Allow users to tag their own sentences without special permissions

[UM4NO]

Currently, the tagging feature of sentences is limited to administrators or users with special permissions. This makes the process of tagging a slow bureaucratic process—no offense.

As a native Spanish speaker contributing sentences to Tatoeba, I want to be able to tag my own sentences, so that I can provide more useful information about them, such as IETF Language Tag or region where it is used, whether the sentence is slang, uses special jargon, is formal or informal, a proverb, a dialog, etc.

I'd like to use tags as I use them in a blogging system: without asking for permission, and in the language of the sentence.

[dispyfree]

What is the advantage of using the language of the sentence to tag something?

On the other hand, I can think of some downsides. For people not very familiar with a language, it will be harder to use those tags (as opposed to, let's say, English tags). Furthermore, you will want to link up tags of different languages who have the same meaning. This will increase complexity dramatically.
Additionally, if it is possible to tag a sentence with tags in the language of the sentence, you might have tags for one sentence with different languages. This will be quite messy.
But you wouldn't want to prescribe someone to use the language of the sentence if he would like to use English.

For the reasons above, I suggest adding the tag feature for English as a common ground only.
If you were to implement it for several languages, I suggest that English is used as a common ground and other languages can only have tags which originate in English. That means:
English tag: proverb
Once that English tag exists in the database (i.e. you add it), you can use a custom tag
Chinese tag: 成語 (chéngyǔ)
which must then be linked up with the English tag. But without an original English tag, no Chinese tag can be added. Those tags can then be treated synonymously, which avoids the shortcomings mentioned above (apart from being slightly more complex).

[RyckRichards]

That's.much better than only allowing users to use tags that already exists

[trang]

Let me bring some clarification about tags in Tatoeba.

When tags were initially implemented, they were aimed to provide "objective" information about a sentence (cf. http://blog.tatoeba.org/2010/11/tags-guidelines.html).
In practice, we were never able to achieve this goal because Tatoeba doesn't have an authority (a person, or a group of people) who is working on defining standard tags. There has been attempts, but we still lack some infrastructure.

If we allow users to tag their own sentences, we would move away from the initial concept of tags.

It should however be possible to have both worlds, by creating a separate category for "standard tags", which would be tags that are added by people who are aware of the definition of the standard tags, and are trusted for knowing when to apply a certain tag. Then we could let any user tag sentences (maybe not just their own, but other people's sentences as well), as non-standard tags.

In order to know how we should proceed with this issue, I have a question.

@UM4NO, you said you would like to provide more useful information about your sentences, and you would like this information to be in the language of the sentence. Could you explain why simply posting a comment on the sentence is not enough? What do tags accomplish that comments cannot?

[UM4NO]

@trang, I want to use tags as a means of categorization, so that I can later click on a tag or search for sentences with one or more tags and Tatoeba will display the appropriate sentences. With comments I cannot do that.

For example, a friend of mine who writes scripts for TV shows in the US asked me about example dialogues using "parlache", a jargon used in Medellín, Colombia. At that time I could have added some examples to Tatoeba and sent my friend a link to sentences filtered by "Parlache".

Also, I'd like tags to be in the language of the sentence because I think a person learning Spanish, and looking for Spanish sentences would find it easier to read tags in Spanish, not English (that person may not even care about English).

[trang]

@UM4NO, what about using lists for categorization? With lists you are completely free to use any name you want, and any language you want. Is there something that tags accomplish that lists cannot?

Regarding the language of the tags, we have to keep in mind that a beginner may have difficulties if tags were in Spanish. For beginners, it would be more helpful if the tags were in the language of the learner (which may not be English). Which is why we have an issue about making tags translatable: #54.

[UM4NO]

@trang. lists would have to work a bit like blog tags to tickle my fancy. For example:

• As a user, in the sentence creation view, I want to be able to associate the sentence I'm creating to one or more of my lists (this is not essential, though).
• As a user I want all users to be able to see the lists a sentence belongs to in the sentence detail view, so that you can click on any list to find similar sentences.
• As a user I want to be able to search sentences filtering by list(s).

If you think these changes are possible and not out of the scope of lists, then I could report the user stories above, and this issue could be closed.

[trang]

As a user, in the sentence creation view, I want to be able to associate the sentence I'm creating to one or more of my lists (this is not essential, though).

This is already possible. You have an icon to add the sentence to a list, and you can add it to as many lists as you wish.

Also, I am not sure if you've ever seen how tags are used, but a user actually cannot tag a sentence on the sentence creation view. They currently have to do it on the sentence details page.

As a user I want all users to be able to see the lists of lists a sentence belongs to in the sentence detail view, so that you can click on any list to find similar sentences.

It's possible, but along with this, we will have to give an option for users to hide this information if they don't want to see it. For some users, it actually "pollutes" the interface to see the lists in which a sentence is added.

On a side note, implementing this would be virtually the same as implementing non-standard tags.

As a user I want to be able to search sentences filtering by list(s).

This is not yet possible, but there is an issue for it: #767

If you think these changes are possible and not out of the scope of lists, then I could report the user stories above, and this issue could be closed.

You can leave this issue open. Although these changes are not out of the scope of lists, it could make just as much sense to change the tags feature. I'll need a bit more time to think about the implications of implementing your feature request in the lists vs. in the tags.

[UM4NO]

@trang, sure, take all the time you need, and thanks for your time.