Welcome, New Users, to The Daily Kos. This Diary is part of a series, generally hosted by ek hornbeck, who is far wittier than I. The series is intended to help you orient yourself to the site and ask questions about how to use it.
In the Body this week you will find some tips for Creating Good Tags for Your Diaries and attempt to enlist the aid of some TUs with tag spring cleaning. Also in the Body you will find some links intended to get you participating more effectively.
After that you can ask any question you want.
No permission slips needed, join us at the deep end of the pool for adult swim.
I've been a freelance tag cleaner-upper and then a more formal member of the Daily Kos Tag Librarians team since we first got the suckers a while back. At the time I was a dialup user and trying to get into the huge Tag Cloud to find existing tags was quickly impossible. One of the first rules put up was to reuse existing tags - but no one did it and it quickly got out of control.
The Daily Kos search tool was not nearly as good then as it is now, so many of use really welcomed the addition of this utility. Tags were the best way to find related information at the time.
Now, with the new and improved search tool, I am not so sure how many folk still use tags to find information on the site. Spring and summer are very busy times with me and work has picked up. So I am going to be doing a bit less "tag cleanup" work myself until fall. That is hard to say, since we tag nannies finally got the number of existing tags under 53000. Not an easy thing to do when you guys create over a hundred new ones every day. You still are not following the request to reuse existing tags.
With that in mind here are some tips to help you create GOOD Tags and to keep the rest of the tag librarians from abandoning ship.
First, I have to apologize - I really intended to announce that I would have a brand new List of Approved Tags up. But I have been swamped with work this week and with 2770 tags having more than 30 diaries connected to them, it takes more time than I've had for quite a while.
So on to the real stuff.
Please review the Tag guidelines. And then bookmark that page. The main "rules" are right there.
Here is a summary of the important parts:
1) Use both first and last names for people in tags. For some folks where the name is shared - middle initials are needed. Thus the tag for the current president is "George W. Bush".
2) Don't use Titles with names (like "Rep" or "Senator" or "Speaker") - people change jobs.
3) Use existing tags - and preferably tags that have are already used in a minimum of 30 other diaries. Use a tag from the Approved Tag List or use the Tag Search Tool to look of variations of the tag you are thinking about using and use the version that has the largest number beside it.
4) Don't use redundant tags - i.e. two tags meaning the same thing
5) Don't create "cutsey" tags - just don't do it. We will simply delete them.
6) Make sure you put commas between your tags (and not between each word in a name or phrase). Don't use semicolons or dashes or dots. Or spaces.
7) Keep tags to the simplest terms instead of using phrases for everything. Once again: Use a tag from the Approved Tag List or use the Tag Search Tool to look of variations of the tag you are thinking about using and use the version that has the largest number beside it.
So how do you know what the existing tags are?
That tag search tool is much, much easier than trying to look in the main Tag Cloud. Use it.
Now a little personal philosophy on how I think about creating good tags.
Tags are kind of an indexing system, but not really a keyword system like a webmaster thinks of keywords for a web page. What you want of course is to have the important names listed, but then also the issues and concepts discussed in your diary. You don't want to just put in words that are in your diary. (Hat tip to Halcyon for that reminder).
I think it helps to step back and think of the issues you are discussing in a hierarchal fashion. Start with the broadest concept and work down, if you must.
Something like this:
1 – what kind of diary is it? Start with one of these kinds of tags:
News, editorial, personal, essay, snark, humor, research, interview
2 – what is the diary primarily based on?
News, photos, video, audio (What else?)
3 – What is the primary subject matter; the issue or concept?:
2008 elections, economy, environment, health care, national security, ????
4 – What are the other or next level of issues in the diary?
i.e. if you had "2008 elections" above, then the next choice would be something like one of the following:
president, house, senate, TX-32, Ohio elections, Chicago-Mayor, Alabama-secretary of state; etc.
If you had "environment" from above, then you might have:
transportation, fuel efficiency, etc.....
Whatever you chose, try to make sure they are listed on the Standard, Approved, Most Used Tag List.
5 – Last, what are the names important to the story in your diary?
