Tag-me Plugin

Plugin to tag wiki content collectively in order to find content by tags and to get a meaningful page ranking.

Introduction

The larger a wiki gets, the harder it is to find content. This wiki tagging Plugin attempts to solve the issue based on these assumptions:

• Assertion 1: Intranet search does not work well due to inadequate ranking of search engines on intranets. This is because there are typically not many cross-links between pages.
• Assertion 2: Let the individuals build their own taxonomy to find content quickly
• Assertion 3: Let the users do the ranking to get an "human intelligence" ranking of important content

There are clear benefits in tagging content in a large TWiki (10K or more topics):

• Find relevant content in a large system quickly,
  • by quickly accessing related topics via the tags on a topic
  • by quickly accessing related topics via related tags listed in a specific tag view
  • by quickly identifying important tags in the tag cloud
• Access my favorite topics quickly (assuming I tag topics of interest)
• Solve the search ranking issue of wiki content indexed by a search engine
• Help solve stale content issue (old topics do not get tagged)

The design goals of the TagMePlugin were as follows:

• Any topic can be tagged by individuals -> create taxonomy for individuals
• Show tag statistics of all users on each topic -> show popularity
• Encourage users to reuse the same tag on a topic -> get a "collective ranking", or "vote for a tag", or "tag count"
• Make it as easy as possible to increase the tag count
• Make it as easy as possible to add a new tag to a topic
• Encourage users to create new tags, but try to avoid use of similar tags for the same subject
• Search for topic by tag, sorted by tag popularity

User Interface

Tag List on Topic

Every topic has a list showing all tags associated with the topic. Additional tags can be added to the topic, and new tags can be created.

Screenshot of tags shown on a topic:

You see:

• a link to the all tags view,
• a list of tags with vote count and add/remove vote buttons,
• an add tag selector, and
• a link to create a new tag

Create New Tag

Add Tag to Topic

Once a new tag is created, it can be added in the tag list of the topic

List All Tags

TagMeViewAllTags shows all tags used in the system. The font size indicates the overall tag count of a tag.

Screenshot of tag cloud in the list all tags view:

Tip: In a WebHome of a web you can show a tag cloud of all tagged topics in that web with this variable:
%TAGME{ tpaction="showalltags" web="%WEB%" format="<a href=\"%SCRIPTURL%/view%SCRIPTSUFFIX%/%TWIKIWEB%/TagMeSearch?tag=$tag;qweb=%WEB%\" style=\"font-size:$size%\">$tag</a>" }%

List My Tags

TagMeViewMyTags shows all tags used by logged-in user. The font size indicates the overall tag count of a tag.

Tag Search

TagMeSearch shows a list of topics that are tagged with a specific tag, sorted by relevance. Topics with a high tag count are shown first.

Plugin Variable

The Plugin handles a %TAGME{}% variable that performs different actions. The tpaction="" is a required parameter.

• %TAGME{ tpaction="show" }% - shows the tag list on topic

• %TAGME{ tpaction="showalltags" ... }% - view all tags or my tags as a tag cloud

  Parameter	Comment	Default
  by="me"	My own tags only; can also be a USERNAME	all tags
  web="%WEB%"	Limit query to a web	current web
  topic="*Plugin"	Limit query to a topic, or a comma-space delimited list of topics with optional asterisk wildcards	all topics
  exclude="fixme"	Exclude tags; specify a tag, or a comma-space delimited list of tags with optional asterisk wildcards	all tags
  minsize="90"	Minimum size of tag $size (typically percent font size)	"90"
  maxsize="180"	Maximum size of tag $size	"180"
  format="..."	Format of a tag, tokens $tag, $size	"$tag"
  separator=", "	Separator between tags	", "

