I disagree on grouping the Windows shells with Linux shells. PowerShell/Batch are very different languages from “shell” languages like *sh (and even very different from each other)
Yeah I agree, perhaps, unix-shell, would be a more descriptive tag, at least that is the nomenclature chose by wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_shell
For the most part, using the proposed shell tag in conjunction with the unix and windows tags should suffice to distinguish shell mostly used on Unix from PowerShell etc.
FWIW, I am not in favor of this tag proposal, and even less if it’s supposed to be exclusionary to shells run predominantly on Unix-likes.
This comes up relatively often. Here’s a thread I submitted 3 years ago - https://lobste.rs/s/3rpinm/tag_proposal_shell. I still think the idea was solid, but I didn’t have a strong enough opinion to make a good case.
In addition to upvotes (which you have), showing recent relevant articles can also help your case.
The issue that came up last time was that “shell” is still a broad term and it wasn’t super clear if it would just cover shell scripting and shells or also shell utilities - I do think shell is the best option among similar proposed tags though.
I hope this gets traction, but it’s an uphill battle getting a tag added and they generally have to be very well defined to get approved.
TBH, given that tags are mandatory, Lobsters’ range of tags seems very restrictive to me. I can rarely find anything that fits well. A few things off the top of my head:
If there is a strong drive to remove the number of tags for some reason, how about collapsing all the xBSD tags into #bsd? Various editors into #editors?
they enable people to filter topics - positively, as in subscribing to specific tags, or negatively, by “muting” tags so they don’t see them on the site.
I.e. they are “top-down” as opposed to “folksonomies” as on many other sites.
What I am saying is that some of them are very narrow (e.g, to certain specific editors) while others are overly broad (e.g. “hardware”).
Example: yesterday I submitted a story about a chap using the RasPi Pico to do a somewhat hardware-compatible emulation of Transputer chips. He is using the 4 programmable UARTs of the RP2040 SoC to support the 4 inter-chip transputer comms channels, something not so easily possible on any other Pi.
The only vaguely applicable tag is “hardware” but it’s not really hardware engineering. He is building his own breadboards, yes. But the interesting stuff is the software, and the use of original INMOS chips, and running an emulator that appears to the INMOS switching hardware to be real hardware.
It is retrocomputing, in a way: emulating long-gone kit. It is both hardware, and software, and home circuit building. It is using cutting-edge kit to run decades-old software.
But he hopes to be able to use lots of Picos (which are £5 each) to build a parallel cluster computer and run cluster software on it.
I think #hardware is a bit reductive for that, don’t you?
The very specific tags are there because there are infrequent flareups of posts about a particular topic, and users want a specific tag to be able to filter them out.
The tag systemd isn’t there because people want to discuss systemd, precisely the opposite.
Your tag scheme above is perfect for folksonomy-oriented sites like pinboard.in, or if you have a personal knowledge management system. But it’s not good for lobsters, because you can’t have user-submitted tags (every other post would be tagged #jewsdid911 or similar), and every addition of a specific but broad tag will risk increasing the Venn diagram of someone filtering out something they might otherwise like.
IMHO, the term “tag” was ill-chosen, it should have been “topic” or similar.
I’m just honestly trying to explain how tags work on this site. It’s a bit counter-intuitive, especially considering the overloading of the term ‘tag’.
Tags are determined by the community, if there is a strong with for more finegrained tags, they will be added. But they are no panacea.
I am not sure there is a happy medium. Either hashtags are open, in which case they are a firehose and S:N is low, or they’re closed (and maybe occasionally changed, e.g. voted on) in which case people will be dissatisfied with them.
I am in the latter camp, currently, and I tried to suggest a few alternatives. You did not engage with those, but merely patiently explained why things are as they are. OK, point made.
Now I come to write this, I am reminded of some job-search system I used to battle with. I was trying to enter my professional experience and found it amazingly frustrating, because either I matched nothing (I professionally know a lot of obsolete systems, OSes, etc. and that has actually turned out to be a professional skill and useful attribute) or I matched everything and it was pointless. Yes, I know Windows; big fat hairy deal. Everyone knows Windows. But I know (say) Windows NT 4 and I could help migrating from that to (say) Win7.
Perhaps some kind of hierarchical system might work, where certain finer tags could match multiple higher level ones. E.g. in the case I was discussing, it was both hardware and software, but it was also definitely retrocomputing, and that might be a sufficiently general net for some.
Never mind. There are reasons for how it is, and for want of a better word, TPTB do not feel the need to change this right now. Enough said.
I have no problem with this idea, but what about shells for other platforms? Would articles about Powershell modules be on topic? What about VMS DCL? :)
I like the idea of a tag for command shells, but keep in mind that the word “shell” has a broader meaning than just unix/posix-y and bash-like shells. “Shell” can refer to a language, a command interface, or even to the bones of a graphical environment. It’s important to distinguish which meaning of shell is intended.
Yes please. I would like to be able to mute it at this point.
Unix is close but seems too broad to me.
Would this tag include, say, the Oil language, batch scripts and powershell? Or is it actually about “bash”?
I think it should be “shell” and not “Bash” to cover multiple dialects.
