Rework of collaborative tags

[MorrisJobke]

• followup to Rework of collaborative tags (NC 12.0) #1465 (Nextcloud 12 part of this)

• Search/type-ahead should only bring up tags the user applied already (or has access to)
• Tags that are not assigned should not be visible (implied by pervious task) (If no file is tagged with a specific tag, that tag should be removed #586)
• Some information on the filter search page (Visualize useful synthetic information when user clicks 'Tags'  #2143)
• More prominent displaying of tags when used (Display tags next to file names #2838)
• better mechanism to apply tags on multiple files (Add Bulk Tagging on new Files app [28+] #45935)

cc @jancborchardt @nickvergessen

[disaster123]

Would it be possible to get tag colors like the labels on github?

[gradinaruvasile]

Hi,
As referenced here:

https://help.nextcloud.com/t/how-to-tag-multiple-files/21769

I would like to add the request for an option to apply tags when multiple files are selected. That is a very useful feature if you have/add multiple files.

[disaster123]

+1

[gradinaruvasile]

Something like this would be nice

• tag option on the toolbar next to download link:
• if clicked, expand the tag input form on horizontally (or maybe add it on a new line below as it is its current function in the details pane?)

[disaster123]

• a listing of all tags for a file in the overview.

[jancborchardt]

@gradinaruvasile we will only have a listing of the tags in the row, comparable to Gmail. Adding and removing tags in the row would be too much and too noisy. That’s done via the sidebar.

@disaster123 that’s what we want to add, as said.

[disaster123]

@jancborchardt great - multiple colors or colors for tags would be great as well. If you have a lot of tags it gets very difficult to recognize them.

[jancborchardt]

@disaster123 that's a different topic, you could open a separate issue for that. :)

[disaster123]

@jancborchardt thanks added: #6778

[Spartachetto]

Given that the milestone has been postponed, maybe you could consider to include the following issues:

• Possibility to search system tags with a better query system Possibility to search system tags with a better query system #4851
• colored tags colored tags #6778
• Allow creating/modifying group tags in the admin UI Allow creating/modifying group tags in the admin UI #621

@MorrisJobke, perhaps?

in addition here (Better UI for managing and applying tags ? #4842) you find a sort of "general discussion" of some possible improvements on the tag system, just for reference

[MorrisJobke]

We just released the beta3 of Nextcloud 13. So also all of those are new features and enhancements and will not be included in 13 anymore. We cannot put everything in one release and delay it even more. Sorry for that.

[Spartachetto]

@MorrisJobke, I am afraid I did not manage to be clear...

I wrote "Given that the milestone has been postponed" meaning that, given that this overal issue on tags has been postponed to Nextcloud 14, maybe you could consider to include other pending feature requests on tags.

I had the impression that all the three feature request I suggested to include in the list for Nextcloud 14 were deemed "interesting enough". Maybe it could be handy to have them in this issue for you to keep track of them.

Said that, I am eager to use Nextcloud 13 and I cross my fingers for some features in Nextcloud 14... 😃

[MorrisJobke]

I had the impression that all the three feature request I suggested to include in the list for Nextcloud 14 were deemed "interesting enough". Maybe it could be handy to have them in this issue for you to keep track of them.

Ah :) Okay - I just moved it because it was already put into 13 and thus should be in 14 (at least we try to). We will have a look at the 14 stuff once we plan it. For new we finish 13 :)

[Spartachetto]

@MorrisJobke Is it the right time for ask you developers to have a look? A review of the tag functionalities to be developed in 14 could be done now.. .?

[spoorun]

Presumably Group tags, unlike personal tags, should be displayed on search/type-ahead, even if not applied by the User (or any user).
Rationale: Administrator may want a set of tags designed for all users, and to ensure consistency.
Also, it's easier for tags to be chosen by a User from a pre-prepared list, easing workflow.

[Klakla2]

tags are already some sort of metadata. I know there were already lots of ideas about file metadata, but nothing did it yet.
Could this tag system be extended to an optional tag = value system in the sense, that we can add metadata needed for correct citing like
author =
Original_Download_URL =
Original_Download_time =

or metadata needed to correlate any file with a geoposition(not only pictures)
Latitude=
Longitude=

gpxpod app would probably be easy to extend to show all files describing something within the selected area.

