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Daily Tildes discussion - comment tags, and how they feel to use
Today's daily topic comes out of a discussion in this thread yesterday - people are currently feeling a bit weird/rude about using the comment tags (described here, if you haven't read this already).
So the questions are:
- Does it just feel rude because we're currently very small-scale, where any negative action feels more personal?
- Are there any ways that we could try to reduce that feeling a bit?
- Should we just remove comment tags until the site is larger, since they're not very useful at this point anyway?
Feel free to add any other thoughts/discussions about comment tags as well.
I like the tags, and the tagging system. I think what's needed is further refinement of the tags themselves.
The noise tag is a bit redundant imo. There's going to be an awful lot of noise all the time in every thread once this place is bigger - do we really want to be asking people to tag half of the comments with noise and offtopic? Seems like it's a lot of tag work for not a lot of useful information, not so different from insightful/informative. If we're going to use them to disincentivize that behavior with -rep that's different, and they'd be useful.
I think tags should be focusing on things that really stand out in the discussion, rather than trying to tag everything. Troll and Flame probably ought to be combined into something that doesn't use such loaded words but still indicates bad behavior, perhaps Rude? Joke might be better as Funny. I do think the rude/funny tags have real value.
I'd like to see some kind of tag that indicates an awesome comment, the sort that everyone visiting the thread ought to take the time to read.
Seconded
But only if moderators have the ability to remove that tag. Or else people will tag memes and things that are funny, but have no substance.
Right. We don't want that tag to become another version of /r/bestof. Occasionally good content but mostly not worthy of the Best Of status.
There could be some 'system'/'specialized' tags that tildes has interactions with beyond just applying the tag. We could have people voting on the tags - say we had #curated as a system tag as an example. Anyone could tag something #curated, but unless a certain number of people bump the #curated tag itself on that specific post afterwards it doesn't truly mark as curated.
What other kind of mischief could we cook up with systems embedded as special tags?
I like the comment tags. That said, it feels like as the site gets larger, it will be used as a statement of opinion rather than what it actually is. I can just imagine the drama now when people tag a serious comment as a joke.
I think my biggest issue with tags is that they're a bit of a mixed message. Some are objectively always bad
trollflamenoiseand some are a bit ambiguous (can be both good & bad)jokeofftopicbut still useful to identify since some people may want to filter them out. I think that maybe by separating the "always bad" into areportbutton and keeping the ambiguous ones in tags, it might help with that. That waytagfeels less like "I don't approve of this comment so I am tagging it!" and more "I can see how some people might want to be able to filter this out so I am just tagging it for that purpose".Which is also why I suggested an
opiniontag since some people will want to filter those out as well... although as you pointed out, there are some major issues with that one, namely it may be used to try and undermine people's comments and some comment sections are essentially always going to be opinion.Another option is to allow people to tag their own comments... so if I make a joke I can tag it as
jokepreemptively or if I know my comment is offtopic but still potentially a valuable discussion I can tag itofftopicright away myself.The other option we have discussed in the past, which I know you weren't a huge fan of @deimos, but maybe I just did a poor job of explaining, was 2 click voting+tagging combined using a radial popup menu.
E.g. https://i.imgur.com/d2cZ2GJ.png (insightful/informative are a bit redundant but this is just proof of concept) I modeled it after the slashdot system and the way it would work is:
The upvote arrow (or
votetext since you want to avoid icons) is neutral colour to start when no vote has been cast, you click it once and a radial menu pops up with 4 directional "vote+tag" options. The user then clicks again on the type of vote+tag they wish to cast. The popup then closes and the arrow icon (or text) changes colour to reflect their vote+tag choice.This system requires only one more click to vote than normal so it’s not that much more complicated or an impediment to voting. However the system provides a useful feature in that since it tags while voting it will make filtering much easier for people since every comment will be tagged immediately if they deserve an upvote (those that don't deserve an upvote can be reported separately if required). And since vote+tag is a binary/forced choice that users have to make, it won't feel like an attack on the person's comment like tagging does currently, but simply a part of the process of voting.
This idea can work on both desktop and mobile devices too, which is nice. You can even do tap/click+hold and drag in a direction, then release to vote+tag which is super quick and a familiar mechanic to mobile users (and gamers) already.
I am curious on other people’s thoughts on this 2 click vote+tag model though. So, thought?
I think that tags like Troll and Flame should be pinging mods (when those exist). Offtopic and noise both seem like good feedback (though offtopic can be more neutral) to give other users that doesn't necessarily require action (unless it is done regularly or the context of the ~ community requires it).
That means the main one that doesn't make much sense to me is Joke. It's a potentially positive reaction especially paired with the ability to also vote for the comment. I think it's fine to go down that path if you really want to, but we'd probably want other reaction-styled text to be near it if you really wanted its purpose to be more clear. I see it as basically saying "this is funny." You could have other tags for "Thoughtful," and "Sweet" or "Cute" or whatever.
Coming at this from the other end, I think the tags offer useful feedback about the expectations of the community without necessarily having to type it out. For example, in this thread my one-word comment was tagged as noise, because it was.
So I'm fine with it, but also I get why people right now might be reluctant to use the options often. It's a small community and most of us are trying to contribute meaningfully. So really there just aren't a lot of comments that deserve tagging with one of these comment tags.
Maybe a silly suggestion but I wonder if tagging via emojis would mitigate the problems of words being perceived as rude.
I think that would lead to more miscommunication.
I like the comment tags, and I almost sort of want non-OP-assigned tags on posts as well.
Yeah, the non-OP-assigned tags for posts are coming. @deimos just wants a way to audit them first, in a changelog or whatever, so abuse can be identified.