TagTeam basics

• This page is part of the Harvard Open Access Project (HOAP).

• Suggested short URL for this page = bit.ly/tagteam-basics

• Also see our Introduction to TagTeam.

Local jargon

• A TagTeam project is a hub. The person who creates the hub is the hub owner. The hub owner can add others to the project and give them various roles or rights. Hub members with the right privileges can tag web pages for the hub, modify the tags used by any project taggers, have the hub subscribe to feeds published elsewhere, modify the feeds to which the hub subscribes, and create hub feeds based on combinations of tag feeds and input feeds.
  • Hub inputs take three forms: (1) tags applied to external web pages, (2) feeds to which the hub subscribes, and (3) tag records imported from other tagging platforms such as Connotea. Hubs store their inputs from all three sources for deduping, back-up, export, modification, and searching.
  • Hub outputs take three forms: (1) an output feed for each hub tag, (2) an output feed for each input feed, without modification, and (3) output feeds modifying input feeds, (4) output feeds combining any tag feeds and/or input feeds, with or without modifications.

• An item is the unit of TagTeam information. If you tag an article for a TagTeam hub, the item contains the URL of the article, all the tags you applied to the article, the "description" of the article you may have added at the time of tagging, the fact that you were the one (or one of the ones) who tagged it for the hub, and similar information. (Hence, we sometimes call items "tag records".) The item does not include the text of the article itself. When a hub subscribes to feeds from elsewhere, those feeds deliver streams of items to the hub. When a hub publishes its own feeds, those feeds deliver streams of items to feed subscribers.

• The bookmarklet is the button on your browser bar that lets you tag web pages. If you have permission to tag for a hub, then you can find the bookmarklet in the "Bookmarks" tab. Near the top of that page is an underlined phrase "Add to TagTeam". Just drag that phrase to your browser bar. If you don't have permission to tag for a given hub, you will not see that phrase on the hub's Bookmarks tab.

• A filter is a rule for modifying tags. Hub members with suitable privileges can create filters, for example, to replace deprecated tags with approved tags, to replace misspelled tags with correctly spelled tags, and so on. TagTeam can apply filters to individual items, to individual input feeds, or to the entire hub. Feeds can be prospective (modifying all tags made in the future) and retroactive (modifying all tags already stored in the hub). Hub owners can use filters to tidy up a chaotic collection of tags, and to manage the evolution of a folksonomy of user-defined tags into an ontology or standard vocabulary of project-approved tags.
  • If a hub owner adds no other members and runs the hub solo, the power is much like the power provided by other tagging platforms to modify one's own tags. What makes filters special first appears when the hub has other members. Members with suitable privileges can modify the tags of all members, not just the tags their own tags.

• A remix feed is a feed published by TagTeam consisting of some combination of other feeds. If your project has many tags, for example, A, B, C, D, and E, then a remix feed could contain just the items with tags A, B, and C, or just the items with A and B but not C. Hub owners can carefully create certain remix feeds and offer them to users. Or users with the right hub privileges can create their own.

Getting started

• Go to TagTeam and sign up (create an account). If you've already signed up, then sign in.

• Once you have an account, you have the right to create your own hubs, tag for your own hubs, add members or users to your hubs, and so on.

• If you want to tag for a hub owned by someone else, you will need their permission. (Likewise, if others want to tag for one of your hubs, they will need your permission.) There are two ways to tag for a given hub: from within TagTeam itself and from another tagging service. Let's deal with these separately.

