The Insect Week iFocus has again shown how easily variations on existing tags can be created. I don’t use tags as much as I perhaps should, but this is - as others have pointed out - a real problem.
Could there not be a ‘message box’ (sorry - the last programming I did was in VBA) appearing whenever the tag field is selected, warning people to look for existing tags before inventing new ones?
I could add some extra “help” text.
I appreciate Amadan raising the tag issue.
Regards the descriptive tag - Insect Week 2023 …I could perhaps have used the Insecta filter to collect the observations but there is a quirk in iSpot that classes Insecta as Other Organisms.
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I think dejayM is working with Miked to reduce the number of tags especially ones that haven’t been used or used only once.
Could the correct tag be put in the current banner for insect week?
I have been given the power to remove or modify tags.
What cannot currently be done is removing bad or mis-tags from the growing list (of nearly 5 thousand).
The simplest solution is to leave a note here and I will correct the tag and explain WHY, in a comment.
This has been running for a couple of years https://www.ispotnature.org/communities/uk-and-ireland/view/project/824066/
It has had 13 reads today but is hidden from general view
I don’t usually use tags unless I need to like for a project or to make something easyer to find for example. any tags that are made are usually automatic from choosing an option like invertrevretes for example. Rather than making a tag. But most people obviously make (a lot) of tags and use them a lot
I think that people assume that (as on some websites) the more tags you add, the more people will look at your photo.
An extreme example would be someone who puts ‘great tit’ ‘tit’ ‘Parus major’ ‘Parus’ ‘garden’ ‘tree’ ‘feeding young’ etc. Actually, on iSpot, most of those are probably redundant.