Tag or Categorize Users

[synapticarbors]

As gittip grows, the list of users making the world a better place (at the bottom of https://www.gittip.com/about/stats.html) is going to become a bit unruly. It might be nice to provide some sort of categorization so that someone coming to the site and wanting to discover someone, could look through a much smaller list of people (e.g. who work on python web frameworks).

I could imagine that users self identify themselves with different categories. This might be better accomplished by a general search framework for gittip, but I sort of like a Stackoverflow style set of tags with synonyms.

[timothyfcook]

I could see just listing a few people on the /stats page, to give the public examples of users who are "making the world better"... and then the sorting already available for finding Github users associated with github organizations enables one level of sorting.

I do agree that, as in issue #80 , there needs to be ways to sort users based on criteria they define , both for this current stage (that is primarily for programmers) but even moreso for later stages when the site could broaden to include a larger community.

Tagging seems right. Maybe users should both self-identify with what projects they work on (and provide a url linking to that project) as well as with more generic Tags to help with sorting of genres.

[timothyfcook]

Tagging should require autofill so you can allign with existing tags

[chadwhitacre]

Resurfaced by @napoleoncomplex on HN:

Just my two cents here, maybe it's worth thinking of offering a more loose relation to specific fields for gittip users instead of projects/corporations, which isn't related to being compensated for being in that field. Something like the tag system on Stack Overflow, for example. Considering the broad scope you mention the platform could have in the future, it could look like this: upon sign-up, a musician adds tags to his profile, #music and #acoustic, a programmer adds #programming, #python and #opensource. That way you let your users build your categories, and your users get a nice filter for their interests, and as you mention in the side note, companies can get ad space by donating in the fields they care about.

Edit: I forgot to address the issue of people tagging themselves with a specific project.

[chadwhitacre]

That's in reference to #27. I think @napoleoncomplex may be right: maybe Gittip wants both communities / tags / categories, as well as brands / projects / corporations. This ticket is about the former. #27 is about the latter, and that's where I've posted her/his further comments regarding projects / brands / corporations.

[chadwhitacre]

Subsumed by #449.