Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC GLEP 1005: Package Tags

[Alan McKinnon]

On 24/03/2014 02:43, Tom Wijsman wrote:
> On Sun, 23 Mar 2014 23:47:22 +0200
> Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> wrote:
>
>> Tags work best when they describe narrow, clearly defined attributes,
>> and the thing they are applied to can have one, two or more of these
>> attributes or sometimes even none. Music and movie genres are an
>> excellent example - there are only so many of them and for the most
>> part one can tell whether a tag really is a genre or not.
>
> There are more ways to search for a music or a movie than a genre:

Genre was just one example of tag usage for illustration. Doesn't mean
there aren't other equally good or valid examples.

>
> What mood is it in? What are key elements of its plot or lyrics?
> Where does it take place? For which audience is it meant? Which praises
> has it received? What kind of style is it made in? What is it based on?
> What is the attitude of it? What looks or effects does it have? Is it
> appropriate for children? Does it contain explicit things?
>
> Let's do this for movies. I'm looking for a ...
>
> ... serial killer (key element) that is scary (mood)?
>     Carrie, Halloween, Saw, Scream, ...
>
> ... musical (genre) that makes one feel good (mood)?
>     Aaja Nachle, Frozen, Grease, The Sound of Music, ...
>
> ... good versus evil (plot) based on comics (based on)?
>     Batman, Sin City, Superman, The Avengers, ...
>
> ... goofy (attitude) hero (key element) where nothing goes right (plot)?
>     Due Date, Faulty Towers, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Mr Bean, ...
>
> These are results from an actual movie recommendation site; similarly,
> the same exists for music too, where you can for example look for a
> female american singer-songwriter singing catchy contemporary country.
>
> Getting back to Gentoo; when I would look for some package, I want it to
> be a lightweight, do audio recordings, organize these audio recordings
> and do effects on these audio recordings. So, I'll be looking for tags
> like "lightweight, audio-recording, file-organization, sound-effects";
> if that's to broad, I can take two of them and test some of that.
>
> Thinking about the different types of things to search for; I'm
> thinking about ...
>
> ... what the characteristics of the software are
>     (light/heavy, new/old, extensible/modular/nonstandard, ...),
>
> ... what the software can do (record audio, organize files, ...),
>
> ... what category (browser, development, DAW software, utility, ...),
>
> ... what kind of interface the software has to me (CLI, GUI, ...),
>
> ... what interconnectivity the software has (internet, bluetooth, ...),
>
> ... and so on ...
>
> We could make a list of types (some already mentioned above) and a list
> of possible tags for that type to shape the tag system somewhat.

Have you considered just how much heavy lifting that is? Who is going to
compile the list of tags? Who is going to approve/disapprove tagable
attributes and the tags themselves? How will you resolve disagreements
people have?

What about the case of a package maintainer that simply can't be
bothered doing tags at all?

I'm not against tagging per se, they can be useful. But they do have to
be strictly controlled otherwise things get out of hand very quickly.
Every case I've seen of software that uses a freeform tagging mechanism
fails almost instantly as it becomes very inconsistent. I have one of
these apps in a corporate setting right now, have you any idea how many
ways people can come up with to tag the concept of "cloud"? I have tags
in there where someone translated the word "cloud" to a different
language! It sounded like a good idea at the time to them....

All in all, tagging is a huge amount of work and the odds of failure are
high. People need to be aware of this reality.

Wyatt Epp's post at 03:25 expresses very nicely in a more formal
language what I'm saying.


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@×××××.com