Suggestion for Improvement: Tag Tags option

[Pedro Ken 3]

I would like to suggest, if already not in developement, the option to tag a tag. 

 

That means being able to associate tags with other tags. 

 

For example, I could associate the tag "Arnold Schwartzneggar" to other tags like "governor", "actor" or "male". So everytime I add "Arnold Schwartzneggar" as a tag, the other tags would "tag along".

 

This way the user would be able to reduce significantly the number of tags needed to add to each note, be able to easily add tags to pre-existing tags, and would REALLY help note organization (maybe even revolutionize it). 

 

Thanks,

Pedro Ken

[jefito 5,589]

I think that that would be somewhat confusing as you describe it (too many uses of the word 'tag'), but various feature requests related to this often pop up, and might accomplish something similar without changing the way that tags work currently (which is pretty simply):

• Configurable auto-tagging rules, e.g. set up triggers like "move a note to notebook A, automatically tag it with "MyTag".
• Search facilities that allow you to exploit the relationships between tags in the hierarchy (I call these "semantic tags). E.g., if tag "B" is a child of tag "A", then a search for tag "B" could also return notes that are tagged with "A"

[Analyst444 182]

_{Pedro, how about constructing a tag like this?      SchwartneggarGovernorActorMale     Use it in Evernote just like you use any other tag.}

 

_{But, be careful, in case your wish is granted! - - - Let me simplify your example to explain what I mean by that. Suppose you use the tagging scheme I suggested above (or any other one) for Governor and Male. That is, anytime you use the tag Governor, the tag Male would also be applied to the Note. With my scheme, the tag would be GovernorMale. The problem comes in to play when you come across a Female Governor. You won't be able to use the tag GovernorMale. You will have to create another tag (or tagging method) that applies the tag Female when you apply the tag Governor. - - - It would work, but it might be cumbersome, causing you to make a huge number of tags.}

 

_{I would think you would find it to be more efficient just to use tags as Evernote designed them to be used. Create a tag named Governor and one named Female. Apply each one as is appropriate.}

 

_{I hope you feel this response is helpful.}

 

 

[gazumped 11,661]

Yeah - associating tags like 'Arnie' and 'Actor' would surely also mean that Brad Pitt couldn't have the tag 'Actor' associated with him (it?)

 

I prefer to use descriptive titles for stuff these days,  and keep tagging to a minimum - so "<name> - actor - male" would be in my heading.

 

Nice idea - maybe it would help if we could copy tagging from one note to another?  Then you could ensure that all the notes for Arnie at least had the same tagging themes.

[Pedro Ken 3]

I'm not sure I passed on through the idea of tagging tags that well. I think I was unfortunate with my wording.  

I actually meant being able to build a hierarchy of tags through a ranking system. 

Let's say for example that I build a hierarchy of tags according to the biological classification (see image below), where at each rank there would be a group of individual tags. 

 

A tag for the Species "(Homo) Sapiens", for example, would be part of the chain of tags listed below. 

 

Domain: Eukaryota

Kingdom: Animilia 
Phylum: Chordata 
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Family: Hominidae
Genus: Homo
Species: Sapiens

In order to make it functional, the user would have to create the hierarchy by classifying and naming each rank and inside each rank, associate a group of individual tags. So when you tag your note, the tag would be associated to other tags and ranks through this system. Individual tags could be part of several hierarchy systems. So if I build a hierarchy system for the media world, for example, typing the tag “Jay-Z” could render me ranks/tags like “singer”, “producer”, “men”, “Beyonce”, etc…

 

Why could this be useful?

First, if I would like to study the “Animalia” Kingdom (from the list above) I would be able to easily find every note associated through hierarchy system. I would not be able to do this today by the search system because not every note will contain the Animalia tag or word. Just like building your own Wikipedia.

Second, it is a very simple way of organizing your notes without changing the basics. It is not much different from saving a file in your computer, where you archive in a system of connected folders. The folder in this sense would be the rank, and the tag the archive. The only difference is that you don't have to find your way through the web of folders
to save your file, you simply tag (save) the note (file) with a pre-existing name in the hierarchy system. You could continue to use tags exactly the same way you do on your notes today.

 

Third, since the number of notes should increase, especially in a corporate environment, a hierarchy system could be a very useful and easy way of organizing things. Administrators could create pre-defined hierarchies and instruct the users (employees) to use a very short number of tags and be able to classify orderly information.

Hope this explanation made things clearer and I would be very happy if this idea could be put into practice (if something similar is not already in works).

[gazumped 11,661]

Nope,  sorry - still sounds complicated to me and horrifyingly easy to muck up so comprehensively that you'd never find all your notes again.  One of the joys of Evernote is that it's simple and efficient,  and easy to adapt to lots of different situations.  Including not using tags at all. 

 

I'm definitely not in favour of this idea!

[jefito 5,589]

I've always thought of this from two ends: searching, and explicit tagging.

 

I have in the past proposed search extensions as outlined above. The reason I proposed extending search (by adding new search grammar that takes into account the tag hierarchy) is that I believe that there are cases when you don't want to search hierarchically. At least I don't, since a fair number of my tags are not strictly hierarchically organized, and cannot be because I reuse tag name that could go equally well in one or another hierarchies (but cannot be in both, because tag names are unique). So my idea is to make the option to search hierarchically or not to be expressed in the search grammar, with the default remaining as it is, so that existing saved searches are not broken.

