Nice to see kos is
chiding his users for not falling into line with his grand vision for the site.
Call me an old-school Internet anarchist, nostalgic for the gentle hacker etiquette of Usenet post retraction, but I do find this one of the saddest aspects of the blogosphere..... the frankly undemocratic attitude of the local despots, who apparently would be quite happy for us all to turn into nice little automata: virtual Stepford Wives staying on the approved topics, using the approved language, tagging using the approved tags (must be political, unless relating to White Sox).... generally numbing our creativity with top-down authoritarian Botox.
Ah well. If you feel rebellious, why not create a diary entry using Kos-styled "bullshit tags" like "Botox" or "Automaton". If not, I'll get my coat and leave quietly. And if some Trusted User edits away the tags on this story just because I'm not a good enough little automaton, then I guess we'll really know how the blogosphere operates.
Update: woohoo, thanks for the tags! and especially the sweet potato souffle recipe --- de.licio.us (little tag joke for you there). Now, some of you kids seem to think I'm an asshole/freeper/warmonger for voicing dissent as to the operation of this website, and to you I have no response, cos you're too drunk on your first taste of virtual community to even hear what I'm saying. However, as for the frantic editing of my tags, I
applaud you guys, you've totally proved my point! Tag culture is not to be cramp'd, cribb'd or confined; it is vibrant, alive and free! Keep editing away, and don't forget to vote on the poll.
Second update: while my original diary was frivolous (though many bottom-feeders seem to have taken it extremely literally), lono accurately nailed the central issue in the comments, quoting the difficulty peer-reviewed journals have with self-regulating tags (aka Subject Words, Keywords, etc.) In scientific informatics (my field) the debate is between rigidly controlled vocabularys (like the Dewey system used by libraries) or freeform search engines (like Google). The point being that if you have a freeform self-regulated tag system, and then criticise users for being too freeform and not self-regulated the way you like, you deserve to have a little fun poked.
As for all those of you who couldn't see the fun in this post, and hurled insults: you made my day. The frantic tag-editing was just great. A few of you got the joke, but for many of you, either my humor's too dry, or you're too serious, or maybe a little of both.