Personally I think of tags as a way of grouping similar videos in a “theme,” so I try to come up with terms that would be likely to be used in other videos.

For me that means all-lowercase, but I agree there should be a standard (or all tags could be automagically shifted to lower case or title case).

I was inspired by Dag's thanks. I can easily be lazy about tags and I especially appreciate it when someone enhances them (Not like Spam or Cheney); but, my main point is, I think that we could all do a better job if we were aware of how tags/search work etc.

Are you talking about tags as in "video content" tags, or html tags for making your comments bold italic small or whatnot?

I took a pass at the same subject a year and a half ago, and here's what I got...

http://howto.videosift.com/talk/Regarding-Tags-and-Tagging

For me tags are primarily supposed to be clickable - so you search and find stuff that's directly related to the tag. This is why you should always keep stuff that supposed to be together, together, not separated by commas.

South Park, Eric Cartman, trey parker,
not: south, park, eric, cartman, trey, parker

Searching for "south" gives me crap on a stick.

Moreover the tags can hint at what's in the video, so people with their nano-second attention spans can get another incentive to actually watch the video.

Just remember, chicken tikka masala. There ain't nothing wrong with that.

based on my own observations and a little info lucky posted some time ago...

- case is irrelevant.
- search and related videos treat words in the title the same as tags, so there's no need to repeat words in tags that are already part of the title.
- partial matches work on tags. no need to put "kitten, kittens" in there.

Yes, case does not matter. I always use lower case for readability unless I want to add inflection to a particular word.

Regarding the issue of repeating terms in title and tags, it's encouraged because if someone wants to find similar posts, they should just have to click a tag rather than copy/paste or re-type a term into the search box.

When you click a tag, it starts a search for an *exact* match only. This means clicking "kitten" will search for only videos with exactly "kitten" in the title, tags, or summary, but will not find videos with "kittens" and without "kitten". This is so because there are many terms where you do not want to find substring matches. This means it's okay to add repetitive tags like "kitten,kittens".

Regarding commas, you should not separate persons' names. E.g., instead of "jon,stewart" use "jon stewart" because when separated by commas, a person could only click to search for videos containing "jon" or videos containing "stewart". Without the comma, users can click to search for "jon stewart" videos (or they could just refer to the top 15 sidebar).

In addition to what is mentioned above, I think it's very important that the tags are quite exhaustive regarding the contents of the video, to make it as likely as possible to come up in a search. I've discovered a lot of dupes that could be blamed solely on insufficient or altogether lacking tags on the original video.

>> ^Ornthoron:
In addition to what is mentioned above, I think it's very important that the tags are quite exhaustive regarding the contents of the video, to make it as likely as possible to come up in a search. I've discovered a lot of dupes that could be blamed solely on insufficient or altogether lacking tags on the original video.

Word.

I have to admit I do have a beef with the way some people use the tags.

Use tags that someone might use to search for the video, not silly descriptions that are funny and clever. getting a dupe on a post usually happens when someone else's tags are so poor, the obvious searches don't bring it up.

I don't have the time to go looking right now..., but those who do this know who they are.
"Put the clever comments in the description field, not the tags!"
Oh, here's one (Sorry alien_concept)
http://www.videosift.com/video/How-To-Make-The-Ladies-Love-You-While-On-The-Rag
"chocolate bread pudding, oh my fucking god, my diet is over"

Another thing is some people don't use enough tags or descriptive enough tags...

Like this one (sorry jdbates):
http://www.videosift.com/video/Neko-Case-John-Saw-That-Number
The Tags are "music, concert, live" -- How about a person's name, song name, location, something that identifies the performance.

This one has NO Commas at all...
http://www.videosift.com/video/Snow-Falling
"snow falling uttarakhand uttaranchal bainji kandai dashjula"


I also have to mention, that after a quick look, there are also a lot of people who use the Tags quite well - so Kudos to those people! and Thanks!

So..., did I mention I hate when my post ends up a Dupe because someone else used poor tags..., yes?..., good then!

Though ^some people are bothered by tagomedy, I don't want anyone to be discouraged from practicing their craft. Furthermore, other members should not change another members' tagomedy just because it bothers them. It's grown to become an integral part of Sift culture, and most people enjoy reading as well as creating funny tags. What you should do in such a situation where your title and tags aren't sufficient for dupe prevention is add keywords to your video's summary to increase the chances it'll be discovered a dupe when others submit in the future.

... but I don't like finding out it is a dupe after the fact... especially when it starts to get votes

Actually, I haven't/wouldn't change someone else's tags. I have however, sent the odd message asking politely, if someone could please ad a tag or fix a tag error on their own post.

I do the clever quips in the tags if I don't have anything else to put in there. Tags are more visible than the description, so that's where I do that.

I also have to mention, that after a quick look, there are also a lot of people who use the Tags quite well - so Kudos to those people! and Thanks!


thats why i have hired the excellent services of Krono and Rasch.they have retagged just about every video i have submitted.i highly recommend their services!
whats that?
oh yeah...the check is the mail you two!
/whistles as he walks away innocently

Is this all going to be on the final... cause im taking notes