Proposed syntax for intentional tags

A person tags an item with an "intentional tag" so that a system can assist in meeting the intention of the person for making that item. The "intentional tag" tells us what the intention is. These tags come in complementary pairs. The person intends that their item find its appropriate complementary match.

Previously, A simple implementation of Sticky Items using tags, we had proposed to prefix intentional tags with "to". The problem with that is that you need some way to determine it's complement, it cannot be determined by just inspecting each intentional tag. We would need the mapping:

to buy => to sell

to ask => to answer

That is an additional complexity.

Here is a method that does not require that additional complexity.

buy~sell

sell~buy

ask~answer

answer~ask

With this syntax you simple invert the sequence of words around the "~" symbol to determine its complementary matching tag.

People then need to read "~" as "seeks". "man~woman" is read "man seeks woman" whereas "woman~man" is read "woman seeks man".

Note, by convention there are no spaces the left or the right of the ~.

Discuss ...

Comments

Seth says

source: Mark: 2005-10-10 13:17:32

Don't know why you need both sides of the match... If I am looking for a car, I'm not really interested in everyone else who is looking for a car. I only want to see all the cars for sale. You may need some sort of fuzzy match. A split screen seems like you are not sure what matches what & I think can do better with some boolean on tags.

Well maybe if you are in a tag room that includes an intentional tag ... say man~woman ... perhaps there should be a button on the room that will simply jump you to its complementary room ... and also one could show the number in the complementary room somewhere in the header of the room.

Seth says

Mark 2005-10-12 10:05:22 1445

Is this because you can't search for just one half of the tag like man and have to search for man~woman ? Could you not search for all tags containing a ~ and then split them up ?

A tag functions as a single string. So if i am viewing a specific tagroom that contains the intention woman~man, and want to post my intention to that room, how do i do it? I must somehow adjust the tag room by changing the one intentional tag woman~man to its complement man~woman. That, and our other plan of defaulting the tags on an item added from a tag room to the tags of that room, can make satisfying a match essentialy a one click operation. Click the right button in the right matching room and you suddelly editing an item which is already correctly tagged for your intentions.

Proposed syntax for intentional tags

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