 

The other thing I've proposed is a way to force the tagging operation to tag a note up the tree; that is, if A is the parent of B, and B the parent of C, then a special mode to make it so that applying the tag C automatically applies the tags B and A. So you wind up with explicit tags, and the tag searches need not change. Again, I wouldn't use this often, or at all, but I understand that some folks might want to do this. I cannot tell how this relates to the scheme that's being presented here, though, since I don't know what the "ranking" operation entails.

[Analyst444 182]

Pedro, I think I understand what your information need is and the value to you. I'm speculating now, but I'd bet that less than 1% of the Evernote users would want or need to have Evernote operate as you describe. In general, I think software development organizations (like Evernote) need to find some effective balance between offering a broad set of functions to its users and offering so many functions that too many users view the software to be overly complex. It strikes me that a lot of the posts in the forum over the last couple of years are by people who are looking for help in understanding and using Notebooks and Tags. It gives me the impression that Evernote must be close to the balance point. - - - Hence, I would be greatly surprised if the Evernote developers incorporate the functionality you are talking about into Evernote. Evernote is a great app. I would suggest that you develop some kind of work-around to meet your needs with it.

[Pedro Ken 3]

I've always thought of this from two ends: searching, and explicit tagging.

 

I have in the past proposed search extensions as outlined above. The reason I proposed extending search (by adding new search grammar that takes into account the tag hierarchy) is that I believe that there are cases when you don't want to search hierarchically. At least I don't, since a fair number of my tags are not strictly hierarchically organized, and cannot be because I reuse tag name that could go equally well in one or another hierarchies (but cannot be in both, because tag names are unique). So my idea is to make the option to search hierarchically or not to be expressed in the search grammar, with the default remaining as it is, so that existing saved searches are not broken.

 

The other thing I've proposed is a way to force the tagging operation to tag a note up the tree; that is, if A is the parent of B, and B the parent of C, then a special mode to make it so that applying the tag C automatically applies the tags B and A. So you wind up with explicit tags, and the tag searches need not change. Again, I wouldn't use this often, or at all, but I understand that some folks might want to do this. I cannot tell how this relates to the scheme that's being presented here, though, since I don't know what the "ranking" operation entails.

 

That's exactly what Im suggesting. You put it in simpler words.

 

thanks,

[Pedro Ken 3]

Pedro, I think I understand what your information need is and the value to you. I'm speculating now, but I'd bet that less than 1% of the Evernote users would want or need to have Evernote operate as you describe. In general, I think software development organizations (like Evernote) need to find some effective balance between offering a broad set of functions to its users and offering so many functions that too many users view the software to be overly complex. It strikes me that a lot of the posts in the forum over the last couple of years are by people who are looking for help in understanding and using Notebooks and Tags. It gives me the impression that Evernote must be close to the balance point. - - - Hence, I would be greatly surprised if the Evernote developers incorporate the functionality you are talking about into Evernote. Evernote is a great app. I would suggest that you develop some kind of work-around to meet your needs with it.

 

I have to disagree that less than 1% of Evernote users would use this function, at least in a business environment. 

 

Let me give you a practical example. I work in an investment firm and our job is to study types of investments (venture capital, private equity, listed equity, etc...) from different regions (USA, Europe, Brazil, China, etc...). Under each type of investment there is a set of analysts, which usually divide themselves by sectors (commodity, infrastructure, technology, etc...).

 

If for example an analysts reads an interesting article about a company and wants to save it into Evernote, he would have to tag the investment type, region and sector the company belongs to plus the area the analyst works in because these are not information that usually come in an article. Let's say that the company is Apple Inc. If I could associate tags like "USA" (region), "technology" (sector), "listed equities" (investment type) and "Team A" (team name) to the tag "Apple", then I would only have to tag "Apple" and all associations would be instantly made. I could also administratively change any associated tag if for any reason the sector changed (e.g. Apple becomes a phone producer, and the new sector changes to Telecom). 

 

I think many business environments could benefit from this function.

[gazumped 11,661]

What proportion of the.. how many million users? Would you say us an investment analyst?

 

Edit: "is an..."

[Analyst444 182]

gazumped - You took the words right out of my mouth!

[LarryEN 0]

I suspect that there are more EverNote users using EverNote as Task Management system (think GTD or SecretWeapon), than pure Investment Analysts.

This feature of having the Tag Hierarchies be applied when searching would be very useful when making queries while using EverNote for task management: for example, if you are making a top-level tag called "When", and sub-tags called "1-Now, 2-Next 3-Soon...".  

 

Say you want to find all the notes that have any type of "When" tag associated with them.  Would be convenient to simply write: tag:When    ...but right now, that will always return zero notes, because one never actually uses the "When" tag, its just an organizer tag for "1-Now, 2-Next, 3-Soon..." Of course, you can use the keyword "any" and write out all the options.

 

I especially like Jeff's suggestions above to somehow make hierarchical search "optional" in the grammar (or a special mode to make tagging happen "up the tree")...this would give access to the additional capability to those who want it, without changing anything about the way queries work now.