[edit for a p.s] Besides fuck is a very versatile word

jgpaiva · « **Reply #84 on:** January 12, 2008, 04:56 AM »

What i really really would like to see would be some statistics on the growth of number of posts per month. I'm almost sure that the "rate/probability" of these words would keep the same throughout all the monts.

To be fair, since i joined DC almost 2 years ago, i haven't noticed any change in tendency or probability of "swear words" on DC.

PS: i believe this was already discussed enough in the other thread, i only made this post because your statistics made me get curious.

Eóin · « **Reply #85 on:** January 12, 2008, 05:10 AM »

Maybe my second point went off topic back to the previous thread but like jgpaiva it was the graphs which prompted me to post. An analysis such as this is dangerously misleading.

jgpaiva · « **Reply #86 on:** January 12, 2008, 05:12 AM »

Actually, i found the page. It's here.

And i made a graph:
Screenshot-08_01_12,11_08_22.png

I've attached to this post the .xls version of the graph data, in case you'd like to introduce this new information in your graphs. (if you'd like, i could do that, if you attached the .xls version)

suleika · « **Reply #87 on:** January 12, 2008, 05:21 AM »

When considering what kind of tagging system would be appropriate for DC, is it already determined whether we're talking about tagging threads or tagging posts? Or both? Or is that still up in the air?

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #88 on:** January 12, 2008, 05:24 AM »

Sorry but I do think the graphs are a little ridiculous and you aren't doing your cause much good with them.

Words are words and people use language they are comfortable with - that is life. Go and sit in any public space and I guarantee you will hear all of those words more in a single day that they have been used in DC forums in total since the site started. They are all common words used in everyday life (and some of the ones I guess you object to more are some of the oldest words in the English language).

If you don't want to use those words that's fine but if you are looking for any user participation website where they don't appear you may as well unplug your modem now because you will be unlucky.

Sorry if this seems a bit harsh but there needs to be a bit of a reality check.

For example you mention the use of 'penis' in these forums but if you search the forum and check the context it has almost exclusively been used in the context of annoying spam mail (by me more than once). Personally I don't think that is an inappropriate use of language when you are talking about eliminating annoying spam.

Both uses of the word vagina were related to 'vaginal cream' for pets of cure ringworm. OK treating pet ailments may be a bit off topic (except it was in the living room) but can you really not use the correct anatomical term when naming an ointment?

jgpaiva · « **Reply #89 on:** January 12, 2008, 05:27 AM »

suleika: It is still all in discussion. Thus, you can comment if you'd prefer one or the other, or what you'd like about one or the other. (or none

)

mouser · « **Reply #90 on:** January 12, 2008, 05:40 AM »

For what it's worth, i think the graphs are cool to look out.. sure you can debate their meaning, but i appreciate them and they are interesting. as others have said, there are issues regarding what the right metric is to look at (radio of curse words to non-curse words over time? or just absolute # of curse words? or curse word containing threads?).

Still, i'm glad to see the charts.

I do think carol has a point though about the context of words, which is really the most important thing to me. It's hard to make the case that one should avoid some of these words absent of some recognition of the context.

mouser · « **Reply #91 on:** January 12, 2008, 05:50 AM »

In general my position has been that if we add a tagging system we get the NSFW filter for free and it won't affect the vast majority of users who won't ever be turning on such a block.

But i am sort of curious about something, it seems to me as if codetrucker and others who want such a filter.. would you want to block ALL posts that EVER mention the terms you've listed about in your chart, including wtf and similar acronyms?
(regardless of other content).

It may make sense to have a FoulLanguage filter that could be automatically computed from posts without requiring any human intervention. Personally it seems to be like a very unforgiving filter but i don't know, is that the level of blocking you are interested in Codetrucker?

mouser · « **Reply #92 on:** January 12, 2008, 06:04 AM »

Also let me repeat something so that everyone keeps this discussion in perspective. I'm fairly firmly against making any changes that would add undo "noise" to the forum.. So any tagging system should be basically invisible. It will operate behind the scenes and just provide extra functionality for those who choose to use it.

f0dder · « **Reply #93 on:** January 12, 2008, 06:40 AM »

Including "WTF" in a "bad words" search? OK, that has made me go WTF?!?!

