•Re: Re: •PLEASE STOP VANITY TAGGING

[merlyn]

They help avoid title collisions

This is precisely the meme I'm trying to kill.

When vanity tags were invented, the Monestary was missing a way to uniquely identify a node, and to help sort out the author in the results of a search. And the consensus that I recall at the time was "OK, until these problems are fixed, vanity tags are OK."

Both of these problems have now been fixed. We have [id://nnnn], or in brief, [nnnn] to handle the title collisions. And the search results now show authorship.

And thus now, it's time to end the vanity tags. Let's stop it. Please.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

[ichimunki]

• is about right. The ampersand followed by some text then a semi-colon is valid Perl. It is also a valid HTML entity in some cases. So which will it be? Without forcing users to input special code tags in titles, there is no mechanical way to differentiate. This same problem does not afflict parentheses. So for this reason the change seems appropriate if it will alleviate concerns over mis-entered angle-brackets and such. Personally I'd prefer to turn on HTML encoding in posts and force users to use special markup for all HTML tags. That way I don't have to use code tags or HTML entities to type in a snippet.

FWIW, until now I'd never realized you even had a problem with this so-called "vanity tagging", nor was I consciously aware that we could now stop tagging our replies. I always thought those bullets were intended to be a cutesy/clever version of "vanity tags", not a protest against them. I mean, if I really wanted to be vain, I suppose I would have a sig with a link to my website on every post. I mean, how necessary is that? My login name already appears next to my post and I have a home node from which to do my advertising. No?

[shotgunefx]

id://nnn doesn't help with looking through a page of search results. Yes the author is there but I find RE (tilly): (tye)Re: Closures and scope gives me more info than Re:Re: Closures and scope

Maybe I missed it but I don't see anyone else complaining. If so many are offended, then the gods should put it in a deciding poll and be done with it. Or not, they are gods after all. It's there world, we just live in it. :)

-Lee

"To be civilized is to deny one's nature."

[ariels]

"Maybe I missed it but I don't see anyone else complaining..."

Well, I didn't want to speak up (I thought merlyn was precisely expressing why vanity tags are just that), but evidently I should.

I don't particularly care to know, 17 writeups deep from here, that a writeup is a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply of mine (℘) to a reply to a reply of merlyn's (•).

I do care to know if the subject of discussion has changed. So if I see "Re: X", I should be able to know it's a reply to something called "X", and that the topic hasn't changed. I want the subject to change (say to "PLEASE STOP VANITY TAGGING") if the topic has changed.

Anything that detracts from my ability to skim 200+ new nodes and tell at a glance if I should read any new topic, I dislike. I really enjoy being able to do $x cmp "Re: $subject"; I don't want to replace this string (which my primitive internal Boyer-Moore engine can easily process) with a regexp match, study or not.

WHile I'm complaining (see?), I should say I also dislike "Re^17: Re: RE:^3.141: PLEASE STOP VANITY TAGGING". It similarly lowers my scanning rate.

IF the Gods decide it is a good idea to collapse "Re:"s, then I'd expect it to happen automatically when I hit "[reply]". I even promise to adjust to the new default form, because it is the default. As long as they do not, collapsing by hand inevitably leads to inconsistency. And inconsistency increases the complexity of my regexps.

The same for vanity tags. IF everyone gets a vanity tag, let's each reserve a Unicode char (bags I `℘'!) and use that. I can adjust to consistent changes.

But please, let's not each invent our own private form of consistency!

[shotgunefx]

Well that makes two. I don't think there is anything wrong with editing your titles, their your titles. The complaints have been about the entities in the titles. This site is made from users contributions so I don't think we should be that anal about how a poster wants to present his contribution. If I'm helping someone I think I should have a little control over my contribution.

As far as consistency, I don't read this site with a regex and I suspect most don't. For a human RE:(5) is much more readable than RE: RE: RE: RE: RE:.

-Lee

"To be civilized is to deny one's nature."

[FoxtrotUniform]

And thus now, it's time to end the vanity tags. Let's stop it. Please.

I've looked through the nodes you list on your homenode, and searched the site for likely phrases, but I haven't yet found the reason behind your disgust with VANITY TAGGING. Why don't you like, or even tolerate, vanity tags? Superfluous cruft? Offensive narcissism?

--
The hell with paco, vote for Erudil!
:wq