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Why Folders are holding back hassle-free File Management & Tags are the Future.

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Re: Why Folders are holding back hassle-free File Management & Tags are the Future.

#31

Post by BitMastro »

roc wrote: post #11
japhyr wrote: post #7

Tags are good in conjunction with folders, because they provide another way to search when you forget where a file is, and you don't remember the file name. But folders are really good at collecting files with a similar purpose together. Does a good tagging system have a notion of a "collection" or something, instead of just categories and tags. If so, it just seems like folders by a different name. Moving away from…

The ideal implementation of tags (at least during the transition) is tags as pseudo-folders. That is, you drop a document into "Projects"->"2012"->"Foo" and the flexibility of tags is simply hidden away until needed. When it is needed, that file can also be 'added to' the 'folders' "Teams"->"Alpha" and "Clients"->"XYZ Corp". So, sort of like folders by a different name. But more like folders++. With complexity hidden…

I think that the problem with tags is the lack of intrinsic hierarchy. While you can flatten the hierarchy by enumerating all the tags, this approach is boring if done manually or requires an accurate ontology if done automatically. Another risk is a result from the paradox of choice. Which tags are appropriate? Did I use the same word as before? Will I be able to remember it? With folders you are able to further refine your lookup, and a document must be in a folder anyway, while it can lack a tag. Of course these are just points that can be overcome in a way or another by a good implementation, but folders, symbolic links and tags together are IMHO a better alternative that tags alone.

Re: Why Folders are holding back hassle-free File Management & Tags are the Future.

#32

Post by maxerickson »

secabeen wrote: post #29
maxerickson wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not really any need to address it specially. Tags only get added to the extent that users care, so mismatches are a problem of abundance, and to the extent tags are meaningful/accurate, they facilitate editing to personal preference. I'm sure that successful file managers will also have some degree of fuzzy matching. But tags are still useful, even if we never realize the RDF dream of a perfect global ontolog…

Do they, though? I'm not very good at remembering which tags I use, and once you have hundreds of documents sharing a single tag, if you mis-tag a new file, you may never find it again. Folders make using previous organizational decisions easier than creating a new organization. Incentivizing that behavior is a net win.

Do what what?

I'm not all gaga over tags, keeping 'primary organizational tags' around makes lots of sense to me. We can even keep on calling them folders. My point is that you really have to construct a silly, user-hostile system for a tagging capability to actually make things worse than no tagging.

Re: Why Folders are holding back hassle-free File Management & Tags are the Future.

#33

Post by yason »

Again, BeOS had a working indexing system so the folders it supported didn't effectively matter and no tagging was needed. Of course, you could create virtual folders for queries.

What made the difference to other indexing systems was that the queries were fast and real time because it was all implemented in the file system itself. That's what's needed to make people first trust indexing and subsequently use it as a daily tool, like we use 'ls'.

Re: Why Folders are holding back hassle-free File Management & Tags are the Future.

#34

Post by leishulang »

I do agree that files/folders are bad in general, but tags will probably not fit the bill too. I think the future file system should be lying within graph theory. Something like semantic web, if you create a file, you need to create at least one semantic link to other files. if you remove one, you need to bridge the separated graphs. But how the semantic link could make sense for human, requires far more work and research I guess.

Re: Why Folders are holding back hassle-free File Management & Tags are the Future.

#35

Post by sp332 »

roc wrote: post #11
japhyr wrote: post #7

Tags are good in conjunction with folders, because they provide another way to search when you forget where a file is, and you don't remember the file name. But folders are really good at collecting files with a similar purpose together. Does a good tagging system have a notion of a "collection" or something, instead of just categories and tags. If so, it just seems like folders by a different name. Moving away from…

The ideal implementation of tags (at least during the transition) is tags as pseudo-folders. That is, you drop a document into "Projects"->"2012"->"Foo" and the flexibility of tags is simply hidden away until needed. When it is needed, that file can also be 'added to' the 'folders' "Teams"->"Alpha" and "Clients"->"XYZ Corp". So, sort of like folders by a different name. But more like folders++. With complexity hidden…

To make them work like folders, you would need a query like "Team and Alpha but nothing else" because otherwise each pseudo-folder would also have all subfolders' documents in it.

Re: Why Folders are holding back hassle-free File Management & Tags are the Future.

#36

Post by sliverstorm »

If you wanted to "tag" files, could you not simply create hard links to the files inside a folder "tagname"?

Of course, using hard links is currently not easy for the technically incompetent, but you could change that, and it ought to be easier as you're just interfacing with existing capability.

Re: Why Folders are holding back hassle-free File Management & Tags are the Future.

#37

Post by pavel_lishin »

sliverstorm wrote: post #36

If you wanted to "tag" files, could you not simply create hard links to the files inside a folder "tagname"? Of course, using hard links is currently not easy for the technically incompetent, but you could change that, and it ought to be easier as you're just interfacing with existing capability.

How do you search for files with multiple tags? E.g.: "Taxes" AND "2009"

Re: Why Folders are holding back hassle-free File Management & Tags are the Future.

#38

Post by yaantc »

Tags are not a replacement for folders, and the opposite is true too.

A folder defines a directed graph. Combining tags loose the "directed" part. It may be good enough for some, but it's not the same and will fall short in some cases. This difference is the 1st point mentioned in the article. The article says that it's inflexible. In some cases yes, then use tags. In other cases, it will be exactly what's needed and tags will be cumbersome.

The two other limitations (related to searching and sharing) are bogus IMHO. They're not limitation of a folder system, but maybe of some implementation.

Re: Why Folders are holding back hassle-free File Management & Tags are the Future.

#39

Post by 3amOpsGuy »

Folders work standalone, tags don't.

Tags don't work without a search feature - we might tag religiously but others don't and won't.

If you're implementing a search feature then you no longer need tags.

It won't take off. Especially as these days we seem to be moving away from files full stop.

Re: Why Folders are holding back hassle-free File Management & Tags are the Future.

#40

Post by joe_the_user »

Currently, I am working on a file management tool that uses tags fairly heavily. Obviously I think tags can be useful.

But the claim that folders can or should be eliminated is seriously misguided.

* Tags aren't enough once your file number exceeds a certain amount.

* File path provides a unique human-readable and human-understand identifier for everyone's file. A system where pieces of data don't have unique identifier is going to be serious drag at some point. Even average people need logical consistency occasionally.

* While folders may be a somewhat hard metaphor for new and casual users to understand, so are tags. A many-to-many relationship isn't actually something people quickly understand fully even if they can quickly get fuzzy understanding it.

* When you throw out the spatial metaphor of folders and files, you've thrown out the guarantee that a file is "somewhere". I've lost and seen other lose files in a disturbing fashion on MACs. Without a keyword for file X, that you just uploaded, you can't "look around" for it.

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