Tag, we are it. I love me free form tagging. A bit before there were there was the Web2.0 frenzy of folksonomy, and wealth that Wikipedia is, leads me to the birth of a term used quite widely.

It rounds counter to the rigidity and forced rules of Official Metadata, in that people, groups, mobs, make free form organizational classifications. It’s at play here on this blog, and WordPress pitches both formal taxonomy of categorys versus informal of tags (cough, cough, COUGH), where I still socially bookmark alone, and of course, in flickr. It’s messy. It’s fun.

Mainly for me, I have big plans to organize stuff, but typically, it becomes a pile of mess. And it still works to organize stuff.

There are certain photo platforms (rhymes with Binstablam) where people stuff more tags in than words in their descriptions. I think it has to do with gaining traction. But maybe it’s just an informal language. I do remember way back when at University of Mary Washington, where the great poet/teacher Claudio Emerson, had her creative writing students blogging where they developed free form messages via LongRidiculousTagsThatBecamePlayfulLanguage.

Where was I going? Yes, in flickr, I use tags a few tags pretty regularly, and as I can see, often mispelled, mangled, repetitive, messy. I make one for each year of my daily photos (2020, 2015, on and on), ones used for doing #ds106 #dailycreates (see what I did there?), and for my most special person.

I don’t tag everything, about a third of my 72000 photos are tagless.

All of this is what I want to get to, and again what makes flickr a joy for me, and more than what people seem to think of online photo places as just being a place to dump photos. There are some 25000 people sharing photo of Stick People in Peril. But there is also a fascinating and almost infinite number of fringe and outlier groups– one of the earliest ones I got invited to was Vegafitti (18 years old and still there!) and Rusty Mailboxes.

I am most proud of the group I made, in which, Groucho Marx style, I am the only member, hideous hotel carpets.

Thus I now get to this new and way out on the edge group Maksimuma Etikedo — I cannot find any clue what the name means, but the intent is there in the group url. It came my way via someone I bump into online I know mostly as s2art (in flickr and mastodon) actually Stu or Melbourne photographer Stuart Murdoch.

The premise of this group is top share photos to which you have applied the maximum amount of tags flickr will let you add to a photo. Any guesses on that number?

Yup, it is 75. So in the blog post 75 TPP is 75 Tags Per Photo. The tag line of the group is “Seventy five Tags! Is it as easy as you think?”

It’s not.

Of course when Stu invited me to the group I had to try. This was the photo I chose, as it had 3 different vehicles.

2024/366/103 Very Vintage Vehicles
2024/366/103 Very Vintage Vehicles flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)

I swear I had added 75 tags and submitted to the group (they approve all submissions), but I did not see it in the pool. When I found the photo, strangely it only had like 8 tags, IO knew I did it! So I just went back and added tags AGAIN, to hit the max 75 TPP.

And I have to tell you, it is not easy.

So in thinking of this again, I took another recent photo, and sat down to go 75 TPP. Visit to revel in my taggedness. Or laught.

ZOMG it makes you tired. Follow this photo to flickr to see my 75 tag swarm.

2024/366/261 This is As Far As We Go
2024/366/261 This is As Far As We Go flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)

Again, this took a good 20+ minutes. Those last 15 are really hard.

This does not have real value, and I am in some ways creating tag polliution.

But its a fun challenge, and a weird one, and I like trying.

Okay Stu! Please accept my photos!

Maximum Tagger. I try.


Featured Image: Maxium Tags allowed = 75? My photo, nuttin generated. 2018/365/177 Maximum Sky flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)

Top half of a cracked, weathered metal road sign that reads "Maximum" below a solid, cloudless sky.
If this kind of stuff has value, please support me by tossing a one time PayPal kibble or monthly on Patreon
Become a patron at Patreon!
Profile Picture for CogDog The Blog
An early 90s builder of web stuff and blogging Alan Levine barks at CogDogBlog.com on web storytelling (#ds106 #4life), photography, bending WordPress, and serendipity in the infinite internet river. He thinks it's weird to write about himself in the third person. And he is 100% into the Fediverse (or tells himself so) Tooting as @cogdog@cosocial.ca

Comments

  1. I wish I had been more mindful of tags in Flickr but I only do it for a certain ongoing project, and going back to re-tag … ack … but I know it’s useful and creates an architecture of remembering and sharing.
    Kevin

  2. I love tags especially in Flickr where they join location & date in helping search. Also for using the API.

    I’ve found tagging in the Photos app before uploading helps a lot with my ‘workflow’ (@ Kevin).

    I just cheated and asked chatGPT for 75 tags for a photo:
    https://www.flickr.com/photos/troutcolor/54010476036/

    I’ll not submit that as it is would not feel right. Given alt tag & description generators I wonder…

      1. I firmly believe that a large chunk of the AI excitement is that Google hasn’t cared about providing good search in a long time. Now what happens when the results in AI responses are more clevely enshittified? I imagine that will be a real mess.

        I threw the phrase into Google translate on auto-recognize language and into ChatGPT requesting a translation. Both got me Esperanto. The GPT translation response was closer to the intention of the phrase. I’ve now wasted the most energy and water I can . . . I do feel the urge to contextualize it agains all the other dumb things I do.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *