

New tagging standard released by Yahoo, Freebase, AdaptiveBlue, Zemanta... - vuknje
http://www.commontag.org/

======
rarestblog
Why do new standards have to be so heavy? Why can't it just be:

    
    
        <p ctag="wikipedia/The_Beatles">We're talking about The Beatles here</p>
    

Why can't they use Wikipedia? Everybody knows how to search Wikipedia, but
dbpedia search (called "Navigator") isn't even linked from dbpedia.org (I had
to use search engine to find out how to search dbpedia)

It even seems like anything that could be tagged should be well-formed XML
document (well, XHTML).

~~~
omouse
This is a Bad Idea. You're mixing up _more_ structure with the content. This
reduces the usefulness of the tags because you and I may not agree on the
tags.

What is needed are overlays that sit on top of the content. This way, you can
specify tags for whatever sections you want, and I can do the same while the
content remains untouched. The advantage is you can _share_ your overlays with
your friends, or you could even setup a centralized service that aggregates
the overlays and uses the most common sets of tags.

~~~
DocSavage
I don't understand what you mean by "the content remains untouched." Referring
to the original Beatles markup above, isn't it useful content to say this
sentence is about the Beatles -- the topic described by that Wikipedia page.
Presumably, you and I would agree on that mapping and reject tying that
sentence to the Wikipedia page on the organism Beatles.

The overlaid, personal tags could be through some other mechanism that
wouldn't even be part of the page. It could be some browser plugin that maps
my tags for the band Beatles.

~~~
omouse
Why should the webpage server/provider have a monopoly on how you consume
their content?

They should be using overlaid personal tags as well, it's just when the
webpage is served, their tags would be sent over as well. Then _you_ can
choose if you want to use their tags or your own personal ones.

------
omouse
Horrible idea, just horrible. I hate how everyone tries to force useful ideas
into HTML/XML or HTTP. You know you _can_ create new filetypes, structures and
protocols for your ideas if they don't fit nicely into the current ones??

------
ComputerGuru
I discussed the need for a tagging standard over 2 years ago in a blog post -
check out the comments on the article, they have a lot of insight to offer.

[http://neosmart.net/blog/2007/the-need-for-creating-tag-
stan...](http://neosmart.net/blog/2007/the-need-for-creating-tag-standards/)

There are a couple of comments by startups dedicated to managing/organizing
tags across different sites with some of the various ideas they've used to
tackle this issue.

------
waleedka
I hope it takes off, but I really doubt it will. It's too complex, and the
benefits are not so clear. I understand the long term benefits/goal, but it's
hard to motivate content producers to adapt something new if they can't see
quick returns.

~~~
omouse
The benefits are clear, but the web browsers will have to adapt to them. Also,
the implementation is fucking awful as I mentioned in other comments :/

------
joshu
That's not actually tagging. Maybe it's a namespace standard.

~~~
sp332
It is tagging, using RDFa. The "new standard" in the headline has a new
semantic namespace, but the cool part is a new XML namespace, with a nicer way
of writing RDFa tags. Example:

    
    
      <body xmlns:ctag="http://commontag.org/ns# rel="ctag:tagged">
        <span typeof="ctag:Tag"
                 rel="ctag:means"
            resource="http://dbpedia/resource/Twitter />
        <span typeof="ctag:Tag"
                 rel="ctag:means"
            resource="http://rdf.freebase.com/ns/en/web_2_0 />
      </body>
    

This relates your page semantically to the concepts "Web 2.0" and "Twitter".

Better explanation: [http://faviki.wordpress.com/2009/06/11/common-tag-is-
release...](http://faviki.wordpress.com/2009/06/11/common-tag-is-released/)

~~~
joshu
I understand the spec. I understand what RDFa is.

It's still not tagging.

Tagging is a UI and organizational conceit. A minimal way to attach a nickname
for a class of things to a new thing to classify it, such that users are
actually able to use it, and to feedback the list of used nicknames so as to
encourage convergence.

Given that I made up the term in the first place, I'm pretty sure I'm right
here.

~~~
DocSavage
Then there'd be two ways to view the word "tagging." One is the UI and
organization style you popularized through del.icio.us. The other is the
common English gerund of "to tag", which is the way Common Tag is using it.
Maybe it would have been better for them to call it Common Label...

Re: common "tags" through a shared namespace -- seems like it'd be a good
thing to do and would increase the relevancy of our stuff to search engines.
Would Google actively support Common Tag or does Google support it naturally
through RDF indexing?

This approach also reminds me to review the debates on Ontology.

<http://www.peterme.com/archives/000558.html>

I would like to implement some kind of semantic marking for the data on my web
site. If not Common Tag, what's the best way to say "this is an Author who has
written that" or "this is regarding the Terminator movie (1984) directed by
Cameron..."?

~~~
joshu
RDF or RDFa plus any of the myriad schemas that are available. You would use
Dublin Core for the first, and you could reference the IMDB URI space for the
second.

Commontag does not appear to do these things.

~~~
DocSavage
Common Tag uses RDFa so I'm confused (bear with me) on your objection to the
scheme. The use of Freebase and DBPedia makes sense since all of their data is
under relatively open license, unlike IMDB.

------
joshu
An oldy but a goodie: <http://sylloge.com/personal/2004/09/flickr-and-
del.html>

------
gsiener
I was surprised to not see Delicious in the list, since they're part of Yahoo
now.

------
TweedHeads
We the people strongly oppose such aberration and condemn those involved in
heresy to be burned at the stake!

Unless they accept going back to the drawing table...

~~~
TweedHeads
How about this:

    
    
      <tag type="author|reader|auto" rel="label|means|etc" value="label1,label2"/>
    

which can be included anywhere in the doc and can be parsed/ignored according
to some browser setting, leaving the whole document intact?

~~~
joshu
XML is the thing where you have angle brackets, right?

