On 8/14/07, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
[snip]
So, here is my suggestion of the day:
* users can assign tags (single words or phrases) to an image
* users can create implications of tags
* implications are fulfilled by the software automatically
Example: I add the tag "MIG-29" to an image. Someone has said (or will
say) that "MIG-29" implies "military aircraft", "russian
aircraft",
"supersonic aircraft". These, in turn, imply "aircraft" (each of
them). All these tags will be added to the tag list of this image
automatically (not in real time, but through an updating process in
the background). Likewise, if I add an implication to a tag, all
images carrying this tag will be updated automatically.
[snip]
Your suggestion is simmlar to what I've been advocating for a while.
Perhaps your particular version will gain the traction mine have
failed to gain.
Perhaps instead of 'implications' being hard hard assignment they were
used in a way users can reject 'implications' which don't apply. This
could be accomplished through a kind of negative entry like
[[-Category:foo]]. Obviously the correct this to do would be to only
use implications in the right places, but there are always
exceptions... it would be a shame to introduce something which
couldn't handle them.
It seems your suggestion includes the concept of creating a new kind
of thing, while I've previously proposed that we just repurpose
categories for this application.
I don't much care if the solution uses categories, or some new syntax
and foolinks table. ... it's just that categories are readily
available for this purpose. Really it's all the same to me.
The only compelling reason I can see to use something other than
categories for this is that we don't currently have real category
redirects, which would be useful to allow a single unique tag to have
representations in multiple languages. If providing yet another
syntax is what it takes to get adoption then I'm all for it.
I have an existing local tool which recommends categories based on the
parent categories on the image as well as the categories which are on
images which are also in the existing categories or on gallery pages
common to the image it is suggesting for. It would be pretty easy to
convert that into a webapp, possibly even an ajax popup that inserts
the new selections directly into the site.