

Ask HN: Can we add tags to submissions?  - ericelias

It would improve the quality of comments, stories and would increase the accessibility of the site.
======
tokenadult
In what way does adding tags do more than

1) searching for stories by keywords via HN Search,

2) scanning the main page and the new page with word search on the page
(implemented as CTRL-F in many browsers),

3) searching for best comments on the bestcomments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments>

page,

4) searching for active threads on the active

<http://news.ycombinator.com/active>

page,

5) searching for comments by users with high karma averages on their comments
by following links from the leaders

<http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders>

page, and

6) doing site-restricted searches of the site with Google

[https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#...</a><p>to focus on
comments with particular keywords? I use all of those methods on different
occasions to find good content here. What could we all do with tags
(implemented how?) that we could not do by those means?

~~~
malandrew
Tagging is useful for a lot more than just finding old stuff on a topic. It's
massively valuable for filtering new stuff and community management.

A lot of the problems with the devolution in HN could be resolved by
implementing a few common tags like, 'startups', 'programming', 'political',
'current_events', 'design' and then having different thresholds for each tag
to reach the front page.

IMHO, the number of votes to reach the front page for a political story should
be much higher than one that is about programming. I think most would agree.

With tagging pg would be able to figure out if one tag is getting out of hand
and squelch it temporarily or even permanently.

As the community has grown, we're suffering from filter failure (
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LabqeJEOQyI> ). The less HN is about stuff
that is interesting to hackers, the more it becomes welcoming for people who
aren't hackers, the more non-hackers that join the more up votes that non-
hacker focused stories get. It's a vicious cycle and tag squelching is one
good way of moderating the community and keeping it focused.

