Can't tag things "AI"

There doesn't seem to be a tag for "ai". I like to try to tag things and I've noticed it before. My guess is it's not enough characters, so I tagged my latest post "ArtificialIntelligence"... but if there's a way you can add a manual tag you should add AI.

I guess another question is "is tagging actually important"? it seems like 90% of the posts that I get in my email summary are people talking about their products (MBS and others), and whenever I add a tag I see most tags I end up using only have 10 or less results. I feel like modern search probably makes the tagging irrelevant at this point and one more point of friction for users... I don't feel strongly about this just wanted to mention it.

I guess I'm curious how many people use tags for searching or following or whatever... if it's only 2% of the users, why encourage the other 98% enter tags?

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Note there is an existing AI tag with 15 tagged messages.

This tag approach goes back to the founding days for FMSoup where we debated the benefits of a set of topical channels (Categories), based on areas of interest, in affinity groupings, vs. a tag structure. The tag structure won out (not very database thinking, IMHO). Now there are over 700 tags - with only a couple dozen having > 1 tag applied, so that approach is pretty much unused, and generally useless. We've discussed in recent years, how to transition back to a more data structured approach, but now gotten far down that path. Again, IMHO, we should set up categories to match the top tag counts. My 2¢ worth - I believe the content would be much more valuable with this approach.

Humm... maybe the "ai" tag is blocked to certain users only. I get a bunch of suggestions that have the letters "ai" in it and then this obscure message at the bottom, and it doesn't seem to let me to actually tag "ai".

Seems this is some newly discovered? issue with the underlying forum. The drop down is limited to 25 items. Changing the sort order under TAGS does not seem to change what shows in the list of 25 items and a search for anything other than those 25, fails.

Guess this is something to add to the "Site Feedback" category to get it into the troubleshooting queue......................

One more argument for categories over tags :slight_smile:

Maybe this is why there is such a huge proliferation of tags (700+) with 1 post, as you can enter whatever you want, but you can never select the ones your entered every again???

If you modify your tag list on the left to include AI, then that tag is available in the create topic dialog. Not ideal, but a workable method of getting tagged content in areas of interest into your focus.

BUT you have to have that tag selected, to have that tag selectable in the create topic dialog (arghhh!)

Hello Kirk. I am a little confused where these emails are coming from, or what we are talking about? Or how i got listed here?

lol. So I might be a developer, but I'm a Mac user at heart. This sounds like a Windows sort of problem...

:rofl:

I just set up a windows machine last week and was so stressed my wife basically stayed away from me for 4 days because I was grumpy and swearing at everything. I hate tech support and bad User Experience issues, my autism flairs up.

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@JasonMark The tag was apparently restricted to some areas, that should no longer be the case. It was also applied to your recent post.

Some tags could also be more likely to be hijacked by bots or post authors who are simply attempting to surf a trend.

Technically, tags are there as part of the platform, and our users are encouraged to use them, but there is no curation effort from our moderators or other members to apply some consistency at the tag level. Different kind of communities use discourse for very different purposes. A vendor who uses that platform to publish information about a product is more likely to have a few staffers in charge of publishing information and could keep things to a smaller set of tags applied with consistency to reflect things like compatibility with a specific browser, OS, etc.

In our community the tags are there, but as it was pointed out, search is often the tool that will bring you the relevant results, and many tags end up belonging to a single post.

Also to note, email summary is more related to your notification preferences for each categories (Watching, Tracking, Watching first post, Normal, Muted).

IDK I think my autism is kicking in here but it seems like you're saying:

  • We know it says "don't forget to tag"
  • Tagging doesn't really help and no one really uses it so don't bother
  • We're not going to update our UI because
  • If you want an interesting weekly summary you have to manually tweak it
  • It's just the way our software works, you're using it wrong.

Which is probably true... I'm a Mac user and tend to just expect things to work (except for Tahoe... lol)

IDK ya'll can do what you want with this info. It's still easier to use than the Claris forums but the MINUTE I try the Claris forums and they don't require a log in EVERY FRIGGING TIME I'll probably just switch back to that since there are probably more users there, but that might be wrong. In the meanwhile I'll hang out here. If the weekly summary gets more interesting I'll keep it, if not I'll unsubscribe. I'm just not enough of a power-user of this forum to want to learn how to use it, which maybe means I'm not the target audience... which is fine. I'm not hurt by that... I'm a hacker not a "programmer" and I appreciate the help I do get here, and also take the time to help others when I see something in my feed I can help with... :slight_smile:

I'll do my best to address your points:

We are not going to update our UI because

We do not update UI without feedback from our community. The specific string "DON'T FORGET TO TAG THIS!" has now been changed. It must have been there for ages and as such, I presume a fair number of our members, myself included, have not been paying attention to the wording or the fact it stood in all caps. Thank you for the valuable feedback. The new wording reads "Your tags go here..."

Tagging doesn't really help and no one really uses it so don't bother

This is far from what I was saying. That said, perhaps your specific use case won't work here on fmsoup, leading you to make the above statement. Tagging is complex, the platform allows for it to be optional or to set minimums and maximums per category, while also allowing for some tags to be exclusive (like you saw with AI earlier). Generally speaking it is helpful in the sense that it adds context and that this can then be used by the platform and its users, this at very little cost to the authors who apply tags as they see appropriate. With this in mind, we encourage tagging. Tagging in the "Questions" category is optional, and tags are not curated. Will tags be useful for your specific use case? Difficult to tell. At this time, I do not see us removing tags from the platform. Use them if they work for you, skip them if they don't.

If you want an interesting weekly summary you have to manually tweak it

That's what preferences are for. They stand at the user level and belong there. No single notification setting will please everyone, nor can the system guess what you want to see land in your inbox.

Mac OS also has its default settings and has many preferences that users will customize. The defaults work for most users, but surely do not work for all. The software does come with constraints each user has to work with. People who are not willing to spend the time customizing their preferences have to deal with the defaults. We also have a budget that is considerably different than the one of Apple, but that is a different topic.


So if you have actionable feedback, we can look into things. If you want to voice how a given feature does not map well to your own workflow without being explicit about a possible fix, it makes things harder, but we can still have a discussion.

Concerning the Claris forums, as far as I know, the authentication mechanism is something that is not going away anytime soon. There are a number of english speaking forums about FileMaker, you can be on multiple forums at the same time if you wish, if you the kind of person to select only one forum, then pick the one with the best mix of community, feature set and any other criteria you may have. We rejoice about your contributions here on fmsoup and are glad to know that you are also getting help when looking for it. If there is anything else that can be done, feel free to message me directly.