The Everlasting Picture Categorizing Project

[zourtney]

Most likely: no. No one would spend the time to tag their images like that. I just want to make sure that the system doesn't get too inflexible. I think the first implementation of our project should hide this idea entirely.

[Brad]

Sounds fine to me.

[Nick]

I don't think people are going to tag many pictures individually, but groups of pictures probably. I like the idea of weights, but they are so arbitrary and difficult to determine for an image. Like a forest picture  What weight should tree be? Road? Gravel? Stream? Green? I guess its up to the judgment of the user. Also, how wil the weights effect other aspects of the program? Will images be sorted based on the tag weights?

[Brad]

For a good idea of how people actually tag images check out Flickr. Just visit any random persons photostream.

Tag weight is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how practical it is.

[zourtney]

Yeah, I know. It's one of those things that would make searching awesome but make the UI tedious. I can't think of a quick and simple UI for applying tag weights, can you? Anything I can think of starts to get pretty clumsy after about 4 simultaneous tags.

If I am the only one who sees benefit in this, it can go on the back burner also. We all know that good things take longer to cook up (chili, soup, spaghetti sauce, etc). Tag weight and relations would make a mighty fine stew if let simmer for long enough. I'm willing to throw those into the "improvement" pot.

[Nick]

One way to do tag weight is to have them be dragable in a pane. Tags at the same horizontal/verticle level would be the same, other lower/right (as is direction) would be heavier and sink lower.

| Dinosaurs, Rock, Cheetarah  |
| cats                                 |
| old-time rock-and-roll          |
| grass, trees, volcano           |

So dinosaurs, rock and Cheetarah are all the same weight as they are on top and so on.

[zourtney]

| Dinosaurs, Rock, Cheetarah  |
| cats                                 |
| old-time rock-and-roll          |
| grass, trees, volcano           |

Oh my goodness...what are we tagging?! If we have to tag whatever comes off the top of your head, it'll be totally unmanageable

Anyway, we could do something like that, but it's still a little fugly. Vertically stacked textboxes in which you "free tag" things at different levels could work but that is probably not enough detail -- you can't accurately calculate the weight of each row automatically. In the example above, what weight does each row get set to? It doesn't seem right to assume the next level down is "half as relevant" (or whatever)...so I don't know.

Maybe we should put it off until we have a workable system. But this, along with tag-relations shouldn't be ignored when we think DB design.

[Brad]

As far as DB design goes you basically just need an integer field in the tags table so it's not difficult to put that in. Sub-tags and whatnot would be more complex.

Until somebody comes up with a UI design which wouldn't make tag management unusably complex and irritating I think we out to hold of on actually implementing weighted tags in the program.

[zourtney]

Tag-to-tag db structure wouldn't be that bad...basically just an intermediate table holding two tag ids and a weight and/or relationship type (child-of being the most useful). But queries would be a pain, to say the least. But that should be put off, for a while. And I'm ok with putting off tag-weights for a while...it'll make every query more complex and convoluted. But....(see below)

So then, back to the user's perspective: what tools would you expect to see along the bottom of the app? I'm still stuck on exactly how to display a large number of tags in a small bar (say, under 100px tall, to throw out an arbitrary number). If we had applied weight, I don't think there is harm in dropping less significant tags from a cloud-type control (and maybe more show up as the control sizes up)...But if we assume everything is equally relevant (no tag weight), there is simply to way to do that properly.

[Brad]

There is no way to display all tags in such a small place. Not unless you cap the number of tags an image can have. I've seen Flickr images with 30-40 tags easy. Sometimes 100+.

I don't think we can assume the user is going to bother to add weight values to the tags which stops you from being able to drop less relevant tags.

No, you're going to need some kind of scrolling container or make it show you have to press a button to view all of the tags in a pop-up window (you'd still show however many would fit in the box). Even if you did drop less relevant tags you'd still want a button like this.

If the tag cloud takes up too much space just use a list of tags. Without weighted tags the tag cloud doesn't make any sense for a single image.

[zourtney]

Without weighted tags the tag cloud doesn't make any sense for a single image.

Hmmm...yep. Definitely true. I guess I was trying to make the tag cloud work for single images and groups of images, but not consciously thinking of it in those terms.

But yes, I was definitely thinking there should be a button which allows you too see a full-screen version of the tag cloud (or something similar to let you see all tags)

[Brad]

We definitely need a button to show a tag cloud when a group of images is selected, or to show the tag cloud for every image in the current query.

I think the easiest method for showing tags in the bottom control bar would be to just show all list and if there are too many tags just have a "Show All" button which brings up a pop-up (non-modal?) which shows all the tags for the selected image or group of images. This doesn't have to be in a tag cloud.

In fact I think tag clouds are not the optimal format for adding/removing tags. They make it hard to see what tags have already been added and to find the tag you want to remove. They are good for showing you what tags are used most often in a group though.

[Nick]

Tag clouds are a good example of being cool rather then usable.  I like them, because they often provide me with 20 seconds of entertainment but I have never used one for its intended purpose. That might just be me though. I am all old and moldery and probably too accustomed to just searching for things or using a 'most viewed' just for finding interesting images. That is not to say that we should forgo having a tag cloud, they are kinda cool after all. Just make sure it knows its place as a supplemental search tool.

[Brad]

The only information they give you easily is to visually see how much tags have been used in relevance to each other. You could get this same information from listing all the tags by "Most Used" but the comparison of use wouldn't be as visually obvious.

My thought: We should include it because it's cool, but it shouldn't be the primary method of viewing/adding/deleting tags.

[Nick]

I thought it was more of a search tool when viewing images/groups of images. You see common tags, the bolder and larger text denoting the density of that tags use. I don't think Courtney was trying to suggest its use as a tag management tool beyond a visual reference of what tags are currently in use. I think the tag clouds place would be on the side lines to give someone a way to navigate/discover related material based on the tags. If you (the program user) added add the tags to begin with this might not be as useful. You already know what there you just want to be able to find it when you want it. The tag cloud is more a social feature for looking though other peoples collections. Or so I think.