extra tags added to my posts
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I just need to know how things work. I have a list of my own tags that I put on my posts when I generate them. I’ve noticed that when I click on some links through which some people came to my blog, my posts are listed with a bunch of irrelevant tags that I didn’t put on them. What gives?
For example: on my blog stats page, wordpress.com/tags/people-in-my-life was listed today as a referrer, so out of curiosity I clicked on it. A whole list of referrals to my posts showed up with that tag (people-in-my-life), and others (such as “fandom”) that I never use. So, who’s adding tags to my posts, and in what dataspace are these tags showing up? Why is it even possible for someone to add tags to someone else’s posts? It feels to me a bit like a violation of my space to have these extra, extraneous, and irrelevant tags added to my posts without my awareness or consent. Is there something I can do to prevent this? Is there something WordPress could/should be doing? I don’t see how the practice could be benefitting anyone, because the added tags are completely misleading.
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that is strange. i believe a similar case has been reported before in the forums. if i’m not wrong that was reported to feedback and resolved from there. so you should do the same.
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I’ve experienced some extra categories popping up from time to time as well. In every case they were loosely related to the categories I did have. I simply deleted them here => Manage => Categories. I’m not thinking any other blogger had access to my blog. What I am thinking is that staff are working on some harmonization of categories.
For example, although you may not ever use the term “fandom” most the “the people in my life” could probably be described as your fans. I think sulz is right and that you should make a list of them and report them to staff. However, in the meanwhile, you didn’t put them there so then why not go ahead and delete them like I did?
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Thanks for the responses.
The extra tags aren’t registering on my posts on my blog; that’s why I asked what dataspace this was happening in. I only discovered them by clicking on the link on my blog stats page back to the wordpress referral from which someone apparently came to visit the blog. That’s what I don’t understand–where and how the tags are getting attached to my posts.
Also–the new tags bear no relationship to the ones I’m using. Example:
My tags: spirituality,spiritual, politics, philosophy, religion
New tags: people in my life, fadom, babble, samu’t sari (I don’t even know what “samu’t sari” means.)
I’ll try reporting this via feedback and see what they say. I know there’s a lot I don’t understand about tags and links in general, but this still seems wierd to me.
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I believe you are looking at the wordpress.com tags page and are becoming confused. I see on the far right hand side
Related Tags
More »* Philosophy
* Psychology
* social science
* Social phenomenon
* Epistemology
* Semantics
* Ethics, norms and politics
* Mind body communication …Understand that the Related tags are not in anyway attached to your posts. Only the categories you assigned specifically to your posts are appearing on your posts.
IMO there’s nothing to report to staff. This is simply the way tag pages work. If you were in a library these would be See also headings. -
timethief: So who assigns tags to content on the wordpress.com tags page? Or, since I doubt an actual person sits there and does this–how does it happen? What’s the purpose and function of the wordpress.com tags page, if it’s not just a clearinghouse for tiems based on tags assigned by the people who make up the content?
Where exactly am I being taken when I ckick on the “referrer” link on my stats page? Is it the same place I would be taken if, starting at the wordpress homepage, I opened up the “more tags” and then clicked on the specific tag that that’s in the referral address on my stats page? (If you can sort that all out. . . )
As I said, partly what I’m after here is just understanding–I don’t get it, and I’d like to understand. If the additional tags bore any resemblance either to my tags or to the content of the posts, it would make some kind of sense to me–but they don’t. So perhaps another question is–are tags just slapped on things more or less randomly by wordpress?
judyb12: Sigh. I need a spellchecker. Thanks–I’ll fix it.
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The bloggers themselves tag assign the tags to those bits of content. They do it by assigning categories to their posts. When they publish their posts, they show up in the tag system under those categories.
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“referrer” link on my stats page
These are the url’s from which other people came to your blog and viewed your posts. They caould have come by doing a search on Google, Yahoo, AOL, etc. They could have come by clicking through a link on some other blogger’s blog that was discussing a post you wrote. They could have come as a result of someone being on a wordpress.com tag page and clicking on your post to read more as the tag pages only have a excerpt.are tags just slapped on things more or less randomly by wordpress
No I don’t believe so. It’s my understanding that each blogger assigns their own category/tags to their own posts and these are then automatically posted by the software onto the wordpress.com tag pages.The spirituality term is defined quite differently by monotheists, polytheists, humanists, followers of new age (or ancient traditions), Native Americans, etc. A common meaning is “devotion to metaphysical matters, as opposed to worldly things.” Another is “Activities rituals and practices which renew, lift up, comfort, heal and inspire both ourselves and those with whom we interact.”
Thus I do know a category like “spirituality” covers a wide spectrum and that the related tags associated with it are likely to be listed as religion, philosophy, psychology, faith, ethics, etc.
WordPress.com tag pages
That’s as far as my understanding goes so I’m hoping drmike will step in and give us more information on the wordpress.com tag pages and how they operate. -
I feel like people aren’t understanding my question. The extra tags I’m talking about are in the lost of tags on the referral to my post, They are intermingled with my own tags that I had put on the post. They are listed at the bottom of the referral blurb, along with the tags that I had put on. They are in no way related either to my tags, or to the content of the post. They aren’t just listed on the page where the referrals are found, they are attached to the specific referral to my specific post. Where do they come from, and how are they getting attached to my post referrals?
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I’m not too sure I understand you. Do you mean you labelled a post with a tag say ‘banana’ and when you go to the tag page there are posts relating to the tag banana and on the right more tags, such as ‘apples’, ‘kiwis’… are displayed?
If that’s the case that’s only what other people have added as tags to their posts which were labelled ‘banana’.
Take for example this tag: Matchbox360 for which I am the only one using it. On the right side are several tags listed which I have used when also using the Matchbox360 tag.
So are you saying that you get referrals from the tags on the right side, the ‘apples’ which you have never used in your tags?
[Don’t ask me where this whole bananas/apples thing comes from btw] ;)
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Carocat Member: No, it’s not the list of “related tags” on the right of the screen I’m talking about. You know how each blurb about a post has a list of tags at the bottom of the blurb? Persumably the tags the blogger put there? That’s where the extra tags are showing up. Which is why they puzzle me.
I can’t find a referral to any of my posts–I haven’t been posting often recently–to give a specific example. And I”m curious whether the extra tags show up if I get there starting at the wordpress homepage, and following tags to the list of posts, or only when I follow a link from my dashboard stats page back to the list of posts. I intend to figure that out, but don’t have time right now.
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/nod to judy for providing the screencap
@ addofio
Now I understand and no this should not be happening at all. Please send in a feedback to staff explaining the problem and be sure to include the screencap link above. The feedback button is on the top right hand corner of any blog page. -
I’ll try to do that, except I can only do it during the work week which is when I don’t have much time for blogging.
Thanks, judyb, for helping clarify what I was talking about. Now I want to know what a screen cap is :-)
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screen capture or screenshot :)
You can send email to support at wordpress.com any time.
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