21
votes
Tagging proposal: .wiki suffix
There have been recent posts that reflect in-depth knowledge and significant effort to provide comprehensive information on a topic (examples here and here).
Yes, it's possible to bookmark these posts for individual reference. However, Tildes doesn't have a pinning feature given the current very loose organization of subjects/interest communities.
In that absence, I'd like to suggest a globally used ".wiki" sub-tag appended to topics, to narrow search results to highly informative entries on a subject.
Please let me know your thoughts on this.
I'd go ahead and add the .wiki sub-tag to a couple of entries myself, but I've lost tagging privileges after a long stretch of inactivity. Please consider that I'm interested in volunteering again.
Interesting idea.
I'm not sure ".wiki" is the best tag to use for this. For one thing, the word "wiki" already has its own meaning, and these expert posts aren't really part of a wiki.
Also, as a sub-tag... what parent tag would you attach it to? The recipe topic that you've cited as an example has the tags "baking" and "bread". Would you attach the .wiki" sub-tag to one of those: "baking.wiki", "bread.wiki"? Or would it require a different parent tag?
Or should it be just a stand-alone tag? However, like I said, "wiki" already means something else.
Maybe we could start using a tag like "insightful" or "reference" or "expert" for these.
Also, I note that one of your examples is a comment, rather than a topic. We can't currently apply tags to comments.
Or... if you think these expert posts are worthy of being in a wiki... maybe we should start using the wiki feature on Tildes to record these for posterity. Only a couple of groups have active wikis at the moment, but it should be relatively easy to start up wiki pages for other groups. And you could become a wiki-editor, instead of a topic-tagger!
You're correct that "wiki" isn't an accurate description of what I'd like to accomplish. I'd like some means of replicating the utility of pinned posts in groups, though - answers to FAQs, lists of references/sources, canonical how-to's, shared forms and templates, etc.
Pinned posts represent both a broader and narrower repertoire of content than a traditional Wiki. They're intended to establish the commonly held ground rules of interaction for a specific community (on Tildes, taking the site philosophy and rules as a baseline, adding any specifics that facilitate better discussion in that group), minimize repetitious posts, and distill expertise/common wisdom into accessible references.
Understood about the topic vs. comment issue - a better resolution might be a group or subgroup public bookmarks function, collated by moderators?
In the case of the baking measures, the appropriate tag in your proposed taxonomy would probably be "baking.reference". The baker's percentages method has applicability to recipe proportions for most baked goods, including but not limited to bread. That's a judgment which requires some subject-matter knowledge.
IMHO, it's better to make the tags sufficiently inclusive to avoid omitting relevant search results, rather than so exclusive and fine-grained that only an expert can retrieve the information. At the same time, I don't think we should use bare "expert", "reference", "wiki" tags unless the post is genuinely encyclopedic; they should be sub-tags limited to the relevant subject.
TBH, I'm not sure I'm expert enough on anything to be a good wiki editor, but I'll take a thrash at it if the opportunity arises.
Over on Reddit, I would put all that into a wiki.
However, I think the right tag(s) could achieve what you want, combined with taking advantage of the mostly empty sidebars in each group.
Designate tags like "faq", "reference", "expert", how to"... for use in a group or groups.
In the sidebar of each group, add some text for each of these tags, with an included hyperlink to a search for the relevant tag.
For example, say we wanted to create a series of FAQ entries here in Tildes. We use the existing tags being used. Then, we put some text into the sidebar of this group:
(Alternatively, something like this could sit in the wiki for ~tildes)
Maybe in ~food, it's:
I like your proposal for sidebar details, more so since it takes advantage of existing functionality and UI spaces very nicely. As always, I'm grateful for your experience and wisdom!
Glad I could help!
I don't see a problem with simply tagging everything that has a high likelihood of being referred back to with the reference tag. Ideally we'd take great care to otherwise tag the thread well, so a baking reference would be found by looking for the tags "baking" and "reference". Is there a way to search for two tags at once currently? If not that seems like an easy enough fix.
The only downside is that we as a community have to agree on what is worthy of being referred back to.
I think what we're really looking for here is 'keepers.' The threads that belong in a 'hall of fame' equivalent. I think I like this better than just 'sticky' threads in groups - we all know sticky threads get the shaft, it's just their nature. Best to leave them for announcements and timely issues rather than bookkeeping.
It would be interesting to be able to kick great threads over into a wiki-like archive of some kind for each group, and we could indeed do it just by slapping a special tag on them. It wouldn't need to be an actual wiki, though. Just some kind of special thread view we can attach to the wiki along with some kind of index.
We don't have an exemplary submission mechanic yet. In theory, an 'exemplary submissions only' view would be the same as a hall of fame view, if that system works out someday.
I don't have any specific suggestions. I just know I would love it if I could kick things over into the wiki without having to sit here copying pasting and editing everything all the time. I'd rather pin that thread into an appropriate index and get on with my day. Making it simpler like this might even encourage more people to use it - most users don't interact with the wikis on reddit. Perhaps we can find some subtle mechanics to encourage that here.
I think this is actually something that an Exemplary label for topics could potentially help with. If we allowed people to browse a list of topics that have received exemplary labels, and also filter them by text topics, or by tags, it could really help with curating high-effort, interesting, user created posts like those you speak of.
I would not be opposed to some sort of specific tag to indicate knowledgeable, wiki-worthy posts in particular groups though. @mycketforvirrad would probably be the best person to ask about this though, but I imagine they have a lot on their plate already simply keeping up with all the new submissions and cleaning up their tags.