OakDragon's Journal: Tagging beta - wtf,no,yes,maybe

By now, some slashdotters should be aware of the tag system that is in beta. (If you don't know, just look at any story; the tags appear under the story's description.) As of now, only subscribers (and a few users) can add tags to a story.

It may be my imagination, but the tagging already seems to be losing some steam. Tags appear less quickly, or not at all. And of the tags that are present, only about half would be actually useful. Let's look at some recent examples.

fud

This is fair enough. (FUD stands for Fear, Uuncertainty, Doubt, and has a rich history among geeks and nerds in the IT world.) But it seems for every fud tag, a notfud is found. Useful?

thinkofthechildren

This one just seems to long and unwieldy to be a good tag. It's more like an in-joke or something.

notinternationalspacestation

Here's a real beaut - if you're looking for articles concerning the internation space station, this tag helpfully says "not here!"

slownewsday

That may be, but you can do better. Useful tag for those that like looking out for lame news stories.

Then we have tags that directly respond to the article description, often to rhetorical questions with the write-up.

yes, no

Really, what good is yes or no as a tag? Like fud, you are likely to find both together, which makes it doubly useless.

haha

Usually given in the "hanging's too good for 'em" spirit, it is pretty lame as a tag.

duh

For those that like reading about stuff they already knew, and how!

So how about some useful tags?

• microsoft, linux, ...
• security
• apple, ibm
• biotech, space, ...
• google
• ...others?

And one last question: how do we use the tags presently? Or will that come after the beta period?

EDIT NOTE: When I wrote this, I was unware that only some Slashdot members could participate in tagging.