[Spartachetto]

@MorrisJobke I am trying to shamelessly bump up this tag overall issue...

Sorry for disturbing, but there are a lot of good proposals here.

In any case, thank you for your attention.. ..

[sualko]

I just want to show that as soon as user see that tags are public
than there is no problem with ut all.

Since tags are editable by everyone, I think this is a huge issue. @jancborchardt can you try to push this issue, because I think it's a pretty bad UX if all your tags got renamed my someone else.

[mapeze]

My considerations about this issue:

What would be a great step forward is to have a collaborative web based file manager that supports 1:n relationships on file (visual) structure. That's the summary. And I would say, sooner or later the collaborative file managers will switch to the 1:n logic. The "folders" concept, inherited from the physical view used before the digital era, give us a 1:1 relationship.

The naming of the functionality "tag" denotes that this is viewed as only a patch of the problem. I would rename the concept to something like "routes". A file can be reached from multiple routes. A file manager should show us the routes, and no anymore the folder concept. The old school folder concept would then be a special case of the 1:n structure. All the files would physically be in the same folder of the base system.

The big problem I see is how to live together with base systems who live with 1:1 logic. For example, ¿how to manage backups or to synchronize files in desktop clients?

Maybe, this comment contribution in short term is close to nothing... But, as a person who have though many hours on that issue, I wanted to share my point of view.

[Spartachetto]

@MorrisJobke , @skjnldsv (hoping that you're still the right persons...)

This issue is becoming a bit the kitchen sink of the suggestions about tags. It is full (IMHO) of good ideas yet they are all mixed together and it'll take some work to split them...
Do you think there is something that can be done?
For example I'd split the discussion on public versus private tags started by matiasdelellis in another thread...

Let me know if I can help somehow

[rickyelopez]

Just discovered this feature and this thread, and I think the topics discussed above can be split into two general categories:

1. Privacy/Security
   • Configure tag visibility for different users and groups
   • Configure tag modifiability for different users and groups
2. Functionality improvements
   • Tag colouring
   • Tag searching/filtering
   • Tag assignment improvements
   • Tag management improvements

For me, point 1 is more important, but presumably this will vary for everyone. Seems like maybe this could be split out into two issues and handled separately in whichever order is most preferred? Not that I'm really entitled to an opinion here, I'd just really like to be able to control tag visibility :)

[schneif2]

I just want to show that as soon as user see that tags are public
than there is no problem with ut all.

Since tags are editable by everyone, I think this is a huge issue. @jancborchardt can you try to push this issue, because I think it's a pretty bad UX if all your tags got renamed my someone else.

Currently i´m facing this issue as well. It would be great if some collaborative tags can be defined by Admin or other Groups and e.g. only creator or admin can change it again. When you use collaborative tags with many users you may think they are wrong or misspelled and when you change them others will affected by this. Everyone should be able to use the tags at files, but can not rename the tag.

[godfuture]

As the only user of my Nextcloud instance I was very surprised when my tags showed up under my user account and my admin account. Definitely not what I expected and I thought I did something wrong, but I couldn't find a way to make them user specific. Seems like a major privacy issue to me. Luckily I'm the only user. The fact that you also can't tag multiple files at once makes me wonder if this is a feature that's actually used.

Exactly my thoughts. Once I misspelled a tag and it was created on-the-fly in the tag bar. After that I had a hard time deleting it. Very strange user experience.

I think it would be much better if there was a tag editor to manage tags. There you could see which public and private tags exist. Instead of creating tags on-the-fly in the tag bar, you have to intentionally create a tag first in the tag manager. When creating the tag, you choose if this tag is private or public. After creating the tag, you can choose it in the tag bar. This means: the tag bar in files app is read-only. This prevents shitty data due to spelling mistakes and reduces the list of unwanted tags being shared by default. The result is a cleaner environment and better control over data.

[delacosta456]

hi
Nice ongoing work
It may imply a lot of issue to resolve but wouldn't it be interested to have possibility to limit "collaborative tags" usage to allowed list of Groups ?
Actually anybody can assign restricted tag which may result to a lot of tags (on files /folder) difficult to understand / manage.

Thanks

[shu0406]

At school we have the problem that pupils can use and delete tags even if they do not have writing rights in that folder. So first step should be that the collaborative tags should respect given rights (write, delete) for every group.

