ha! ha! now we've got a tag on this thread by another anonymous genius saying 'poor leetnoob', as if to underline what i've been saying.

my last contribution to this community a few days ago was getting hardware video acceleration video playback working in easy debian.

i'm now saying adios completely, and any other further breakthroughs like getting video playback working higher than
864 x 648 i'll doubt i'll be sharing.

and that folks is the power of tags.

goodbye.

Don't get me wrong.
Sometimes I found these tags amusing, sort of funny. After all its just Tags. I prefer Power Search. There's no need for taking them personal.

But on the other hand expressing them (trolls) they are d**kheads, just opens the door for doing what they do best. (trolling)

mate. I made a comment on another thread.
"smartphone != smart people"
It's unfortunate that those with the most to say, often have the least worth saying.
And those of us who should be saying thanks to the wonderful contributors in this community, don't do it enough.
there's clowns in every circus. Don't let their childish behaviour undermine the rest of the good this forum does for Maemo.

As said above, admins know who made tags. If the tag violates the code of conduct, then they can take action. If you want to report it, just report the first post in the thread with a message indicating that the problem is with the tags.

If you're against "useless" tags, then you may as well ban "useless" posts too. You're also going to have to define what "useless" means. Humour (or bad attempts of it) are not against the code of conduct IIRC.

I would rather make it so that people who can post tags can also remove all tags - not just their own. This would create a large degree of social enforcement regarding tags. Also, re: freedom of speech - that argument has the same validity as saying all posts should be completely uncensored, un-moderated, and so forth. That's freedom of speech too - but freedom of speech is A: A very western-world notion - it's barely recognized as a right in most nations, and even in places where it is, such as the USA, it's got nothing to do with forums. The US Government is obliged to its citizens not to infringe on their right to expression so long as it doesn't in turn infringe on or severely endanger the rights of others. There's no such dictum on the internet - you can argue for it on ethical grounds, but it's not hard to put counter arguments to that - if you want to be a dick, that right is your so long as you don't cause harm or impinge on what other people are trying to do - which in the case of talk.maemo.org is trying to have discussion about internet tablets/smartphones, computery things, and the like, with a focus on Linux derived Maemo OS. Banal troll lolz is not at all condusive to that, in tags any more than in posts.

I also reject the notion that there's no anonymity in admins/mods being able to see the tags. The fact that there's no transparency from user to mod level means that we have no way of knowing whether the moderators are doing their jobs or if they're part of the people getting cheap lolz from tag trolling.

This is further worsened by the fact that if I recall correctly there's a running "points" count for against-the-rules behavior in the entire talk.maemo.org forum for each account - which of course us users can't see.

On my end, I am publicly happy to admit, as of a day or two ago I decided to start putting "trolling tags" and "tag trolling" (haven't settled on one or the other yet) as a tag on which I find other tags to be irrelevant and anal/dickish at the same time. Irrelevant humor I don't care about, and anal commentary that's actually indicative of the thread content I sometimes understand, but both at once is bs. For instance, at the time of this writing, the tags are "offemsive tags" (looks like someone made a typo) and "this is a tag". I would not tag that as trolling tags because, well, the first actually covers the topic, the second seems to be a joking remark of some sort, but it's not intentionally aiming to be dicking (it could also be trying to be informative, like "this thing you're reading now is what we're talking about". Not sure about that interpretation being likely, but it's feasible).*

Since the forum system doesn't give me any way of expressing discontent with BS tags (beyond directly PMing moderators/admins, which I haven't tried but I would be happy to if that's what the forum staff actually want done and it would get useful results), there's no way to clean up tags from the user end, and there's been no or little response/action to this from staff of TMO when this same issue has come up in threads before, it is kinda my own way of responding to the people who so enjoy tagging threads with useless bs, and I hope would also contribute to moderators noticing the thread's tags and wiping them (my trolling tags one included).

At the same time, people on the receiving end - why does this have to get to you so deeply? Some - lots - of people are *******s. You can still focus on being secure in your own positives. Like in the GNASH thread - yeah it's been slow going, hard and thus far fruitless compiling work - but how does the fact that some people can't appreciate the fact that you tried in any way change the merits of those actions, or you for doing them?

For instance, threads where I post have a tendency to get tagged with tags involving "babbling" - i.e. "babbling", "stop babbling", etc. I don't know if that's directed at me; at least once a thread with "babbling" was tagged "more babbling" after I voiced my disagreement with that tag. But other than that I don't know if the tags are directed at me or not. And at the end of the day, so what if they are? I'm secure enough that I consider what I have to say mostly useful, and relevant to some people even if some others have some knee jerk reaction to it because ... well, whatever it is some people don't like about commentary like that.

At the end of the day a dickish tag can't touch you. It can't detract from your self-worth or merits, and all that emotional response it brings up doesn't have to bother you if you're secure in knowing that the tag is wrong. It's not fair that some people are *******s and get away with it, but it doesn't have to - and shouldn't - bother you enough to stop what you're doing.

The problem with such tags is their utter uselessness, and indirectly that they encourage the wrong kind of attitude most of the time. But the tag upsetting you is a separate problem, and should be dealt with inside yourself first. Curbing the behavior of dipshits should never be personal, because when it is you risk being needlessly cruel and unfair yourself.

- Edit -
* What do you know, bs tags got posted while I was writing my post. Surprise surprise.
- End Edit -

What did Mentalist just say?

No tl;dr ; read it yourself.

...

I think leetnoob is correct and either the tag system gets disabled completely, or their authors are made public for everyone. The 300-posts-to-create-tags system is clearly faulty, given that the very senior members who should set the example on how tags are used are clearly abusing the system.

None the less, given the abuse and non-standardisation on the tags system, it has clearly turned useless, and is nothing but an anonymous comment tool; some witty, but usually remaining in the trolling territory. Examples? The ever-present Bada-whatever tags.

I'm all for tags removal. Also, I'm all for a public tool for viewing who are the people who added the already-present troll tags; I'm sure we'd be in for a surprise.

On a more personal note... Truly, these forums have been lacking in moderator activity; lots of newbie bashing these days... Widespread, actually.

Additionaly: I'm reporting this thread to the moderation; I think they need to read this, and get to action.

If you agree... Report this thread; we have moderation material on the tags, and I think mods need to review our claims.

I've been here for around a year now and I still haven't figured out how to tag a thread.

Noooooooooo!!!!! Pick a different project to boycott!