cohost support

I've recently learned the bizarre fact that if you share a post, the author's tags will not be shown to anyone seeing the share. Even more bizarre, if you add tags to the share, they will be shown on the post in the exact location that the author's tags would have been if the post weren't a share!

A tag often carries vital contextual information about a post. People used to tumblr are not going to suddenly understand that this isn't allowed here;  it's common to see tags used as additional little comments and jokes, and in some cases to indicate things like "this is a joke" that might not be otherwise obvious to everyone.

Hiding those tags when shared doesn't make any sense and opens up all kinds of possibilities for confusion and sadness. _Replacing_ them with random other tags added by the sharer is frankly dangerous. A vague angry post could be easily made to look as though it is targeting an individual the original author has no problem with, etc.

I understand that if you know how cohost works, you can tell from the top bar that this is what is happening. But I've been using the website heavily for a couple weeks now and had no idea until it was pointed out explicitly in a post I happened to see; I don't think a very high percentage of new users are going to figure this out.

I really think this is a terrible, terrible misfeature. Please fix it!!

One important reason for people to tag shares without adding anything to the post is to organize them on their blog

just type "a" or :eggbug: or something, no-one will mind and it indicates that the tags are not from the original post while also allowing that organization for featured tags or etc.

I think the ability to add additional information to a post without it being automatically replicated through shares is actually a useful social feature. It's nice to be able to add little asides to your own or other people's posts without it having to actually be part of the post itself. If you want your text to be included in shares, put it in the post, and if not, put it in the tags. Everyone who uses the site for very long understands that's how it works, so I don't agree that the behavior you're describing is an issue, Yaodema.

I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to a feature that let you click to view the original tags on a post or share, perhaps where it's collapsed or hidden by default but can be expanded or shown so it doesn't clutter up the feed. However, given the primary uses of tags are 1. an organizational tool and 2. a way to add asides that you know won't persist through shares, I don't see this as a necessity. 

What I would be strongly opposed to would be your proposed removal of the ability to organize posts on my own blog without having to append some meaningless placeholder text to each share. In addition to the annoyance of having to do that myself, imagine every post on your feed having a dozen little "replies" that are all just emojis or single characters or whatever so that the sharers could add tags. To me, that would be so much more detrimental to UX than any decision that could be made about whether or not tags should be shown in shares.

I'm not opposed completely to the idea of allowing an empty post to add tags, but the original tags should still be visible to people if they want it to be visible. the objective should always be options for how to make this information visible to people. I would prefer this be the default, but for those that consider tags appearing on other posts to be "clutter" the tags on previous posts could be hidden by default.

I do prefer that the origin of tags on posts not be something you have to figure out by knowing the site well. the user interface is telling me "these are the tags that belong on the post," they do not tell me "these are the tags that a user added to this post" at any time. I had to figure that out through using the site for a good while. the communication between user and dev is incomplete here. the easiest way I can think of to resolve this would be to make empty posts show their added tags separate from the tags of the original post, and make it obvious which page added them.

I think part of what is going on here is you're used to the way it currently works, and from reading further above, to how tumblr handles it. I don't believe the devs here would be so resistant themselves as to replicate tumblr's awful hands-off attitude, or to reduce options for people rather than increasing them. it'd go against their entire way of doing things so far! I also know I'm asking for something that is somewhat different from what the OP was asking for, and am workshopping it over time, but I chose this one because it was closest to what I thought would solve the issue when I saw it. maybe this deserves its own thread tbh.

I do find it rather unlikely, even in the case that a tiny non-empty post is required to add tags, that people would create massive chains of just "a" or an emoji, except as a bit. most people would just go to a higher point in the chain to repost, as often happens already on the site as-is. and people hardly need this kind of excuse to do this kind of bit, people literally made chains of apparently-empty posts at one point!

neither the "empty reposts show where their tags came from" nor the "empty posts cannot add tags, add at least one character to a post to do that" option prevents you from organizing your blog with added tags to check later, so I'm a bit lost as to why this seems like it'd cause so much trouble for you.

> I also know I'm asking for something that is somewhat different from what the OP was asking for, and am workshopping it over time, but I chose this one because it was closest to what I thought would solve the issue when I saw it. maybe this deserves its own thread tbh.

I don't think your idea is very far from what I was asking for at all! It might be exactly the solution I would have picked on my own, in fact.

I really still can't get my head around the idea of tags being 2nd-class content; they are just words added to the post for reasons, and it should always be clear that they were added, and who added them.

I think I nice solution for people who want to empty-repost but add tags is: the share button is always on the original post, but there is optionally a distinct second row of tags added by the sharer. That way you don't get an ever-growing mess of secondary tags on a much-shared post, everyone can add tags for their own organization/joke purposes, and you can can always tell which tags are whose.

Tags are "2nd-class content" in a way that there's a possibility to add something to the post and not have it broadcasted along with it via shares, intentionally. Also to organize your posts on your own blog, and these organizational tags loose their meaning out of that context. Also to be searchable — unneeded on a shared post. All these are common reasons to use tags. If the reason was for them to be the actual post's content… the poster would just include what they wanted to include inside of it

Showing tags on shares in such cases either takes poster's aside out of the original context of their blog and plasters it in any place on the platform, which they might have not wanted. Or it creates clutter of tags created for organizational and discoverability purposes. This is why I am against showing tags on shares by default — but I am not opposed hiding them behind some UI element like a dropdown or something like that

And having to pad a post to tag it with your own organizational tags is even more mess of course

> Also to be searchable — unneeded on a shared post. 

except when the post is being tagged specifically to organize things, as you said. and also, remember, the tags don't currently show up at all on shared posts. if the tags contained something of interest (which they often do) or contained useful search terms (which they are literally designed to be) then all indications that the tags even exist are invisible on a share by default. you have to click through to the original post, which most people are not going to do.

I want to be able to use the search functions of cohost properly to find posts I remember seeing, and like 90% or more of the posts I see have no tags on them, because they get hidden by the current rules of how tags are visible (being, only the most recent share is visible, ever)! trying to copy the tags from the post you're sharing won't work either, because that just tries to make one giant blob of a tag, full of #s. there is no easy way to do what the UI should be doing on its own.

> but I am not opposed hiding them behind some UI element like a dropdown or something like that

then make it an option. I massively prefer the ability to see the tags by default, you apparently want the exact opposite. cohost is a platform built on these kinds of options! just make it an appearance setting for tags!

> And having to pad a post to tag it with your own organizational tags is even more mess of course

I still find this baffling, but I honestly don't care that much. we can keep empty reposts. just make it reasonably possible for new users to tell at a glance that those tags are from another user, which user they are from, and what the original tags were. currently we get none of this information, and it took me literal months to be fully aware that this tag information was just not showing up at all on a share. and now I'm aware that most people seeing my posts don't see my tags at all.

To echo some scattered sentiments from previous posts in a succinct way: the tags from each post in a chain should be visible through a dropdown that prevents clutter, and filterable for those who want to filter out certain content. This maximizes information while minimizing the amount of screen real estate it takes up.

just bumping this since i saw a post today that had some good original context in its original tags but was shared which meant those tags didnt display and the meaning of the post kinda got obfuscated as a result[1]. It's a bugbear to figure out exactly how to implement but it's worth doing IMO.

[1] Also, there's the counterargument "a user should just know that the tags aren't as solid content as the post itself and take that into consideration", but personally I think that's unintuitive and not really a solid counter to the original want.