• %TAGME{ tpaction="query" ... }% - tag search

  Parameter	Comment	Default
  by="me"	My tagged topics only; can also be a USERNAME	all tagged topics
  web="%WEB%"	Limit query to a web	current web
  topic="*Plugin"	Limit query to a topic, or a comma-space delimited list of topics with optional asterisk wildcards	all topics
  tag="..."	Name of tag	(required)
  sort="web"	Sorting of tagged topics: "tagcount" by tag count (relevance), "web" by web then topic name, "topic" by topic name	"tagcount"
  norelated="on"	Do not show the list of "related tags"	(show related tags)
  nototal="on"	Do not show total number of topics found	(show total)
  minsize="90"	Minimum size of topic $size (typically percent font size)	"90"
  maxsize="180"	Maximum size of topic $size	"180"
  format="..."	Format of a topic, any token of FormattedSearch can be used, such as $web, $topic, $summary, $rev, $n. In addition, $votecount expands to the number of tag votes, $size to the suggested font size, and $taglist to the tag list of the topic.	(nice formatting)
  separator=", "	Separator between tags, $n or $n() can be used for newlines	"$n"

• %TAGME{ tpaction="newtag" ... }% - create new tag

  Parameter	Comment	Default
  tag="..."	Name of tag. Accepts alphanumeric and underscore characters only	(required)

• %TAGME{ tpaction="add" ... }% - add tag to topic, or add vote to existing tag

  Parameter	Comment	Default
  tag="..."	Name of tag	(required)

• %TAGME{ tpaction="remove" ... }% - remove my tag vote on existing tag

  Parameter	Comment	Default
  tag="..."	Name of tag	(required)

Plugin Settings

Plugin settings are stored as preferences variables. To reference a plugin setting write %<plugin>_<setting>%, i.e. %TAGMEPLUGIN_SHORTDESCRIPTION%

• One line description, is shown in the TextFormattingRules topic:
  • Set SHORTDESCRIPTION = Tag wiki content collectively to find content by keywords

• Log add/create actions:
  • Set LOGACTION = 1

• Debug plugin: (See output in data/debug.txt)
  • Set DEBUG = 0

Plugin Installation Instructions

Note: You do not need to install anything on the browser to use this plugin. The following instructions are for the administrator who installs the Plugin on the TWiki server.

• Download the ZIP file from the Plugin web (see below)
• Unzip TagMePlugin.zip in your twiki installation directory. Content:

  File:	Description:
  data/TWiki/TagMePlugin.txt	Plugin topic
  data/TWiki/TagMePluginViewAllTags.txt	Supporting topic to view all tags
  data/TWiki/TagMePluginViewMyTags.txt	Supporting topic to view my tags
  data/TWiki/TagMePluginSearch.txt	Supporting topic to search for tagged topics
  data/TWiki/TagMePluginDebug*.txt	Supporting topics for debug
  data/TWiki/TagMePlugin*.txt,v	Topic repository files
  lib/TWiki/Plugins/TagMePlugin.pm	Plugin Perl module
  pub/TWiki/TagMePlugin/*.gif	Icon files

• Configure and enable the Plugin:
  • TWiki 4.0 and up: Run the configure script to enable the Plugin
  • Change the Plugin settings as needed
  • Add the %TAGME{}% variable to the page decoration. It should be exactly of the form %TAGME{ tpaction="%URLPARAM{tpaction}%" tag="%URLPARAM{tag}%" }%. This should be done so that it is rendered for every topic, e.g. somewhere in the skin template, such as the WebTopBar. A good place is also the WEBCOPYRIGHT since it gets displayed by every topic view. Example setting in the TWikiPreferences:
    • Set WEBCOPYRIGHT = Tags: %TAGME{ tpaction="%URLPARAM{tpaction}%" tag="%URLPARAM{tag}%" }%%BR% Copyright © 1999-2015 by...
  • For international character support: Remove the onblur attribute from the name="newtag" input tag in the "Create New Tag" form
• Test if the installation was successful:
  • Add a tag

Limitations

• Tags are lost if a topic is renamed or moved (this is currently a Plugin API limitation)

Plugin Info

Related Topics: TagMeViewAllTags, TagMeViewMyTags, TagMeSearch, TagMeDebugViewTags, TagMeDebugSearch, TWikiPlugins, DeveloperDocumentationCategory, AdminDocumentationCategory, TWikiPreferences

-- TWiki:Main.PeterThoeny - 14 Sep 2006