Welcome, New Users, to The Daily Kos. This Diary is intended to help you orient yourself to the site and ask questions about how to use it.
In the Body you will find some links intended to get you participating more effectively. Also in the Body this week is a discussion of Tags using The Daily Kos (dKos) interface.
After that you can ask me any question you want. I don't know all the answers so if you stump me, you do. I invite those wiser than I to contribute and correct (or raise a ruckus, just don't scare people).
No permission slips needed, join us at the deep end of the pool for adult swim.
Romper, bomper, stomper boo. Tell me, tell me, tell me, do. Magic mirror, tell me today, have all my friends been good at play?
I can see Howardblaju (#113422) and Matts Mom (#115088), the first and last users to join the weeks of 12/8/06 to 1/4/07, and all of you boys and girls out there in DailyKosland!
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Other diaries in the Welcome New Users Series. The Welcome New Users dKosopedia page.
Tags
I have this problem with books. I like them a lot.
When I was 6 I moved 1 block from a Library. Big mistake. By the time I was 10 I had my own adult card and was basically set free to roam across continents of poems with ease.
Or at least make them think so.
When you look at dKos you may see insubstantial photons floating away faster than the leaves of a cliche movie calendar. I see a big old library, full of exciting places I can visit.
The Inner Light
Without going out of my door
I can know all things of earth
With out looking out of my window
I could know the ways of heaven
The farther one travels
The less one knows
The less one really knows
Without going out of your door
You can know all things of earth
With out looking out of your window
You could know the ways of heaven
The farther one travels
The less one knows
The less one really knows
Arrive without travelling
See all without looking
Do all without doing |
Tags are Catalog Cards
I hope you had the experience of having a Librarian teach you how to use the Card Catalog at the library. Usually there are 3, organized alphabetically on 'Subject', 'Title', and 'Author'. Some libraries cheat and put both the 'Title' and 'Author' cards in the same case, but that's OK because we aren't going to use either of them.
I hate that Ms. O'Neill, booting me from the class, sending me to the library to do a 500 word essay on bats just because I called you wrong, it's SONAR, not RADAR they use navigate. I'll show you disruptive influence....
Card Catalog/Subject- Bats, 15 books all about bats with a nice little summary and a map to where they are in the library (your library didn't have a map on it's cards? Sorry, I really am). These two will do. And because I intend to crush you with cites let's look at the Subject Catalog for Sonar, Radar, Dolphins, and the Battle of Britain.
Take that.
The way you as a New User will usually encounter Tags is as a way to access the dKos Library of Diaries. You can do it right from the Front Page (opens new window). Go to the top of the 'Recent Diaries' List on the right hand side, skip the Sort by Tag: Time: buttons for now, and go to the next line where it says- Tag: and has the 'Set' button. Type in 'george w. bush'.
Now if you just push the 'Set' button the page refreshes but nothing much else happens, but if you push the Sort by Tags: button then push 'Set'.
Bang.
Try 'Tags' or 'Meta' or 'Welcome New Users' if you must and I'll still be there at the very top of the list staring at you until someone posts a new Diary with that particular tag.
Heck, I can stay on the Front Page for weeks or months at a time that way, especially if you use 'Welcome New Users'.
So if you are interested in a particular topic, like 'Health care' or 'Education' or 'Iraq' you can use that to reduce the number of diaries you're exposed to on dKos. It's easy to divide things, there are 2 Diaries tagged 'bats'.
But if you want to go back and take a look at all the other Diaries whizzing by, just empty the Tag: box, push the Time: button and hit 'Set' again.
I will note that after this your browser may complain that the page contains POSTDATA when you refresh it next, mine (Firefox 1.5.0.9 under XP SP2) does. It's ok to resend it, but I usually clear the condition by relaoding the Front Page URL by clicking on the orange banner that says 'D A I L Y |{ O S' at the top (H/T Yellow Canary).
Another way to find things to read using Tags is talked about by dmsilev in his excellent Diary Sipping from the Firehose (122) and my Diary Searches (95). You can use 'Restricted Queries' of the form |tag="tag"| to find Diaries that might be related to a specific topic, I did that as part of my research.
And finally, there is the 'Tag Cloud'.
The Tag Cloud
Again, that link opens in a second window, the reason this time is it can take a long time to load. Nope. Longer than that. Wait for it.
The reason it takes so long is there are 80 gajillion entries in it and each one of them is a link.
This is a problem that has generated a lot of discussion but we will ignore it for now and talk about what happens once the 'Tag Cloud' loads.
And how to load the 'Tag Cloud', because it's not obvious.
You see there are 2 'Tag Clouds', you get to the first one by pushing that button right underneath the 'Set' button that says All Tags (separate window). That opens the page "http://www.dailykos.com/tag". Bingo, just what we want, right?
