Ratags
I had a brainstorm about a new concept I’m calling “ratags”. Cindy helped me come up with the name — it is a combination of rating and tag. Ratags are like the tagging systems used by del.icio.us, flickr, and other sites, except that the tags are parameterized. So instead of just the tag, there is a value associated with the tag. The value associated with the tag can be of different kinds. It could be a rating (one to five stars, or thumbs up / thumbs down). A value could also be a date, or a range of dates. Or it could just be a number. So in addition to just adding tags to things, you can use ratags to assign ratings.
For example, a bicycle rider might want to tag a road with its grade (how steep it is), so there could be a ratag called “grade” that takes a value (e.g., flat through steep).
Want to not only allow people to define their own ratags (like they currently can define tags) but also to let them define new kinds of ratags. Each kind of ratag, including user defined kinds, should have a graphical representation (one to five stars, thumbs up / thumbs down, etc.)
Furthermore, I had been thinking about the community aspects of Zat, and want to provide interest groups (or just groups). Certain ratags can be associated with groups. For example, if there is a bicycling group, they could have ratags for “grade” and for how wide the shoulder of the road is, etc. Groups can also be hierarchical, so that within the bicycling group, there can be subgroups for touring bicycling and for off-road bicycling, since their ratags would be different. Same thing with boating. Subgroups could include sailing and motorboating, etc.
–wm