You may have noticed that the subjects on our posts – Massachusetts, National, Vote 9.16.2006, etc. – have vanished. They’ve been replaced by “tags,” which work like tags at Daily Kos (if you’re familiar with them there).
The good things about tags are (1) they’re self-defined, so you can essentially categorize your own posts, and (2) you can assign more than one tag to a post. One drawback that I can see is that they’re entirely self-entered, so you have to type out “Massachusetts” in the tag field instead of just clicking on a drop-down menu. But a fix is in the works for that problem.
So please use the tags! And note also the “Hot Tags” box on the left – that box will link to the most recently used tags, and also allows you to see a list of every tag used on the blog.
Please tell us what you think.
UPDATE: Another risk I can see with tags is inconsistency. If you tag your piece about Tom Reilly “Reilly,” I tag mine “Tom Reilly,” and someone else uses “election” or “primary,” the system starts to break down. So at least for now, please try to stick to the tags we’ve been using (which are in the “subjects” and “hot tags” boxes on the left of the screen). If you really, really want to create a new tag, go ahead – but please try to use at least one existing tag. Thanks!
Tags are much much better. More flexible, and I’m told they’re a big part of the Future of Blogging. Apparently that’s how gmail organizes your email.
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If you use Mozilla Firefox (which I heartily recommend), it has form-filling boxes anyway — eg. for login, you type “Ch” and if you’ve typed that in recently, it will give you the option to auto-fill “Charley on the MTA”.
Tags only show up when you view a post’s own page. They would be much more useful if they showed up on the front page, and user’s pages, like they do on most blog sites that have tags.
what do you use tags for? Or, stated differently, why would it be more useful if tags appeared on the front page at the bottom of every post? I’m a newbie to tags, so I’m looking to be educated.
some work that needs to be done around tags. It helps to set-up some rules for those who post often.
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For example, you should always use a person’s first and last name.
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Then, you agree on a coding pattern for political districts:
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CD-02 – For MA Congressional District 2
HD-04 – For MA State House 4th District
SD-05 – For MA State Senate 5th District
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or something like that.
If only the Massachusetts House and Senate races were so sensibly numbered.
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Instead we have abominations like “Worcester, Hampden, Hampshire and Franklin”, not to be confused with “Berkshire, Hampshire and Franklin” or just “Hampshire and Franklin”.
how different all the states are.
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I’ve since learned that New Jersey has a State Senate, where Senators are elected to different length terms over 10 years.
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Instead of State Senators serving 4 year terms (and their House counterparts serving 2 year terms), NJ has Senators server terms that are 4 years-4years-2years.
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States… i tell ya.
I just posted my first new posts since you added tagging, but I see no option to define tags for my post. All I get is the old pulldown menu asking me to choose one of the old categories (Diaries, Massachusetts, National, etc.)
This is fixed as of this evening. Thanks, David.