So TVGuide's website has added a tag cloud to their community section.  Or rather, something vaguely resembling a tag cloud.  Here's a great example:

http://community.tvguide.com/forum.jspa?forumID=800006183

 I find the following errors:

1. It doesn't use different font sizes to identify the popularity of tags
2. "null" and "the" are two of the tags, as is the letter "L"
3. It's sorted in ASCII order, so all the tags starting with uppercase letters preceed those that start with lowercase letters.  Also, note that the first item is "Company.  It included the double quote in the tag and sorted it first because of it.
4. winchester13 is one of the tags, which appears to be a commenter's name

 

It almost kinda looks like a semi-readable sentence. What a wonderful tagging system.

"L" is probably there in reference to Showtime's The L Word.

Then why aren't The (capitalized) and Word on the list?  They shoud be appearing just as often, if not moreso.

Am I the only one who despises tag clouds to begin with?  More of an eyesore than an easy navigation feature. 

This "tag cloud" misses the point of having a tag cloud. There is no way to identify the most popular tags, so it isn't very useful.

LOL! Image says it all: (context ads rule)

 

And of course they made the links black just like the rest of the text (and the navigation links), so you have to guess if they are clickable or not. I hate it when sites make the links have the same exact style as the regular text. Grrr...

vt_mruhlin:

Am I the only one who despises tag clouds to begin with?  More of an eyesore than an easy navigation feature. 

Me too.  I haven't once actually been glad that a tag cloud was present on a site that I've visited.  They just get in the way and if I'm going to search for something, it's generally not by clicking on a tag and then sifting through all of the results.

Tag clouds can be a very efficient way to half-browse, half-search a site with a lot of subjects/categories. It also is a good way to let you know what the site is about at a glance, and offers "search" functionality to someone who might not know what they are looking for yet.

However, I agree that they tend to be rather ugly and hog space--IMO, they should be on a separate page, not on the landing page or the article pages of a site (a la TV Guide).
 

bstorer:

1. "null" and "the" are two of the tags, as is the letter "L"

 

null is my favorite one :) 

rbowes:

bstorer:

1. "null" and "the" are two of the tags, as is the letter "L"

 

null is my favorite one :) 

 

What's even better is that when you follow the "null" link - it lists the articles with that tag like 4 screens to the right!  It doesn't wrap!  Man, these guys need some serious help with their website...

jgreen:

What's even better is that when you follow the "null" link - it lists the articles with that tag like 4 screens to the right!  It doesn't wrap!  Man, these guys need some serious help with their website...

That happens on all links with enough elements. It appears that they forgot to put a </td> somewhere. I know I've done that 75,000 times, but I always see it right away. Unless this is, like, their beta site or something..
 

rbowes:

bstorer:

1. "null" and "the" are two of the tags, as is the letter "L"

 

null is my favorite one :) 

what they need is a 'very null'.

I second the motion

vt_mruhlin:

Am I the only one who despises tag clouds to begin with?  More of an eyesore than an easy navigation feature. 

I haven't seen any really good navigational tag clouds and I'm not so sure they're all that useful as navigation elements... but I love the way they're used in ma.gnolia.com as a way to enter tags. (Basically you can click on the tags to enter them; finding the most often used tags is simple enough.) I think they're also more useful when browsing stuff that you have tagged yourself. I have no inclination to trust other people have tagged things in any tolerable way though...

boolean:

Tag clouds can be a very efficient way to half-browse, half-search a site with a lot of subjects/categories. It also is a good way to let you know what the site is about at a glance, and offers "search" functionality to someone who might not know what they are looking for yet.

The only one I've ever seen is on this site, and this one is utterly worthless. Along with the big bold world "banana" (and the unbolded walrus) which is just people playing with the tag system, we have other words like "incompetence" and "clueless" which can apply to pretty much every post. Seems like a big waste of space to me.

