When did LJ get the ability to filter by tag?

[jducoeur]

I just added a new person to my flist, and noticed that the add-friend page now has the ability to not just add the person, but to white or blacklist entries based on their tags.

Whoa. That's *huge*. I mean, that is the number-one feature I've been wanting from LJ since I first started here. It's not as good as I'd like (which would let me specify specific tags for specific custom flists), but it's a big step forward.

Of course, it implies that I should try to be more consistent about which tags *I* use, so that people can filter me appropriately: I suspect that rather different sets of folks are interested in the "programming" vs. the "sca" vs. the "politics" tags.

But I'm going to have to go through and give this some real thought. Frankly, there are a fair number of people I haven't been able to follow as regularly as I'd like, simply because of volume. But given the ability to follow a specific subset of their entries, it might be worth revisiting.

Comments

[mneme]

A couple of years ago, I think.

They didn't introduce the feature with a lot of fanfare.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I thought it was in the most recent release, the one that added lj-spoiler and such, but I could be mistaken.

It's worth playing with. I know I have people who *only* read the story filter, and other people who *never* read the story filter...

[jducoeur]

Right -- that's exactly the sort of place where I'd expect it to be useful, rather like my "programming" entries. (Which I believe are very interesting for a few people, and utterly useless for many others.)

As far as I'm concerned, the main point of tagging is for read-filtering, and having some automated support for that is a significant win...

[unicornpearlz.livejournal.com]

Using me as an example -
I don't tag regularly. It seems like a colassal waste of time for me (for the most part). How do you intend on following people like me - not me specifically. (Especially since if I want to talk to you, or need you - I'll just call you.)

[jducoeur]

Well, in that case it's a non-sequiteur for you -- perhaps unfortunate, but no worse than previously. But for people who do tag consistently (and I'm by no means unusual in that), it will sometimes make them significantly easier to follow, since it makes it easier to just follow the more interesting bits...

[unicornpearlz.livejournal.com]

Ah ok. See if I think its interesting enough to take the time to share, then I generally don't need a tag to say its interesting. Similarly, that's why I dont get a paid membership to lj.

[jducoeur]

That's not unreasonable, and may even suit your readers. But I could easily see you winding up in a situation where, for instance, your posts are largely split among "history of medicine" and "SCA Can of Worms", with lots of people interested in each but most people *not* interested in both. The more readers you have, the more this becomes significant. And when something like that happens, it does your readers a significant favor to tag those separately.

(Of course, you can then always split off separate per-topic blogs, and many people do so. But it's no longer as *necessary* to do so as it used to be.)

[unicornpearlz.livejournal.com]

I already split them. Can of Worms is ALWAYS tagged. And, they are (generally) the only posts I do that are not friend locked.

[jducoeur]

Makes sense, and that's a fine example of where tagging is useful: it's exactly the sort of thing that some people are really going to want to read, and others are really going to want to avoid. So tagging that consistently is a good idea.

(Of course, this conversation is mostly reminding me that I should take my gigantic soup of tags, and boil it down to the few that are genuinely useful...)

[jducoeur]

As for waste of time: remember, tagging isn't for you, it's doing a favor for your readers. Less of a concern for smaller, more purely social journals, but for people who are more content-focused -- more like a classic "blog" -- it can be really helpful to one's readers, as a way of distinguishing "these are the entries that you're likely to be interested in".

(Frankly, if this had existed ten years ago, I wouldn't have bothered setting up the bouncing account -- I would instead have simply created a "dream diary" tag that people could follow or ignore as they saw fit.)

[unicornpearlz.livejournal.com]

On my academic blog I understand. On my friendship blog I disagree strenuously. If you're interested, read it or call me or text me. These are friends, not strangers. I feel rather uncomfortable at the prospect of ppl knowing only parts of my life that I put out there. In essence its someone saying that they don't want to get to know who I am, even if its only judging by the seldom parts I out out there. What little I do anymore.

Read or don't read. It really makes little difference to me. I use tags to catalogue my life, when I remember to, about things I know from past experience I will want to look up again.

If, for example, someone just wanted to read on the things I out under love, job, research, or academia - they would get such a slim view of my world, I don't know why they'd take an interest at all. They have no clue about me at that point. And really, if that's all you're untested in text me or ping me on im, and ask specific questions. Ill answer. But to actively follow just one part of my life (or for me to do it to anyone else) seems like its cheapening the friendship to me

[jducoeur]

That's fair, but keep in mind that (on LJ *far* more than any other social network), the lines between "social", "professional" and "academic" get very blurry. Mine, for instance, has a lot of each, and that's not unusual.

As for why they might have an interest: you have interesting things to say. And it's very common on LJ to wind up with a lot of people reading who aren't close personally, but who are interested in what you're saying. (Again, less of a concern for you because you *have* a separate academic blog. But most people don't -- they just put all of it on LJ...)

[cellio]

Actually, while I agree that tags are for other people (content labeling), I use my own tags a fair bit as an index. "I know I posted something about that a while back... ah, there it is!" So my tags are for me too.

[jducoeur]

It's true, I do that sometimes. But odds are that I wouldn't miss it *too* much if that wasn't there, at least most of the time, since I usually find old entries through text search (on DW) instead. Tagging is only really important to me for organized series of articles...