Introducing Topics | Hacker News Reader

Introducing Topics

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205 pointsshayfrendt24 comments

I tagged a few of my repos. What I'd be excited for is topics that are not simply languages or frameworks but concepts. As an example my feature toggle library in elixir should be tagged with feature-toggle which if you are looking for that kind of tool in that language here it is. I could see this being really helpful for "how have others solved X problem in Y language so I don't have to?"

Languages and frameworks can be pretty reliably determined by tools (GitHub already classifies repos by languages since as long as I can recall); I agree with tagging that reflects concepts/functionality, especially for projects that aren't libraries / dev tools (in which case the underlying languages are merely implementation details).

Should just allow me to integrate with tags on StackOveflow.

I like this feature, it's very reminiscent of StackOverflow's tags. I do however think this would be better used as a menu or at the bottom of the page, out of the way, as this information will not be relevant on most repository visits. It adds unneeded complexity to the top and most important part of the page where before it felt simple.

One key feature of Stack Overflow tags (and I do have a "taxonomist" badge on a few Stack Exchange sites :)) is that is it bottom-up, but supervised:

- only power-enough users can create new tags (synonyms are mapped, useless tags are pruned),

- questions are mercilessly re-tagged they don't follow tagging standards,

- there is requirement of at least 1 tag, and a limit of max 5 tags.

Exactly because of that I was able to create a graph from tag coincidences: http://p.migdal.pl/tagoverflow/.

I tried to do a similar thing for many other systems (with wild tags, e.g. Twitter hashtags) and results were never satisfactory.

Another nice thing about the SO implementation is that the number of questions with a given tag is given while tagging. This avoids people creating tags which are essential synonyms. I already see this as a problem on GitHub based on the suggested tags.

This is awesome, it's basically just tags for a repo to make GitHub search better. Love this update. I also wonder if they could just make their search smarter, too, or suggest tags based on a repo's readme, wiki, etc. (assuming it was public). But either way, this is a great update. Loving all the stuff GitHub is adding/changing lately.

I went to tag some of my repos and found it suggesting a few useful and a few not-so-useful tags for them. Having a tag that's just my repo's unique name wasn't great, but identifying that some of my repos are Pebble applications was good.

Oh, great to know! That's awesome they are helpful.

I'm skeptical if topics are going to be helpful. They seem very arbitrary and redundant so far.

I think it's too early to say much about how they are actually used (e.g. I just checked a relatively specific keyword and only one guy has started tagging his projects), but yes, I expect the first medium posts on "how we tagged our repo with unrelated cool keywords and got 1000 stars and sooo much attention" next week... :/

I think they are going to be mostly valuable in relatively niche topics, where they'll make it easier to find projects in the same space.

Hoping people can tag as "unmaintained" and "looking-for-contributors" or similar

https://twitter.com/jbscript/status/826722110965886976

Looks like it.

I hope awesome-list owners all agree with a master topic and each of them will use that!

Love this feature! I wish there was a way to browse topics and see which ones are used more. It would help you tag your repos to topics that exist already instead of creating a new topic with only yourself.

Why are they calling tags, "topics"?

Probably to avoid confusion, as git (and github) already had a concept of tags

https://help.github.com/articles/working-with-tags/

It's surprising that GitHub is significantly putting out much more innovation after the open-source repos moving to GitLab fiasco of a year or so ago. Are there any changes that can explain this besides more incentive?

- Out with flat org structure based purely on meritocracy, in with supervisors and middle managers. This has ticked off many people in the old guard.

- Its once famous remote-employee culture has been rolled back. Senior managers are no longer allowed to live afar and must report to the office. This was one reason why some senior execs departed or were asked to leave, one person close to the company told us.

- GitHub has hit "hypergrowth," growing from about 300 to nearly 500 employees in less than a year, with over 70 people joining last quarter alone.

http://www.businessinsider.com/github-the-full-inside-story-...

It looks like topics are completely unmoderated—In only a cursory use I've already seen several redundant tags. It makes discovery much more painful when there are several overlapping GitHub topics for each conceptual topic.

I tagged my library as SuperAwesomeUltraJavaScriptLibrary. I hope it helps my discoverability :)

In all seriousness I thought tags were like the "old" thing going away. I'm curious how this will help discoverability, if at all.

awesome feature! I've always wanted something like 'tagging' on github :)

btw, can you implement tagging when I star/fork a repo? ps: have a look at https://getpocket.com's tagged-bookmark feature

Topics are neat way of tagging repositories. But are they being reviewed periodically? (or) Is it going to be like LinkedIn skills? Say, tags like '`node` `node.js` `nodejs`' will reduce the impact of the solution for the problem Github is trying to solve.

Can I have a way to sort / categorise my repos now? I can create organisations but then I lose the private repos that I pay for.

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