When it's working, this page is just the most recently popular tags. It even says- Most Popular Tags I'm not sure how the weighting works, but the concept is to trim down the list and speed loading by ignoring older and less frequently used Tags. I say when it's working because mine (when sorted 'Alphabetically') stops at Al Weed (31). Pushing the 'Popularity' button gets you a different (and very small) list that ends with wal-mart (479). There are 150 of them, which is a nice round number, so that display is probably working. Number 100, oddly enough, is Troll Diary.
It's an interesting snapshot of community concerns, and can give you an idea for a tag (if you're writing a Diary and need one), but I wouldn't imagine it turns over much. In any event it's not the whole list.
To get that you have to press the second All Tags button, the one that takes you to the big, slow page (again loading in it's own window)- "http://www.dailykos.com/alltags".
Now while sorted by Popularity is interesting from a 'sociological' point of view, I find it less than useful for actually finding Diaries on a particular subject. You should sort Alphabetical.
I open in a separate window and search for stuff using the 'Find In This Page' feature of my browser. If I look for 'bush' I can find the whole criminal clan from Prescott to H. W. to W., to JEB and Neil, and Barbara and Laura, and even Jenna and Not Jenna. When you clicked on a tag you used to get a list of similar tags down the right side of the page, but not anymore, you have to search for each them (find next).
You will also find a wide variety of variants and misspellings. You can't depend on a Tag returning the same results as a search, the Tag string need not be part of the Diary.
When I've found a Tag that I'm interested in, I always open it in a separate window. Going back to the old page using the browser 'Back' is slooow, and I have a good machine and plenty of bandwidth. My /alltags page stays open, ready to 'Find In This Page' again.
Tagging Best Practices
The other time you as a New User will encounter Tags is when you write a Diary and need to assign some to yours. A lot of people get hung up by this but I don't think it's very hard.
What are one or two words that describe your Diary?
Is it about the President? George W. Bush. Is it about a State? Minnesota.
That wasn't so hard, was it?
That said, there are certain conventions that are community norms, State Names are completely spelled out. C-O-N-N-E-C-T-I-C-U-T, not ct. ct runs the servers. The most important rules are the ones put up by the boss, kos. These are the ones from the 'Diary Editor' Tagging tips. button.
Tag Tips
Tips:
The big thing to keep in mind when tagging -- they are a search tool. What do people search for? Issues, people, and races. Tags should ALWAYS address one of those three.
- Use combinations of simple tags rather than inventing complex ones.
- Try to think of what tags people might use to search for something and use those. Remember, tags are like categories. And people don't search for "humor" or "satire". They search for issues, races, and people.
- Try to re-use existing tags.
- Keep it simple. Don't use tags that are redundant.
- For election blogging, add the year, state and office. So the Colorado governor's race in 2006 is tagged: "2006, governor, Colorado". Also add the dKos-style abbreviation of the race (two digit state abbreviation and race). So a governor's race would be "CA-Gov", a Senate race "CA-Sen", and a congressional race would be "CA-06".
- Stop with the "cutesy" tags. This is a tool to help organize content, not show how clever you are with keywords like "HUNTERRIFIC" to express how great Hunter's diary was.
- Use first and last names for all people. Believe it or not, people sometimes share last names.
|
If you take a look at the 'Tag Cloud', you'll see that some of these rules are followed less closely than others. People do search for things other than "issues, people, and races" though they're a good way to start thinking about your Tags.
Simple tags- "Harold Ford on the NJ civil unions decision Kos Diary" has too many ideas in it. 'Harold Ford', Tennessee Senate Candidate, people might be interested in finding Diaries about him. 'NJ', oh 'New Jersey'. 'Civil Unions', issue. 'Kos Diary', of course it is.
Now you might say- "Wait ek. How do I find the Diaries about Harold Ford's reaction to the NJ Court Decision?" Search me, but you might try |tag="Ford" tag="Civil Unions" tag="New Jersey"|. Found 1 result, it gets better without the "New Jersey" tag. Found 2 results. Hmm... maybe a keyword search. 17, that's more like it.
So- Harold Ford, New Jersey, Civil Unions. All nicely separated by commas (because that's what the parser picks up), properly spelled out, first and last names in that order.
And because it's a candidate you're going to want to add an 'Election Tag' or 'ETag'. An 'ETag' starts with the 2 letter State Postal Abbreviation, CA == California. Then a dash and the type of race- Gov, Lt. Gov, AG, SoS, Sen, etc. House of Representatives races are indicated by the Congressional District- 01, 02,... with At Large races indicated by 'AL'. Vermont At Large is 'VT-AL'. Ohio's 2nd District is OH-02. Oklahoma's Attorney General would be OK-AG. Maine's Secretary of State? ME-SoS.
Stop with the "cutsey" tags.
Wait ek! How do I re-use existing tags?