Side trip for a rant: Cut out the acronyms! Everyone has an abbreviation for everything - but remember that tags live on and on and on. There are a few that are appropriate (you will probably find tham on that list above), but most of the ones some folks throw in are compltely meaningless to anyone outside their profession or will be meaningless in five months when much of the population of active Daily Kos participants shifts to newer members. Be logical. Use acronyms ONLY if they are already on the Approved Tag List.
Keep punctuation out of tags. Question marks disappear them forever - like sending them to Gitmo. Not every phrase needs a hyphen. Again, use a hyphen only if that is the way most people at Daily Kos have already entered it.
Don't add "US or "U.S." to most tags. The blog is about politics, and it is mostly about things U.S. - so there are few situations where you need to enter "politics" as a tag, or attach U.S. to the beginning of a tag - EX: Don't use "U.S. Marines" because "Marines" is all you need. Don't use "US Congress." The current exception to this is the hot "U.S. Attorneys" purge being discussed right now. The Tag Search Tool is most helpful in finding the exceptions to the rule. Enter the main word and then see how many, if any, users have entered it with the U.S. prefix. If the majority haven't, then you shouldn't.
Since we are in the perpetual election cycle, a few words about ELECTION DIARY TAGS.
The main tag for diaries about the 2008 elections is "2008 elections"!! Not "elections 2008" or "2008 presidential campaign."
After you enter "2008" elections, enter the office you are discussing.
"President", "House" or "Senate"
For state Congress and Senate races add the state CD tag like:
CT-Sen, or OH-10.
In every other situation, the state names should be spelled out and not abbreviated.
If you are discussing a state election, then use "statename elections" like "California elections."
The Plea For Help
Now the PLEA for Help from other Trusted Users: We need your help. Check tags on diaries as you read them for the basics. First and Last Names, especially. Election Tags next. Delete the new cutsey ones.
And for those with a bit of spare time, we could use help with the Tag Clean Up Jobs listed here on the Tag Cleanup Jobs page.
And anytime you are using the search tool and find a slew of tags used only one time, take 10 minutes to delete them or change them to better and more used tags.
OK - I think that is about enough and I am running late getting this posted. We can continue the conversation in the comments, where I hope other Tag Librarians will join in with the problems they are finding most often.
UPDATE: How do we know that you tried to slip in a new wildly creative tag? Tag Librarians check the New Tag List every day - and get rid of most of them. (Get Rid = change to a correct tag or delete if better tags already exist in the diary)
UPDATE 2: Why should you care about tags when the search engine is so much better now? One of the best reasons I know, is because some of us (maybe especially FireFox users - I haven't done a survey) create folders of book marked URLs based on tags. I can click on that folder and open all of the entries in it at one time and a quick glance lets me see if there are any new diaries with those tags.
Example: My Health Care folder contains:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
CSI Bentonville says that she keeps some in her blogroll.
Those are also good reasons to try and use the same tags that others are using for the same issue/content.
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Frequently Asked Questions Highlighted FAQ Areas/Rules for polite conversation-
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ek has written some diaries you may find useful-
* Speed Reading dKos, about How to Read a Lot of Diaries.
* dKos Censorship?, about How Things Disappear.
Other Useful Diaries-
* jotter's High Impact Diaries- 150 Diaries a day, ranked by Impact, and other daily statistics.
* Useful Diaries in the FAQ- A collection of useful Diaries.
* See That Caps Lock Key on Your Keyboard? by PatsBard.
* Diaries 101: Let's Share Writing Tips :) by OrangeClouds115.
* Please Stop Biting The Newbies by kraant.
* How do YOU dKos? by Yellow Canary.
Here are some other Diaries that address the needs of new users-
* New Users Guide To DKos, By The Pony Express by buhdydharma.
* Not buhdydharma's New User's Guide to dKos by ek hornbeck.
* DailyKos 101: The Basics by theleftknew.
* Join Me In Welcoming New Members and Readers by Darksyde.
* Hey, Newbie! by georgia10.
* An Old Coot to Newbies and Fellow Codgers: Let's Talk Site Functionality by folkbum.
Here are some older takes on what the well informed user should know-
* Soj's Old-Tyme FAQ and Jamboreee by Soj.
* Suggested dKos Community Norms by pastordan.
* On community by kos.
Other diaries in the Welcome New Users Series. The Welcome New Users dKosopedia page.
Welcome New Users!