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Tag me stupid, baby!

This postbag contains small pieces of irony or humor which may choke small children or law professors

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink

Not everyone was impressed.

"I know you were trying to be funny/smart-alecky/serious about being funny," writes Rich, "but I fell asleep half way through the article."

Well thanks for waking up to tell us that, Rich!

"I heartily agree that more people need to grow a sense of humor; there seems to be an increasing preconception that everyone should think like YOU do and "What's wrong with you, you miserable fascist dictators anatomy part!" if you don't," writes Richard Warnock.

"I have had instances of misunderstandings with persons I've known online since the early 1990s on the old bulletin board scene where the other party has taken it seriously AND personally even when the content was literally marked up with smileys at the end of each portion that was meant to be just funny.

"And these are folks that have read my epistles nearly daily for over ten years.

"I think that each and every humorless indiviual on the entire internet should be sent to alt.flame for a two month stint as an apprentice target :)"

Richard also notes that our old Humor Tags idea doesn't clash with US Section 508 accessibility requirements. He does this for a living and describes 508 this as the most important for any US government-backed lawsites.

"The basic rule just says: (c) Web pages shall be designed so that all information conveyed with color is also available without color, for example from context or markup. The equivalent from the W3C is: 2.1 Ensure that all information conveyed with color is also available without color, for example from context or markup. "The point is that color is only an issue if LACK of it can cause issues in comprehending content or navigation. The primary exemplar is "Press the Green Button to Continue or Click the Red button to Cancel." This would give anyone one with color blindness a problem.

In which case, maybe one day, Humor Tags may fly.

Finally, the strong undercurrent of control-freakery that's behind the Tag craze hasn't gone unnoticed.

"Surely he next tag that we'll see will be HonorTagCommentSpammer," writes Steve Anderson - sarcastically.

"That's the problem with self-tagging, it's wide open to abuse. People think they can tag themselves to boost their traffic and for instant credibility. And anyone call call themselves anything. How about HonorTagSantaClaus?

"You earn honor by doing something good, not labelling yourself. It's like giving yourself a Congressional Medal of HonorTag"

We neglected this aspect of HonorTags first time round which seems to sum up both the earnestness and the futility, and it's confirmed for us in the HonorTags FAQ:

"The readers get the author's intentions up front... [yes, we'd sort of gathered that]. What's in it for the creators? They get increased control over how they're identified." [our emphasis].

Why on earth would anyone want to do that? And on the wild-wild-web, what makes anyone think they can succeed?

Next: an XML grammar to push water up hill. ®

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