I disagree on grouping the Windows shells with Linux shells. PowerShell/Batch are very different languages from “shell” languages like *sh (and even very different from each other)
Yeah I agree, perhaps, unix-shell, would be a more descriptive tag, at least that is the nomenclature chose by wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_shell
but from a lobsters point of view the articles about and projects involving them could be argued to logically fall into one group
For the most part, using the proposed
shelltag in conjunction with theunixandwindowstags should suffice to distinguish shell mostly used on Unix from PowerShell etc.FWIW, I am not in favor of this tag proposal, and even less if it’s supposed to be exclusionary to shells run predominantly on Unix-likes.
yes
Also would include fish and powershell.
This comes up relatively often. Here’s a thread I submitted 3 years ago - https://lobste.rs/s/3rpinm/tag_proposal_shell. I still think the idea was solid, but I didn’t have a strong enough opinion to make a good case.
In addition to upvotes (which you have), showing recent relevant articles can also help your case.
The issue that came up last time was that “shell” is still a broad term and it wasn’t super clear if it would just cover shell scripting and shells or also shell utilities - I do think shell is the best option among similar proposed tags though.
I hope this gets traction, but it’s an uphill battle getting a tag added and they generally have to be very well defined to get approved.
Agreed.
TBH, given that tags are mandatory, Lobsters’ range of tags seems very restrictive to me. I can rarely find anything that fits well. A few things off the top of my head:
#cluster #emulation #functional (or #fp or #funp) #retrocomputing #opsys #parallel #pascal #wirthian
If there is a strong drive to remove the number of tags for some reason, how about collapsing all the xBSD tags into #bsd? Various editors into #editors?
Tags serve 2 purposes here:
I.e. they are “top-down” as opposed to “folksonomies” as on many other sites.
Yes, I get that.
What I am saying is that some of them are very narrow (e.g, to certain specific editors) while others are overly broad (e.g. “hardware”).
Example: yesterday I submitted a story about a chap using the RasPi Pico to do a somewhat hardware-compatible emulation of Transputer chips. He is using the 4 programmable UARTs of the RP2040 SoC to support the 4 inter-chip transputer comms channels, something not so easily possible on any other Pi.
The only vaguely applicable tag is “hardware” but it’s not really hardware engineering. He is building his own breadboards, yes. But the interesting stuff is the software, and the use of original INMOS chips, and running an emulator that appears to the INMOS switching hardware to be real hardware.
It is retrocomputing, in a way: emulating long-gone kit. It is both hardware, and software, and home circuit building. It is using cutting-edge kit to run decades-old software.
But he hopes to be able to use lots of Picos (which are £5 each) to build a parallel cluster computer and run cluster software on it.
I think #hardware is a bit reductive for that, don’t you?
The very specific tags are there because there are infrequent flareups of posts about a particular topic, and users want a specific tag to be able to filter them out.
For example:
The tag
systemdisn’t there because people want to discuss systemd, precisely the opposite.Your tag scheme above is perfect for folksonomy-oriented sites like pinboard.in, or if you have a personal knowledge management system. But it’s not good for lobsters, because you can’t have user-submitted tags (every other post would be tagged
#jewsdid911or similar), and every addition of a specific but broad tag will risk increasing the Venn diagram of someone filtering out something they might otherwise like.IMHO, the term “tag” was ill-chosen, it should have been “topic” or similar.
I entirely see what you mean. I mean, I think I do.
But your argument does not seem to refute mine; to me, it seems to be tangential.
However, I can see that you feel strongly about this, whereas I do not, so… OK.
I’m just honestly trying to explain how tags work on this site. It’s a bit counter-intuitive, especially considering the overloading of the term ‘tag’.
Tags are determined by the community, if there is a strong with for more finegrained tags, they will be added. But they are no panacea.
Strong will?
Yes, I got that. :-)
I am not sure there is a happy medium. Either hashtags are open, in which case they are a firehose and S:N is low, or they’re closed (and maybe occasionally changed, e.g. voted on) in which case people will be dissatisfied with them.
I am in the latter camp, currently, and I tried to suggest a few alternatives. You did not engage with those, but merely patiently explained why things are as they are. OK, point made.
Now I come to write this, I am reminded of some job-search system I used to battle with. I was trying to enter my professional experience and found it amazingly frustrating, because either I matched nothing (I professionally know a lot of obsolete systems, OSes, etc. and that has actually turned out to be a professional skill and useful attribute) or I matched everything and it was pointless. Yes, I know Windows; big fat hairy deal. Everyone knows Windows. But I know (say) Windows NT 4 and I could help migrating from that to (say) Win7.
Perhaps some kind of hierarchical system might work, where certain finer tags could match multiple higher level ones. E.g. in the case I was discussing, it was both hardware and software, but it was also definitely retrocomputing, and that might be a sufficiently general net for some.
Never mind. There are reasons for how it is, and for want of a better word, TPTB do not feel the need to change this right now. Enough said.
I would personally like to read and hear more about #activitypub
Submissions about ActivityPub are on topic, and searching for the term gives a number of results. For tags, I’d suggest
distributedandwebAgree. There should be one for “shell” if there’s already one for Python, Go, Rust, Swift, C, Elixir, and others.
agree! love the recent influx of shell content - it’s gotten me learning plain Bourne shell 😄
I have no problem with this idea, but what about shells for other platforms? Would articles about Powershell modules be on topic? What about VMS DCL? :)
I like the idea of a tag for command shells, but keep in mind that the word “shell” has a broader meaning than just unix/posix-y and bash-like shells. “Shell” can refer to a language, a command interface, or even to the bones of a graphical environment. It’s important to distinguish which meaning of shell is intended.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_(computing)
+1
Agreed
Also agree that we need to have this tag. 👍