Improving and expanding hashtags usability.
Shmerl
Public
Seen by 161
Current functionality of hashtags in Diaspora has several limitations. I'll list them first (if you can come up with more - feel free to comment):
User can only follow a straight list of tags (i.e. following is defined with logical OR).
User can't filter tags for not following (i.e. not to see some content which has them).
Viewing options of followed tags in the UI are limited to either viewing all followed tags, or only one.
Search is limited to one tag.
Hashtags themselves don't allow whitespace in them which is caused by the syntax restrictions and results in awkward unreadable notations like "#areallylonghashtagyoucanbreakyoureyeson", or people trying to come up with workarounds (like using underscore or camel notation, which proliferates incompatible tags and defeats the purpose of searching by them).
To address these issues, several improvements can be made (these proposals match the problems described above).
1-2. Following by default can still be defined as a simple list (which is equal to tag1 OR tag2 OR tag3 OR ... OR tagN). Interested user can be given an advanced option to define a more complex boolean expression for following hashtags. I.e. allow using AND, OR, NOT and parentheses. This will cover both 1 and 2, allowing way more flexible method of following and filtering data.
When using the UI for viewing, one should be given a way to view one, several or all (multiple select) of those hashtags. This is sufficient for the UI case. More complex view will be covered with search (4).
Search should allow boolean expressions, the same way the following in the proposal (1-2).
Syntax of hashtags can be expanded. For example it can allow such form in addition to simple not whitespaced tags:
#(some phrase with spaces)
In the final text it can look like a hyperlink without parentheses:
#some phrase with spaces
Parentheses are used just for definition, to delimit the beginning and the end of the tag. This will give a clean way to avoid multiple incompatible notations for complex multiword hashtags.
Poll Created Thu 30 Oct 2014 3:18AM
multi-word hashtags should be enabled by requiring two hashes Closed Sun 2 Nov 2014 2:08AM
Not passed. Bad/confusing syntax.
Multi-word hashtags should be enabled by requiring one hash (#) preceding a non-[space] charater and another hash following a non-[space] character.
If there is no hash symbol in the text which follows a non-space character, it should be assumed that the last character in the tag is before the nearest [space]
For example, #this is a multiple word tag#.
And #this sentence only contains one tag.
This would allow people to use single- and multiple-word tags in-line with the text of their post. multi-word hashtags are not created accidentally, no new fields have to be created specifically for hashtags.
Results
| Results | Option | % of points | Voters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Agree | 10.0% | 2 |
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| Abstain | 10.0% | 2 |
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| Disagree | 80.0% | 16 |
|
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| Block | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Undecided | 0% | 132 |
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20 of 152 people have participated (13%)
Chris
Thu 30 Oct 2014 3:28AM
It seems to me like this option would be the most natural for the user.
Shmerl
Thu 30 Oct 2014 3:34AM
It makes parsing more complex. See more details in the main comments.
Rasmus Fuhse
Thu 30 Oct 2014 8:26AM
Don't like the syntax. See comment
Jonne Haß
Thu 30 Oct 2014 10:04AM
What has been said. Also you just need to accidentally swap space and # when defining multiple tags on the same line to make an accidental one. Besides I don't actually see any need to change syntax for mult-word tags.
Florian Staudacher
Thu 30 Oct 2014 11:11AM
I don't think mulit-word hashtags are the solution. It just makes stuff more complicated all around.
goob
Thu 30 Oct 2014 5:46PM
I think this would cause problems as suggested above.
Deleted account
Thu 30 Oct 2014 8:48PM
Useless. Just the result of a misunderstanding how tags work.
Perig Gouanvic
Thu 30 Oct 2014 10:30PM
#"multi-word hashtags" can automatically generate the other variants that proliferate (because natural syntax was not implemented for tags in the first place!). No other variant can generate the term #"multi-word hashtags".
Juan Santiago · Wed 29 Oct 2014 8:17PM
@chris26 @riveravaldez @kazhnuz @shmerl
I think I have distracted the subject of this thread.
Is it appropriate to create a new thread to discuss about combined search?
or someone who draws better than me in English, created here vote for that?