This is starting to become ridiculous.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #94 on:** January 12, 2008, 06:43 AM »

What's wrong with the World Taekwondo Federation (aka WTF)?

gjehle · « **Reply #95 on:** January 12, 2008, 07:09 AM »

ok, enough is enough already

first of all, if you're a parent and let your kids browse the internet unsupervised, it's YOUR fault, and YOUR responsibility.

statistics
just counting words YOU think unsuitable for kids doesn't make your effort the least bit statistically relevant.
you have to count relative occurrences, of course the absolute count went up, no arguing about that,
but so went the total posts per month, norm your data!

also, putting in a linear fit into a growth pattern is kinda flawed to begin with.
do you want to imply you actually know what you're doing? well, you failed.

besides all that, you can make statistics look exactly what you want them to, just by carefully picking the question for the answer you want.
you did that.

you're hypothesis is: "DC needs regulating because there is significant danger to minors"
doing it properly:
you'd establish the null-hypothesis "there is no danger to minors on DC" and try to find statistically significant reason to refute the null-hypothesis, thus accepting the initial hypothesis.

your graph shows what you WANT it to show, with no significance at all.
same goes for you're initial argument wich has no foundation and is but a bold claim you came up with.

your values != every one's values
one thing people should learn is keeping their 'values' to them selfs, this is a international community of mostly adults.
what makes you think your standards apply to everyone.

there is a significant difference in 'getting involved with a community' and 'pushing your own views and values'.

cost / benefit
how many active minors are on DC anyways? numbers please, and percentages.
there is NO REASON AT ALL to make life complicated and less fun for 99.999% of all DCers just to 'protect' some minors (who's numbers we don't even know) from reading certain 'words'.
let alone that it's not DCs task to protect them from the oh-so-evil internet but their parents.
if you're afraid your kid might read something you deem inappropriate, YOU control it, who cares about your standards?

to put it bluntly: hell, i don't.

o m f g (yes, that's a 'fucking' in there.... oh the children! OMG!)

if you still disagree that it's not the parents task.
you might as well give your toddler a couple of loaded hand guns and blame the manufacturer if they get hurt.

gee.

nosh · « **Reply #96 on:** January 12, 2008, 08:09 AM »

Codetrucker,
I'm not being snide when I suggest this. Have you thought about installing a kiddie filter to your browser? It sounds like an obvious solution to me. It won't just save you from DC's unpalatable posts but the rest of The Internets too! Sounds a lot simpler than trying to change the world around you.

Veign · « **Reply #97 on:** January 12, 2008, 11:03 AM »

Damn and WTF are NSFW? That's a new one to me. The graphs, although nice looking, are useless and skewed to the NSFW argument. The more you try and convince us the more your losing credibility in your argument.

DC is a great forum and at this point I say put the tagging system on the back burner until things cool down.

PhilB66 · « **Reply #98 on:** January 12, 2008, 11:21 AM »

Oooops CodeTRUCKER, you may have to add yourself to your ignore list for writing down all this foul words

This NSFW tagging thing is NFG.

Lashiec · « **Reply #99 on:** January 12, 2008, 11:26 AM »

CodeTRUCKER, don't be offended, but considering all those words as inappropriate for children made me giggle. I'll tell you, children hear things like that everyday, mostly on the street, and if we're going to consider the proper names for sexual organs as offensive, I wonder what kind of sexual education are we going to teach to children.

Of course, your mileage may vary, but I think we could end up going too far. Besides, another thing that arises from the context consideration is that if you're willing to turn on a post filter with the possible results of missing conversations just because there's a inappropriate word in there. Considering all the times words like "damn" or "dammit" were used in this forum (half of my posts include the word

), I think you'll end up ignoring much of the conversations around here.

* Lashiec doesn't get last reference to New Found Glory