Blog: Tagging and grouping
A few weeks ago we asked for your help as Pool entered a new phase of community moderation. The good news is that so far we’ve had no issues. So thanks for keeping an eye on things for us!
The success of community moderation has led us to think about other things we might be able to easily improve.
There’s been a bit of confusion recently around tagging and grouping things on Pool. We thought we’d attempt to clear the air with a few quick points. Of course, this is a collaborative website, so feel free to comment on issues we might have missed.
What’s a tag?
Tags or keywords are a good way of identifying your work to help other people find them. If you're unsure about what to tag, a good starting point is always your main subject area. Then you can always add on other subjects. So if you are contributing to ‘Live Local’ start by using that tag and then add the others afterwards. It's always best you use a few tags as that helps others to more easily find your work! But try not to use too many - it can get a little confusing.
You can find more info about using Tags on Pool here.
GB also let us know recently about a few issues where people had been contributing to the ‘Sea Things’ group but not ticking the group box. If you’re contributing to callouts that are group based, like Sea Things or The Dead Walk, it’s important that you also select the target group when you’re uploading your work.
There is a screen shot and some more explanation here.
We know that these are minor issues and won’t solve the frustration we all have working with our existing beta site. But hopefully they’ll make a small difference.
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Photo: Sarah Parrot under this Creative Commons license.
Tags
Comments
2 comments
11.12.09 — Andrew Davies
Hi Rossco,
Thanks very much for this. Some great advice - particularly in relation to tags and search engines.
Andrew, Pool Team
11.12.09 — Rossco
Interesting subject as the importance of "Meta Data" is such an integral part of your image,audio or text when uploading it into websites / databases. The "Tags" make searching for images,audio or text so much easier if you place a full description of your subject eg: An image of a farm should have the tags : farm, farmhouse, homestead, fence, cows, sheep , grass, farming etc etc.
Basically anything that is visible in your image should be placed in the tag line and not forgetting various words that change in different countries such as Farmhouse / Homestead / Ranch.
The benefits of good "Tags" means others finding your work through search engines such as Google so much more easier , and with multiple tags your image has the advantage of being higher up within the search engine results.
Cheers
Rossco