[SergioArbarviro]

Hello to all,

I agree with the summary above by @rickyelopez .

Just discovered this feature and this thread, and I think the topics discussed above can be split into two general categories:

1. Privacy/Security
   
   * Configure tag visibility for different users and groups
   * Configure tag modifiability for different users and groups

In my views, the main functionality that tags are meant to perform is to give a fast and easy access to very diverse content. This fast and easy access happens because you can search by using:

• a limited number of tags (ideally: one only);
• tags belonging to different ways of looking at that diverse content (in our case: per topic, per geography, per readiness level...).

Hence, the most important feature among those neatly summarised by @rickyelopez is, in my views, that an option should be given that the modification of tags be restricted to administrators (or to a small group). If not, you end up with a myriad of slightly misspelled tags, which results in a helpless fragmentation of the category of content that you intend to create. This becomes nightmarish to administer and ultimately kills the function of tags as I described above.

Example: A taxonomy per geographic locations, with one tag per EU Member State, in a multilingual community. In the absence of this restriction to the edition of tags, you will rapidly end up having, for the concept of "Germany", and an initial official tag such as "DE - Germany", a flurry of alternatives such as DEU - Germany, DE. Germany, Deutschland, DE - Alemania, ...
After a short while, it becomes impossible to search for content related to Germany because the list of tags to search for is (1) too large and (2) registered nowhere.

[godfuture]

@SergioArbarviro
Why should tags be owned by only admin or fixed group of users? I think there could be two types of tags. Private and public (collaborative). Public tags only live inside a group. This means tags should only exist in conjunction with their owner.

Owner is a user or group:
userXY:tagXY; groupXZ:tagXW; groupXV:tagXT

The admin can add tags with empty owner and by this everyone on the server can see it (default tags).

Modification should be driven by admin of either server or group. Those that manage the server are able to edit everything, and group admins can change group tags.

As a consequence, tags with same name from different groups exist in parallel. But thats okay, if one group is deleted the tag with same name from other group will survive.

[SergioArbarviro]

@godfuture
I agree with you that the persons defining the tags could be a broader group than the administrators, and that one could imagine that the administrator of a group manages the tags relevant for that group.

My concern relates to the pollution of these public tags (= editable by a restricted set of administrators only, for the server or for each group) by private tags. In the current version of NextCloud, anybody can start typing a tag and can create his/her own private tag that is "close" to the public tag (= with one or several typo errors, truncated), but not identical, just by typing "enter" (willingly or not) when the tag starts appearing on the tag search window. This new, private, "contaminated" tag is then proposed to other users that, without knowing it, use the "contaminated" version instead of the official one... and you end up with tens of slight variations of the same chain of characters to describe the same concept... making the tagging system useless.

I understand that some use cases may want to leave complete freedom of the definition of tags by anyone. This is legitimate when the centres of interst are extremely diverse.

In more professional use cases where the universe of issues to handle is finite and there is an interest in navigating fast to the content of interest, I believe that the option should be given that the ordinary users are not given the possibility to create their own "private" tags.

[godfuture]

@SergioArbarviro
I do not entirely agree. If users create a tag, by default it is shared with others. This is bad and needs to be prevented. I agree with you in this point.

But I dont agree that users shall not be able to create their own and private tags which are not shared to others. If a user is polluting his tags with poo, then this poo is only in his user account. As drafted above, public and shared tags in a group would exist in parallel. Your own poo will not stink in other user accounts.

So again, you are free to mess up your account, but you will not be able to mess with default tags on whole server or group tags, if you do not have permission.

This way I dont understand your fear of tags going messed up. The messing up today is created because all tags are by default public.

[SergioArbarviro]

@godfuture
I thank you for your clarification and agree with your opinion. Indeed, if the tags produced by a user are "private" and hence visible to that user only, then indeed s/he can do whatever s/he wants, it has no consequence on the broader community.

[skjnldsv]

Folks, please open a dedicated issue for the user tags (if there isn't one already)
Tags are called Collaborative tags for a reason :)

We do have some API for user tags already, this is how we store favorites for example.
But it wasn't pushed further than that.

Regarding that issue, most of the work is done now (31)
Last part missing is #2143, which I quggest people follow that on the issue directly :)