Item3867: TagMePlugin: allow direct adding of tags without selection

Priority:	CurrentState:	AppliesTo:	Component:	WaitingFor:
Enhancement	Closed	Extension	TagMePlugin

The user interface may be fancied with autocomplete or clickable suggestions. But first the possibility must be coded to add a tag to a topic by passing the name without having to choose from a selection list:

• If the tag does not exist, add it
• Then add the tag to the topic

To support other interfaces it would mean that %TAGME{ tpaction="show" }% needs to be decoupled from the select box.

-- TWiki:Main/ArthurClemens - 09 Apr 2007

The way the user interface is designed is to make it very easy to add tag votes and add tags from the existing ones, and to make it a bit harder to create a new tag. This is done by design to reduce the chance of adding duplicate/similar tags.

The "if the tag does not exist, add it" looks useful, but will result in many tags, also duplicate/similar ones (such as chart, charts, graph, diagram, diagrams.) If done it might be better to have a confirmation screen ("do you want to add tag foo? Please check first if an existing tag fits your needs: ....")

-- TWiki:Main.PeterThoeny - 10 Apr 2007

Delicious is a good example. That interface gives suggestions what already is there (and less applicable to here: what tags other users have used).

With a large list of tags the select box is not that efficient. My proposal is first to create the backend to make a different interface possible.

-- ArthurClemens - 10 Apr 2007

The current tagging interface is a very bad one. I'd suggest to display all tags in a tag cloud and highlight the ones that apply to the current topic. Adding a tag is then only a matter of selecting it from the tag cloud. If it was already highlighted, a click removes that tag for the topic. Below the tag cloud there's an input field to add new tags. It would be nice to have ajax in the background but that's no necessity. The advantages are (1) better overview on which tags are already in use and (2) one-click tagging/untagging and (3) no extra page needed to add a new tag.

-- MichaelDaum - 25 May 2007

Showing a tag cloud on every page is not good usability style. Just imaging all the tags of twiki.org being showed on eversy page.

"to make it a bit harder to create a new tag." In my opinion either you make it impossible to create new tags for everyone or you make it as easy as possible. Free tagging is voluntary work and should be easy. There are already loads of tags on twiki.org, so I don't think that the approach of "making it a little bit harder" does not work.

the delicious style should be applied here, too, as users are already expecting it and will only be confused by many different style of tagging.

-- MarijanaPrusina? - 30 Jul 2007

TagMePlugin has aged badly and the code is far from pretty. Having said that, the alternative - TagsPlugin - isn't quite ready for production.

So in the meantime, I've added a simple jquery ui to hold us over until the new tagging engine is finished.

-- PaulHarvey - 28 Feb 2010