Themes should be voluntary
The only thing that puts me off about themes, as other users have mentioned here, is the hashtag symbol. The hashtags have a really trivial feel to them, no matter what goes behind them. But regardless I do think we should give this change an honest chance. Imagine a year from now being able to search with almost any keywords and find relevant poems! sounds pretty dope to me.
I've been working hard on this the last couple of days and have now launched a Theme Explorer to help you find themes. This can be accessed by clicking the Help Me Find Themes button on the Submit Poem page. You can also still add tags the old way, by typing and choosing from the options presented in the list.
What you describe sound's so much easier. Next submission will hopefully be much smoother, thanx. I know this isn't the place however i got a question, where do i introduce myself on the welcome thread, I posted but where it went I don't know. Thanx,
Shadow
Shadow
Shadow_Dancer said:What you describe sound's so much easier. Next submission will hopefully be much smoother, thanx. I know this isn't the place however i got a question, where do i introduce myself on the welcome thread, I posted but where it went I don't know. Thanx,
Shadow
We have a special group for new members, so you can introduce yourself there:
https://deepundergroundpoetry.com/groups/welcome-party/discussion/
Shadow
We have a special group for new members, so you can introduce yourself there:
https://deepundergroundpoetry.com/groups/welcome-party/discussion/
i think the real value you could reap from this would come by actually completly opening up of the categories like other social media. let people tag whatever they wish...while it will bring chaos to the amount of tags...it is in that freedom; that granularity, that should breed interesting tags that rise to prominence. Being able to tag an erotic poem as #erotic is not that helpful...id much rather see what the author or reader opts to tag; the creative minds of all of these poets will surely come up with interesting ideas!
poetrician said:i think the real value you could reap from this would come by actually completly opening up of the categories like other social media. let people tag whatever they wish...while it will bring chaos to the amount of tags...it is in that freedom; that granularity, that should breed interesting tags that rise to prominence. Being able to tag an erotic poem as #erotic is not that helpful...id much rather see what the author or reader opts to tag; the creative minds of all of these poets will surely come up with interesting ideas!
The problem is that this site is very different from the likes of Twitter, especially on scale. Twitter has around 500 million tweets per day, whereas we have around 80 poems published per day.
Letting people tag randomly will mean people who know how to "tag well" with get much better exposure for their poems. I don't want it to become a situation where people have to learn/master/manipulate social media marketing techniques in order to get their poems read. Obscure tags on a site of this scale would never become widely used enough to have pages generated, as there's little point showing pages containing lots of submissions by just one author.
Further to this, the English language has many different words for the same thing, so the difference between your poem showing up could be down to which word you choose. I don't believe that situation would help readers find what they're looking for, nor writers find an audience for their submissions.
Ultimately there's no point have 1000s of tags, each with only one of two related poems.
I understand the benefit of discovering new themes that people want to use, but unfortunately I don't think this would be a viable way to do that.
Within the next few days I'll be updating the "poems" page to allow people to browse by theme. The most widely used themes will be the most visible and easy to access. So in that sense at least, members will be dictating which themes are the most important.
The problem is that this site is very different from the likes of Twitter, especially on scale. Twitter has around 500 million tweets per day, whereas we have around 80 poems published per day.
Letting people tag randomly will mean people who know how to "tag well" with get much better exposure for their poems. I don't want it to become a situation where people have to learn/master/manipulate social media marketing techniques in order to get their poems read. Obscure tags on a site of this scale would never become widely used enough to have pages generated, as there's little point showing pages containing lots of submissions by just one author.
Further to this, the English language has many different words for the same thing, so the difference between your poem showing up could be down to which word you choose. I don't believe that situation would help readers find what they're looking for, nor writers find an audience for their submissions.
Ultimately there's no point have 1000s of tags, each with only one of two related poems.
I understand the benefit of discovering new themes that people want to use, but unfortunately I don't think this would be a viable way to do that.
Within the next few days I'll be updating the "poems" page to allow people to browse by theme. The most widely used themes will be the most visible and easy to access. So in that sense at least, members will be dictating which themes are the most important.
i get it...not enough critical mass to have the tags self organize.
i think you are doing the right thing, experimenting to find the right formula of openness, granularity and function.
i look forward to seeing what you come up with.
and kudos to you and thank you for creating such a great vehicle and community.
i think you are doing the right thing, experimenting to find the right formula of openness, granularity and function.
i look forward to seeing what you come up with.
and kudos to you and thank you for creating such a great vehicle and community.
poetrician said:i get it...not enough critical mass to have the tags self organize.
i think you are doing the right thing, experimenting to find the right formula of openness, granularity and function.
i look forward to seeing what you come up with.
and kudos to you and thank you for creating such a great vehicle and community.
There's definitely an element of trial and error
I'm sure some interesting new theme tags will emerge along the way.
Thanks for your support.
i think you are doing the right thing, experimenting to find the right formula of openness, granularity and function.
i look forward to seeing what you come up with.
and kudos to you and thank you for creating such a great vehicle and community.
There's definitely an element of trial and error
I'm sure some interesting new theme tags will emerge along the way.
Thanks for your support.
