Labels Not Tags, Says Google

Ashraf Al Shafaki writes "The word 'tags' is the one in common use on the Web today and is one of the distinctive features of Web 2.0. Ever since Gmail came out, Google has decided to use the term 'label' instead of the term 'tag' despite they are basically the exact same thing and have the exact same function. Why is Google using inconsistent terminology in its products for such an important term? Is there a real difference between a tag and a label?"

Re:A replacement for "folder"

[kusanagi374]

Yeah, pretty much like the Motorola phones. When you create a folder on a MicroSD card (photos, videos, music, etc) it'll consider the folder name a "category", and the whole UI is based on that concept.

I believe its much more logical to consider folders as categories and subcategories instead of just directories. That's what I do when I store my data, and that's the logic behind my folder names.

Desktop email clients use term labels

[grag]

Eudora and Thunderbird use the term labels. MS Entourage and MS Outlook use the term categories. By the way, is there some standards document like RFC saying any web app, especially webmail, has to use the term tags?

Re:label makes more sense

[MP3Chuck]

"html/xml tags"

For which I'm pretty sure the proper term is "element [w3.org]."

Re:what is a tag ?

[Anonymous Coward]

If we're being pedantic then "tags" aren't used in markup either, "elements" are. The xml/html related definitions of "tag" at the google link are wrong!

Nonsense, most of them are perfectly correct. Take this one, for example:

A token that represents the beginning or end of an element. A tag that begins an element is called a start tag, and one that ends and element is called an end tag. HTML tags begin with ' < ' and end with ' > '.

That's exactly what a "tag" is (except it doesn't mention XML's <name/> syntax, but that's just a shortcut anyway).

Re:label makes more sense

[Anonymous Coward]

"html/xml tags"
For which I'm pretty sure the proper term is "element."

Not to confuse anyone...

<h1>all of this is an element</h1>
<h1> the thing on the left is a tag (an opening tag)
</h1> the thing on the left is another tag (a closing tag)

Re:It depends....

[pnewhook]

If the service is in the Beta phase it's Label. If it's in Alpha, it would be tag.

No, a 'Label' is a piece of paper or some other tangible medium with information on it that is firmly affixed to an item (like the Dell label on my monitor). A tag is the same thing, but instead of being attached directly on the product it it only partially attached such that it 'hangs off', such as the tag on my matress, or on the ear of the deer in my backyard that the environmentalist relased..

Re:Why tags?

[mporcheron]

actually, Google Reader only refers to them as tags on the Settings page, on the rest of the site they're called folders

Re:what is a tag ?

[jrockway]

No, on Slashdot, there is a depraved vocal minority that wants to feel like they are okay objectifying women in selfish, addictive, and animal-like ways.

  I'm not a Baptist; I'm just getting tired of the stereotype that techies are perverts and that if you belong to that *club* that makes porn acceptable.

  What happened to the techie that had a sister or a mother or a cute little daughter and wanted to protect them from exploitation?

You are aware that there exists a large quantity of porn directed at females, right? It's not just men that like porn... PEOPLE LIKE SEX. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you can stop posting this drivel to slashdot.

Re:A replacement for "folder"

[Wildfire Darkstar]

To be fair, there's been hard linking functionality in NTFS since the first version of XP. It may even have been there in Win2000, but I can't remember for sure. The problem, of course, is that Explorer itself offers no support for the concept, and Microsoft doesn't even ship command-line tools with the OS itself. But they do exist, and can be exploited, if somewhat awkwardly, with various tools.

Re:A replacement for "folder"

[drsmithy]

Hard links anyone? They've been around for nearly 40 years.

Hard links don't work across filesystems (or drives, in Windows-speak. or Volumes, in Mac-speak).

Re:A replacement for "folder"

[spitzak]

Actually that is a restricion in Unix, it refuses to create such hard links long before the file system sees the attempt. This was done to make it impossible to create circular dependencies. I don't know why they felt this restricion was necessary, it does not really match the Unix design philosophy. Underlying file systems certainly do support hard links to directories, as this is how the "." and ".." files work.