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This post began as a comment to @yintercept's post in LeoFinance titled "Tag Spam is Killing HIVE, but the fix is easy"; my comment was intended to add to the post, but I went down that rabbit hole again. Rather than hold a captive audience hostage to a massive comment, I thought it was better to break out that comment into its own post. The comment I left there is a TL;DR comment which points to this post.
About Tag Spam
Tag spam is spam when irrelevant tags are used. I won't use LEOFINANCE for a Splinterlands post, and I won't use SPLINERLANDS for a ClickTrackProfit post. While technically LEOFINANCE and CENT are distinct enough from each other to require separate tags, enough overlap exists between the two tribes that most people posting won't worry about using both tags.
How Other Web Sites Handle Tags
If we visit any number of web sites which have blogs-- not only personal or hobby blogs, but also cryptocurrency markets, commercial enterprises and online periodicals-- we can see that many of these sites let their posts have as many tags as necessary. Some of these tags can involve variations such as spelling and punctuation such as dashes and underscores. And these sites aren't concerned with "token tags" as opposed to "content tags"-- for them, tags are tags.
The Consumer Perspective
Just from a consumer perspective-- that is, someone who posts and engages by upvoting and commenting-- there are a couple of issues regarding tags which are a turn off:
10-tag limit -- many of our posts can use far more than 10 tags just for content or SEO purposes. Add to that the use of token tags, and it can be frustrating deciding which tags to keep.
(for lack of a better term) Identity crisis -- When using a tribal front end and the relevant token tags, I expect the post to be tagged for the front-end and let all other tags be incidental. Last night I used the CTP front end for a post which I also wanted to appear in Proof of Brain. After I hit the POST button the post I wrote using the CTP front end was tagged for Proof of Brain since that was the first tag on the tag list. Even after I edited the post to change the tag order, it's still considered a Proof of Brain post; this must be a side effect of recording to blockchain.
Arcane tag rules
- Multiple "hive-" Tags Forbidden
If I use any front-end based on Hive.Blog, I am limited to using only one "hive-" tag, and sometimes it doesn't even need to be typed. - Only 1 dash allowed
If I use any front-end based on Hive.Blog, the tags I use can only have 1 tag. Error notices appear if I use a 2nd dash in a tag.
- Multiple "hive-" Tags Forbidden
Regarding arcane tag rules, LeoFinance solved those problems. I don't know if the LeoFinance front-end is a variation of the Hive.Blog front end, but whether it is or not, those are not problems for anyone using it.
As someone who tries to use the proper front-end for the tribe in question, it's annoying. I'm sure other posters have an even stronger reaction to this situation.
Different Tribes, Different Rules
While it's true that different tribes have different rules for the posts they accept and encourage, there are ways to eliminate problems involving arcane tag rules and identiy crisis. If LeoFinance can do it, I'm sure others can do it too.
Tag Conflicts
As for the 10-tag limit, there is a conflict between content tags and token tags. 10 tags won't be enough even if we ignore token tags. 10 tags won't be enough if we ignore content tags.
A Possible Solution
From the perspective of a consumer, it looks to me as if the solution is to simply remove (effectively or literally) the 10-tag limit. If a limit needs to be in place, treat content tags differently from token tags. There could be coding or development reasons for having the 10-tag limit, or the code is a reflection of policy; I don't know.
I think unrestricted tag use would be the easiest solution to the problems covered by @yintercept's post. Tag spam would still be a concern, but no more than now or not as much as now. Even with an unrestricted number of tags, we should still use relevant tags. After all, spam is spam.
The "Multiple Post" Problem
As for search engines finding multiple copies of a post, back-end processing by the front-end used to publish the post can be used to add the canonical designation to it. LeoFinance already does this. Any front-end can be modified to do this, but then the responsibility falls to the poster to use the proper front end to ensure the canonical address of the content matches the desired domain address.
A Possible Way To Handle the "Multiple Post" Problem
From the consumer perspective, we write one post and use multiple tags so it can be found by searching for it or by visiting community or tribe.
How the coding makes this happen is a mystery to me. It could be that the post is copied and pasted into the tagged communities or tribes, in which case the spam concern is really a concern.
If this is the case-- and I will admit that I don't know-- then the domain address for the front-end used to publish the post is designated the canonical address. There should ony be one post, but that post should be referenced as many times as necessary the the tags used. This way, other feeds retrieve a copy of the original for display.
Could this already be the situation? Probably; I don't know what the concerns are from a coding or development perspective.