Why you go to the 'Tag Cloud' and look around until you find one that describes your Diary.
Hah. Just kidding. List of Approved Tags.
What if it's not in the list?
Are you sure? It's a big list.
If it's not in the list then you must have a pretty good idea what it is, I say go with it; but you should be aware that you run the risk of contributing to some problems the community has identified with Tags- 'Tag Proliferation' which is why the 'Tag Cloud' is so slow and 'Tag Graffiti' which has hindered efforts to fix the 'Tag Proliferation'.
Tag Proliferation
I'm just going to say flat out that I have struggled a lot with this section. What I'm going to emphasize may not seem reflective of community norms, but point of this entire series is to make using dKos easier and more attractive to New Users.
The more Tags there are the slower the 'Tag Cloud' loads. Also it becomes harder to find any particular thing or things related to it without computer assistance like my little 'Find In This Page' trick.
A lot of the time this comes from simple mistakes I find it hard to blame people for- misspelling Arnold Schwarzenegger or Condoleezza Rice, forgetting to put in commas between tags, including odd characters like "quote marks" and extra spaces. Heck, even kos sometimes has trouble deciding between al-Jeezera and al Jeezera. I'm not letting you off the hook for the basics Diarists. First Name AND Last Name, in that order. Middle initial(s) if appropriate. Today's Representative is tomorrow's Senator, so no titles. You want people to be able to find your Diary don't you?
As a Trusted User I am often allowed to correct these problems, which I do silently and without regret. ct keeps a record, who else needs to know?
In fact, it's kind of fun.
What's a "Trusted User" ek?
Nothing that you need concern yourself about much. There is a 3 month waiting period for eligibility; after which, if you are sufficiently active and reasonably popular, you get assigned additional responsibilities to help maintain this site.
Without the activity of our community moderators dKos would be much more difficult to use.
Of the many powers and abilities granted these Avatars of virtue, the existence I mostly crave is that of Librarian, keeping the books neatly lined up in the stacks, finding stuff on the shelves, and keeping the catalog organized. But love don't pay the rent baby and Librarians are forced into a life of prositution, whoring themselves for mojo on the busy streets of our Metropolis. Should you be offended by their gaudy displays you may avert your eyes but please contribute, because a Librarian in paste withdrawal is an even less pretty sight.
I think that devoting some time each day to keeping the 'Tag Cloud' clean is one of the best and most community spirited things Trusted Users can do for the site.
On Case in Tags and the Process of Tag Cleanup (HK and grndrush).
If the first person to enter, say, "Sally Fields" as a tag enters it as "sally fields", and the next day someone else enters it as "Sally Fields", the latter entry will show up as "sally fields". If 100 people later use "Sally Fields" or "sALLY fields" or "SALLY FIELDS", they ALL show up as "sally fields". To further aggravate things, you can't go through and change them to "Sally Fields" (not even if you attempt to change that original entry first). You must change each of them to, say, "Sal Flds", or "Sally Fields!" - EVERY SINGLE ONE of them. AFTER you've changed them ALL, you then have to go back and change each one of them to "Sally Fields". This is a tremendous amount of work, even for an entry with only a dozen or two diaries attached.
...
if ANY of the diaries containing "sally fields" (even if entered as "Sally Fields") has been deleted - by the user, an admin, Kos, or if it's been archived, or whatever - you CAN'T CHANGE THEM, PERIOD! To add massive insult to injury, you can't determine ahead of time whether or not there have BEEN any deletions! Making changes to 30 or 40 entries, only to find out that there's been ONE deletion, is infuriating, as you now have to go back and undo all your changes and re-enter the very string you were trying to correct.- grndrush
Note: I always use case insensitive searches and I suggest you do too. Keep your keywords as short as possible, don't use plurals (s).
Let's take a look at Bush. Using 'Search' on |tag="bush"| I get 18782 results from since time began until now, and it took me 'Search time 2.889 seconds, run time 3.241 seconds'. That's a lot of results and it includes all of the family and the odd Chanukah or Hanukkah bush.
But maybe I'm most interested in that giggliest of the twins, Barbara (sigh). Ewwww. Why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that? Not Jenna!
That is an example of the power of tags as a categorization tool. Snark Tag? Bats. Just what I was looking for. Take that.
And so not worthy of being cleaned up as a unique or one off tag, however slow the cloud may get.
How slow?
Not as slow as it used to be, and not as necessary either.
If you read some of the source material (but c'mon, who does that?) you'll find a lot of praise for how superior Tags are to 'Search'. "Let's not mistake a view engine for a search engine", say I. But it was sloooow and didn't work at all for some things. Thank you jotter.
One of the big deals in terms of Diary courtesy was and is not duplicating breathless BREAKING !!!! posts, because you push someone else's Diary down. Tags, when they were introduced 10/10/05, were great for that. "Hmm, the last Diary on this was published 6 hours ago? But we know so much more now!"
