Fun with Tags

In case you haven't noticed, we just launched two new pages:

A tag cloud for Weblists

and

A tag cloud for people

Clicking on a keyword will display all the Weblists (or people) who have been tagged with that keyword.

I think this is a pretty neat way to find stuff, whether it be Weblists about things that you are interested in, or people who share interests with you.

The bigger the tag in the cloud, the more things that have been tagged with that word.

We'll be making some tweaks to the formatting over the next few weeks, but I think this is a great start.

Vacation

I've been on vacation for the past week with very limited Internet access. Inevitably, a few things broke just when I dropped out of contact - Profile Pages and Helpful Buttons.

I think we have both of these things worked out now.

Sorry for the hassle.

Da Vinci Code

If you've read the newspapers or turned on the news during the last couple of weeks, you would have noticed a tremendous amount of hype about the movie The Da Vinci Code.

Well there are three outstanding, even handed Da Vinci Code reviews by Stark, GTH, and MA on RateItAll. Personally, I tend to trust these three more than I do the pro critics.

Couple Updates

OK, we finally got that image display bug worked out on the "Reviewers Most Interested In" section. It's finally showing the correct images, not old images from our test server.

Also, now, if you click on a People Tag, below the photos of all the other people tagged with that keyword, it will show you all the Weblists tagged with that word.

For example, clicking on the Travel tag off of Abichara's profile displays not only other people tagged with travel, but also the Weblists that have been tagged with that word. It also shows related tags.

I think this could be a neat way to match folks with things that they might like to rate.

Some General Weblist Tagging Principles

The thing about Weblist tags, is that they only work of people choose the same word to capture the same concepts.

For example, if Genghis tags all of his movie lists with the word "films," and Ridge tags all of his with the word "movies," they're not going to correlate. Clicking on the tag "films" is not going to display Weblists with the tag "movies."

So here are some general principles to help people get on the same page:

- Use plurals, not singulars
- Don't be afraid to use multiple words to describe the same thing (e.g. use "films" AND "movies")
- There are no "wrong" tags - tagging is a personal exercise. You should tag your Weblists with what they mean to you. Don't be afraid to have a lot of tags.
- Don't use "-" or any other symbols. Multi word tags should be written like this: "civilwar" not "civil-war"
- One tag per line

Sorting Weblists

Did you know that when you are "viewing all" with a reviewer's Weblists, that there's a sort feature?

You can sort alphabetically, by number of items, or by date. It's at the bottom right, as shown below:

Weblist Tagging is Live!

And it's nice.

Check out the list of tags being displayed on most of the newer Weblists. Click on a tag and it shows you other Weblists tagged with the same word.

Also, it shows you people who are tagged with the same word.

Here's an example:

Artists: Impressionism

Click on the tag Art, and see what you find.

To ensure that your Weblists get maximum exposure, it's probably a good idea to go back and tag your older ones so they start showing up on these tag pages.

RateItAll Widget Monkeys

Here's another nice use of a RateItAll Widget - this time monkey style. (you have to scroll down a little bit)

Recent Comments Bug Now Fixed

We fixed that recent comments bug where some reviews were not showing on the recent comments page.

What was happening was that a Weblist privacy feature that we're working on (for folks who don't want their Weblist visible to the masses) was kicking in unexpectedly.

All of the Weblists that were accidentally assigned "semi-private" status have been moved back to public.

New Feature-cito

Here's a very small, new feature that you may or may not have noticed.

When you go to edit an existing review, you'll now see a "delete" button in the pop-up window. This does exactly what it sounds like - it removes the rating and review from the database.

Before, you could clear a review, but there was no way to permanently remove a rating. Now there is.

This probably isn't that big of a deal, but it's nice to have.

Bush and Bin Laden

Should President Bush be held accountable for Osama Bin Laden still being at large? It's a tough question.

Click HERE to see smart, well-written, arguments and both sides. I specifically would like to point to EDT4's and EO's posts. Both forceful. Both passionate. But both civil in their tone.

This is what I like about RIA. We're not an echo chamber for any one particular ideology or viewpoint. You will find people whose opinions you diametrically oppose. But somehow we keep it together, and (usually) remain civil.

Recent Comments Bug

There's a confirmed bug on the Recents Comments page. Some recent comments are not showing up on the Recent Comments page, but are showing up properly on the home page.

We are working on it.

Need Some Help

Several people have reported a problem with duplicate listings showing up in their Weblists. In other words, when they add a new item to their Weblist, it's showing up sometimes as many as four to eight times.

I am unable to recreate this bug - if anyone else has experienced this, please pass on the details (what browser you're using, what weblist it happened on, and any other info that might help us isolate the issue.)

New Things to Rate

There was a bug on the New Things to Rate page that prevented us from displaying the newest Weblists. I think we have this fixed now.

We have put in one hour caching on this page for performance reasons - what this means is that it may take up to an hour for a new Weblist to show up. But it will show up.

UndiesDrawer.com

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

RIA Widget in Action

Here's a nice example of the RIA Widget feature.

If anyone else finds / has other examples, let me know and I'll promote them :)

Tag Those Weblists!

We're getting closer to launching the tagging output functionality for Weblists. Here's how it's going to work:

Every Weblist is going to display their keyword tags prominently right below the Weblist title. Clicking on a keyword tag will display all the other Weblists that have been tagged with that keyword.

For example, the "Biggest Jerks in Sports" weblist has a tag of "villains" - clicking on the word "villains" will show all the other lists that have been tagged with that some word, across all categories.

It's basically going to work exactly the same way as the People Tags, and I think it's going to be a great way to find clusters of Weblists that you are interested in, and to gain more visibility for your own Weblists.

In the meantime, RateItAll's crack team of taggers (uhhh... me) is going through and helping out with the tagging process to try and provide some consistency in word choice.

Stay tuned.

This is neat...

Three members from an obscure 1960's band called The Sound Sandwich reunite on one of garagerokker's Weblists.

New Feature - a RateItAll Widget

OK, you can now put a snapshot of any RateItAll ratings list on your personal Web site or page. This format works with MySpace, Friendster, etc.

To do so, scroll down to the bottom of any ratings list page on RateItAll, and click on the section that says "Put this List on your Web site." Just copy and paste that code into your site's template and it's done.

It's pretty easy... if you get stuck, feel free to send me a message.

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MySpace

Any RIA'ers on MySpace? If so, please add me as a friend. I feel unpopular.

http://www.myspace.com/rateitall