James, I agree with you that tags in their current state don't provide a ton of value from my experience. I'm not sure if someone else disagrees with that though. Where tags could be beneficial is if they could be scoped to a group for example. That way a group admin could tag certain widgets and if you are part of that group you could share the tags. Granted, Rave is a long way from supporting that.
Chris On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 5:46 AM, Jmeas Apache <[email protected]> wrote: > *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 >