SuperousOxide:

boolean:

Tag clouds can be a very efficient way to half-browse, half-search a site with a lot of subjects/categories. It also is a good way to let you know what the site is about at a glance, and offers "search" functionality to someone who might not know what they are looking for yet.

The only one I've ever seen is on this site, and this one is utterly worthless. Along with the big bold world "banana" (and the unbolded walrus) which is just people playing with the tag system, we have other words like "incompetence" and "clueless" which can apply to pretty much every post. Seems like a big waste of space to me.

Hey, at least it's got pretty complete Unicode support, and you can tag things ☕ and such. =) The users are the real WTF...

SuperousOxide:

The only one I've ever seen is on this site, and this one is utterly worthless. Along with the big bold world "banana" (and the unbolded walrus) which is just people playing with the tag system, we have other words like "incompetence" and "clueless" which can apply to pretty much every post. Seems like a big waste of space to me.

Dude, what is your problem with bananas?

dhromed:

SuperousOxide:

The only one I've ever seen is on this site, and this one is utterly worthless. Along with the big bold world "banana" (and the unbolded walrus) which is just people playing with the tag system, we have other words like "incompetence" and "clueless" which can apply to pretty much every post. Seems like a big waste of space to me.

Dude, what is your problem with bananas?

You are. 

SuperousOxide:

boolean:

Tag clouds can be a very efficient way to half-browse, half-search a site with a lot of subjects/categories. It also is a good way to let you know what the site is about at a glance, and offers "search" functionality to someone who might not know what they are looking for yet.

The only one I've ever seen is on this site, and this one is utterly worthless. Along with the big bold world "banana" (and the unbolded walrus) which is just people playing with the tag system, we have other words like "incompetence" and "clueless" which can apply to pretty much every post. Seems like a big waste of space to me.

 

I wanted to see a tag unrelated to this site get bigger then related tags. So i started posting everything with banana. Hmm, bananas are not worthless.....

 

plazmo:

I wanted to see a tag unrelated to this site get bigger then related tags. So i started posting everything with banana. Hmm, bananas are not worthless.....

Seems you've got more work to do. TAG_NOT_FOUND looks larger than banana. I'm not sure if that's a bug or more foolishness.

plazmo:

I wanted to see a tag unrelated to this site get bigger then related tags. So i started posting everything with banana. Hmm, bananas are not worthless.....

Setting out deliberately to debilitate the value of a system like this is the real WTF, even if it is the norm in the world today. Go rot in an Enterprise with the code-monkeys, banana boy.

☠

SuperousOxide:

plazmo:

I wanted to see a tag unrelated to this site get bigger then related tags. So i started posting everything with banana. Hmm, bananas are not worthless.....

Seems you've got more work to do. TAG_NOT_FOUND looks larger than banana. I'm not sure if that's a bug or more foolishness.

lol, indeed it is. Seems a few people are doing the TAG_NOT_FOUND thing (or one person that posts quite a bit, not sure).   It would take a lot of bananas to catch up with that tag.
 

Check out what happens if you actually CLICK the "null" tag like I did: http://community.tvguide.com/tags.jspa?tag=null

 
Layout explodes completely.  Er, I mean:

 

The REAL WTF is what happens when you click null.

 

There, that's better! ;]

Edit:  Fennec, sit the hell back down.  No need to get on this upstanding young man's case.
 

plazmo:

SuperousOxide:

plazmo:

I wanted to see a tag unrelated to this site get bigger then related tags. So i started posting everything with banana. Hmm, bananas are not worthless.....

Seems you've got more work to do. TAG_NOT_FOUND looks larger than banana. I'm not sure if that's a bug or more foolishness.

lol, indeed it is. Seems a few people are doing the TAG_NOT_FOUND thing (or one person that posts quite a bit, not sure).   It would take a lot of bananas to catch up with that tag.
 

You could always click on the tag to see who's posted with it!

BTW, TAG_NOT_FOUND probably looks bigger because it's in caps.