Deprecation of Tags

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#1

Hello!

I recently started transitioning my workflow to Memex.
I’m taking advantage of the temporary free beta to see if this is something I want to invest in.

Today was the first time I noticed the warning that Tags were going to be deprecated in favor of Spaces.
Right now Tags are a central part of how I save and curate information.

I haven’t explored any of the social aspects of your service. I didn’t realize that creating curated content feeds was a focus of Memex.
I’m willing to participate to see if it provides any value to me and out of curiosity.

I have a few clarifying questions.

  1. How imminent would you say this change is? This month? Indeterminate but sometime this year?

  2. What happens to our tags?

  3. Is there a planned process to map Tags to Spaces in some way, or something I can do as a user to somehow transition existing Tags to Spaces?

Thank you

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#2

The change seems to be live as of today, and I’m surprised to see that my Collections have been converted to Spaces and the tags are just gone. Was this intentional? I thought Collections and Tags should be merged.

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#3

Well, that’s disconcerting.

Are you using a Chrome based browser?

I’m using Firefox which doesn’t get Memex updates as quickly as the Chrome version.

#4

Sorry, I was too quick. The tags are still there and I can still filter by them. Was just confussed since I expected them to show up in Spaces. But that merge has apparently not happened yet :slight_smile:

And yes, I’m on Chrome.

#5

I am quite concerned about it. I am also evaluating the tool closely, and it was on the way to become my primary tool for the early part of the food chain in terms of processed information.
Also, I HIGHLY enjoyed that tags could/can be assigned to individual highlights.

This way, the tool has been GREAT to follow up on various things in online dicussions (SoMe and web fora). If I was researching things, keeping snippets but still inquiring or commenting more.
These snippets are too cumbersome to store in a traditional task system. Webex is perfect because it is so close to the source/home of these comments that are being tracked and interacted with. Right there in the side bar.
And the tags on notes let me export to Roam Research or other places, to follow up or to do other things with them.

I also, I loved having the collections as a separate dimension to work with. I use it for staging my information flow. Basically a funnel with different levels or types of action to be taken on the items.
Whether it is to be read, or data extracted (annotations etc.), or exported to another system, or archived. And so on.

Now I am not sure what will happen. They will all be messed up in one.
Also, I am not able to discern if tags disappearing from individual notes will mean there will be no way to assign a space there either.

If one or both of these aspects disappear, it is just a significant setback for the value and usability of the tool.
I am not aware of ANY other tool that can offer these things. In such an integrated way with the web content.

#6

Sorry for not providing more information on this earlier. I just released an announcement article here: Unifying Collections & Tags ⇒ Spaces

In the end, this change will combine the best of both worlds of the Tags and Collections, and should so far we know not inhibit any existing usage patterns of either Tags and Collections.

So to take out all the concerns here:

  1. How imminent would you say this change is? This month? Indeterminate but sometime this year?

Probably in the next 2 months

  1. What happens to our tags?

Those who have the extension installed before we release this change will still have both tags and Spaces available. A bit later we’ll do the migration of the actual tags to spaces.

  1. Is there a planned process to map Tags to Spaces in some way, or something I can do as a user to somehow transition existing Tags to Spaces?

We’ll provide a migration process a bit later on.
Generally Spaces will behave just like tags now, plus more!

  • Spaces are name-editable
  • Spaces can be deleted, tags not so far
  • Spaces will be assignable to annotations, just like tags now
  • Spaces will be usable in the TextExporters (Collections are currently not)
  • Spaces will be pushed via the Readwise integration’s tags
  • Spaces are searchable and manageable in the dashboard as a complete list (as opposed to tags now)
  • Spaces are shareable and co-curateable via invite links
  • Spaces have an N-N relationship to Pages and Annotations, just like tags and collections have now.

Soon after:

  • You’ll be able to “Favorite” Spaces so you can organise your most important flows, like the one @Tjief describes
  • You’ll be able to use [[Spaces]] and #Spaces in the editor to reference them

I use it for staging my information flow. Basically a funnel with different levels or types of action to be taken on the items.

@Tjief I think your workflow wills till be perfectly possible. The only difference is that it would show the “Spaces” on the page and annotation cards too, which previously was not the case for “Collections”. You can still use some tags for organising a funnel and some for other metadata you want to add there.

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#7

Thank you for taking the time to address these questions.

I appreciate the information and I consider these changes to be an improvement.

I hope Memex continues to grow and finds success!

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