And if you're willing to wait for the 'Tag Cloud' to load you can still do that today, think of a topic, search the cloud for it or something like it, check out how long it's been since the last Diary, use it as your starting point and take off.
Even at it's fastest, the 'Tag Cloud' was never quite as efficient at that as the techniques I outline in Speed Reading dKos and especially Pig Wings in terms of determining whether you're posting a duplicate Diary or not. And Diary Cops outnumber Librarians.
Without the 'Tags like this' presentation that was axed it's just not as useful at turning up like items for someone who's interested in a subject as a swish-e 'Search'. It takes longer (slow count to 20 on my machine) and when you find a page there will be fewer results.
What it does have is that lovely '&story_view=long' type display that lets you see the Introduction to each Diary and really get a feel for it.
So the behavior I would encourage in Librarians is this-
RULE NUMBER ONE!
- The object is to make the Diaries easier to find and increase their traffic.
Some other less important suggestions
More important people than I have lots to say about 'Tag Proliferation'-
dKosopedia (The Centerfielder) on Tags
dKosopedia Tag Cleanup Project
Other dKosopedia Tag Cleanup Project Tools
from dKosopedia Help
Other Authors on Tag Cleanup
Tag Graffiti
As a New User you will not be able to commit 'Tag Graffiti', but you might experience it. As outlined above in 'Tag Proliferation', Trusted Users can modify your Tags, sometimes in ways you might not wish. Let's not talk about it.
Rest assured that as the author of a Diary you can always change them back.
At one point 'Tag Graffiti' was so prevalent that the ability to modify Tags was shut off for a month and a half, and when the ability was restored it was limited to Trusted Users.
And it came with a warning. Here's what kos has to say today-
Well, fairly recently at least.
The admins (0 / 0)
can see every user who has edited a tag. If a diary has malicious tag graffiti, let me or a contributing editor (you can email us from the Contact Us page) know about it so we can ban the malicious tagger.
by kos on Wed Sep 27, 2006 at 07:31:39 PM PST
My controversial contention is this- these penalties discourage people from becoming Librarians.
Because I crave neither existence or non-existence I do all kinds of crazy things-
- I correct trivial errors in Diary's I surf that have them.
- I close down misspellings without regret.
- I never hijack a Diary with a Comment, unless I have a witty one.
- When I get exceptionally frustrated I'll punish the fools who persist in using bush when I want Not Jenna.
Any one of which could result in the revocation of my posting privileges forever.
I feel repressed.
Diaries About Tag Graffiti
Other Diaries About Tags
Tags are one of the most Diaried meta topics. If you don't think so then you and I have different definitions of meta. I don't expect these are all the diaries about tags, but here are some of them.
kos on tagging
To me, the era of tags begins on September 29th, 2005 with kos' diary Next dKos project: Tags (64) but includes all of these diaries on tags by kos-
Tag Utilities
Some utilities users have written to make using Tags easier.
I have tested Centerfielder's prototype tool and it works. It is potentially a very serious improvement for people who just can't decide on a Tag (you only need one) and it could be developed to provide a map to the library. Not every book mind you, but the Public Services Section with stops for Healthcare, Education, Katrina, etc. Right now it's a demonstration project that's very good at generating ETags. Looks like a lot of work, I wish our Librarians luck.
The Centerfielder is the host of the dKosopedia and publishes under that handle also, with permission from kos.
General Tutorials (including Tags)
Election Tags (ETags) Project
ETags Locator Project
Other Tagging Projects
I've done Recommended Patrol, even though I initially was opposed to the concept. I think it's sheer vanity to worry about whether your Diary gets on the 'Recommended Diaries' List or not, and I didn't want to encourage that behavior. Still don't.
I do it because I can (I hit refresh fairly often) and because until recently there was no statistic for it in jotter's lists. This meant that you couldn't track changes in community interest over time. It is a well accepted tradition now and my non-participation would only mean that some Diaries would get missed.
Here, against my better judgement, is the Recommended tag; and here is the related Rescued tag.
- Recommended!! by thereisnospoon 12/22/2005 (27) (Recommend Project)
- Open Thread by georgia10 06/10/2006 (162) (Yearly Kos Tag Cleanup)
Tags/Search Comparisons
Hmm...
Meditations on Tagging
The Diaries in this section are about Tagging Etiquette and Ethics and how people relate to Tagging.
These next 2 are not positive about the Tagging experience.
Searches used-
From: 2 years To: now
Find: Stories and Diaries
Find: Stories
Find: Comments
dKos is a Progressive Archive
"... I would be surprised if sociologists aren't already combing this place as part of some grand research project. It would be a heck of an interesting project." Sat Sep 10, 2005 at 11:23:48 AM PST
There are other things to talk about. Let's get started.