Using TagTeam as your tagging platform Create a TagTeam account. Go to the sign in page and sign up. You may now create TagTeam "hubs" or projects, and tag items for your own hubs. To tag items for OATP, take the next step. Log in to TagTeam and go to the OATP hub. Click on the Contact tab and fill out the web form, asking to participate in OATP as a tagger. We'll need your real name and a working email address. Our policy is to approve all requests to tag for OATP, and only withdraw approval for those who generate spam or persistently tag offtopic items. Approval requires a human action, and sometimes the relevant people are traveling or crunched. We'll act ASAP, and send you an email as soon as you're approved. Put the TagTeam's tagging bookmarklet in your browser bar and start tagging! Once you are authorized to tag for OATP (previous step), you can find the bookmarklet by logging in to TagTeam and the OATP hub, and clicking on the Bookmarks tab. Drag the "Add to TagTeam" link to your browser's bookmarks toolbar. Remember to use oa.new (the OATP primary tag) for all new items you want to include in the OATP primary feed (because they are OA-related and new in the last six months), and omit it from the items you want to exclude from the primary feed (for example, because they are not new). If you haven't already seen them, see the OATP tagging conventions and some of the more common OATP tags. [edit] Using a platform other than TagTeam You may tag for OATP using any tagging platform which creates RSS (or Atom) feeds for its tags. This includes Connotea, CiteULike, Delicious, and many others. You do not need to use TagTeam itself and you do not need to create a TagTeam account. Create a tag for items you want OATP to include, for example, add2oatp, jane-add2oatp, 14159, or zebra. Call this your special tag. Your special tag may be any string of characters accepted as a tag by your chosen tagging platform. Figure out the URL of the RSS (or Atom) feed generated by your chosen tagging platform for your special tag. If your chosen tagging platform generates a feed for your use of the special tag, and a separate feed for general or total use of the same tag, then here you want to use the former. Open TagTeam, click on the Contact tab, and fill out the web form, asking to participate in OATP as a tagger. We'll need your real name, a working email address, the name of the tagging platform you want to use, and the URL of the RSS feed for your special tag. You needn't have a TagTeam account. If you have an account, you needn't be logged in. When you are approved, TagTeam's OATP hub will subscribe to the feed for your special tag. Use your special tag for all the items you want OATP to include, and omit it from all the items you want to OATP to exclude. If you use it for too many items unrelated to OATP, then OATP will unusubscribe from your feed. Similarly, use oa.new (the OATP primary tag) for all new items you want to include in the OATP primary feed (because they are OA-related and new in the last six months), and omit it from the items you want to exclude from the primary feed (for example, because they are not new). The OATP policy is to subscribe to all apparently relevant feeds, and only unsubscribe from those that generate spam or persistently tag offtopic items. If you apply many tags to the same item, including your special tag, then OATP will harvest all the tags you used. If you haven't already seen them, see the OATP tagging conventions and some of the more common OATP tags.

• • To request permission, pick the target hub from the hub menu on the TagTeam front page. Once in the hub, pick the "Contact" tab. Fill out the web form and explain that you'd like to be approved to tag for the project. Note that approval requires an action from hub owner, who may be traveling or crunched. Some will act quickly and some may not.
  • TagTeam hubs can publish carefully curated feeds of content relevant to the project. If tagging for a hub did not require permission, then spammers could undermine the value of the project feeds. (You may already know the problem well.) Determined spammers can still request permission to tag for a given hub, and if the crowd for that crowd-sourced project is large, the owners may not personally know all participants and grant permission. But the permission requirement means that TagTeam hub owners can revoke tagging permission from spammers.

--if you have permission to tag for more than one hub (and you're tagging through TT), the bookmarklet lets you choose which hub you're tagging for at the moment. See the "Add to hub" pull-down menu at the top of the bookmarklet. By default, it will show the hub for which you most recently tagged.

Copyright and licensing

• You'll notice that TagTeam screens display a copyright notice, "© President and Fellows of Harvard College." TagTeam was developed by the Harvard Open Access Project, the Harvard Library Lab, and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and it's standard Harvard policy to put this statement on any software created by the university. However:
  1. The copyright statement only covers the code, not the data.
  2. TagTeam is free and open source. The source code is at GitHub under an Affero General Public License (AGPL). There is no conflict between an open license like AGPL and a copyright statement like Harvard's. On the contrary, open licenses presuppose copyright and express the wishes of the copyright holder.