Provoke HN: Someone build a *useful* tagging service, pls

7 points by _0ffh ↗ HN
Long story short: - Problem: Tagging and up-/downvoting mechanisms as used almost everywhere suck because they're too primitive! - Solution: Do not just count how often s/o tagged s/th as "funny" or upvoted s/th, but save that info including user ID. If user A looks for funny links, tags from user B (who's "funny" tags are highly correlated with A's) carry more weight than tags from user C (who prefers a different kind of humor). - Result: A useful tagging/voting mechanism that won't drag everything down to the average, but is able to identify and sustain multiple parallel "subcultures" with different preferences in the user base! Might help to safe HN, too...

4 comments

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Cool idea. Could be enhanced: If I mark a user as (for example) "fanatic" all his "troll" or "flame" tags are automatically converted to "funny" for me...
I'm working on something like that, actually. Using machine-learning and personalization around tags is a big part of my current project. Unfortunately it's not ready yet... Feel free to shoot me an email though, if you'd like to say informed on the progress.
Nice to see some worthwhile work being done here - I'll be sure to keep my eyes out for your upcoming services!