*Originally composed last night at midnight or so, but it was rejected from the Apache server for some reason.*
Hey Rave community! I'd like to get your thoughts on tags and categories in Rave. We've got both right now, and they share many similarities. Lately I've been wondering if the one difference between them (that I know of) should be cause for worry. Let's look at the similarities and differences: Similarities: – They both perform the same function: arbitrary text data associated with a widget – Both are viewable by all users of Rave. For instance, if UserA creates either a tag or a category, then UserB will be able to see that tag or category. – You can sort by both in the Widget Store Differences – Tags can be created by users and admin, whereas Categories are admin-only That difference is what I've been thinking about. What strikes me as odd about Tags is that they allow regular, un-privileged users to affect everyone else's experience. This seems to go against a basic tenet of authorization I've come to hold: no regular user should be able to change the experience of another regular user. Currently, it's possible for some rogue user to go in and make a million tags that would be visible by every other user. To make things worse, there's no easy way for an Admin to clean that up. I've thought up two alternatives that resolve this potential problem. In the first alternative, Tags are removed entirely so that there are just Categories. They stay exactly the same, so that only Admins can modify them. Whenever a new widget is added, it'd be the Admin's job to figure out the category for it. In this way, regular users are unable to affect another user's Rave experience without admin assistance. A second possibility would be *per-user* tags in addition to Categories. These tags would be like personal notes: nobody else could see your tags. Accordingly, if you make a million of them it's only your account that experiences the deluge of tags. But it's entirely possible that I'm just missing out on a really obvious use-case for these two things, or maybe even that there's no problem here at all. It *is *past midnight. Well, either way, I'd like to hear your thoughts. Thanks for reading! James
