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Currently when the "Hide Ignored Tags" option is enabled in the preferences, any question with an ignored AND an interesting tag is hidden. This keeps many "interesting" questions from being seen when this option is used. This works fine for those who want to ignore homework, but not so good if the volume of questions in topics alien to the user is overwhelming.

To fix this, it is proposed that a new option "Keep Interesting Tags" be added. When "Hide Ignored Tags" is enabled, the behavior of enabling "Keep Interesting Tags" is to show any questions that have both interesting and ignored tags. When "Hide Ignored Tags" is disabled, the setting of "Keep Interesting Tags" has no effect (and could be hidden from the user).

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  • And it was not possible to implement this during the last 6.5 years. What a shame. Maybe you want to accept an answer?
    – Thomas Weller
    Commented Aug 24, 2016 at 14:20
  • With this comment I am trying to draw the developers' attention to this issue.
    – Comrade Che
    Commented Oct 1, 2021 at 16:57

6 Answers 6

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8

I agree with question.

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3

I also agree with this request. If a question is tagged with both interesting and ignored tags then it should be categorized as "interesting".

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1

(duplicate answer)

Solution proposal

In my opinion the real solution would be to merge the two separate interesting and ignore lists into one single list. Each element then has the property of either interesting or ignore and the order of the elements gives priority, with the highest matching item "winning".

Example 1

Linux user that normally wants to ignore windows/macintosh, but not for questions about writing portable code:

  • unix: interesting
  • linux: interesting
  • portability: interesting
  • windows: ignore
  • machos: ignore

Example 2

Windows user that normally ignores unix/linux, but has a special interest in security and would like to read unix/linux questions related to that.

  • windows: interesting
  • security: interesting
  • unix: ignore
  • linux: ignore

Example 3

User with no interest in any questions related to php whatsoever.

  • php: ignore
  • java: interesting
  • something-else: interesting
  • boring-stuff: ignore

This would give a much better control to the users of which questions to ignore or include.

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1

For those greasily inclined, I've updated my interesting/ignored tags greasemonkey script to support this feature. Now questions with "interesting" tags are always shown even if they're also tagged with an "ignored" tag, regardless of your "Hide Ignored Tags" setting (but keeps them faded out so you can still see they're "ignored").

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0

I agree.

However, I'd add that I would like to see the questions which have both tags as they are rendered without the "Hide Ignored Tags" checkbox - Colored background and semitransparent. Don't simply make all favorite tagged questions show up as favorites, regardless of their ignored tag status.

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-4

I disagree.

Hidden tags are usually topics in which the user doesn't have any expertise, no matter if the question has an additional interesting tag.

Further, hiding questions improve the system! You can only look at a fixed amount of questions, by hiding questions the chances of seeing a question you actually can answer are increased. Showing questions both with hidden and interesting tags leads to more noise on the questions page.

If you really want that feature, write a script yourself. The hiding / highlighting of questions is completely done by client-side javascript.

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  • 6
    Tagging isn't perfect. I'd like to get questions tagged C#+image-recognition (even though I ignore C#) because the language is unlikely to have much to do with the problem. As for whipping up a script, not all SO users are web jockies.
    – ergosys
    Commented Jan 25, 2010 at 20:34
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    I see no reason for you to disagree as it wouldn't affect you.
    – Arlen Beiler
    Commented Jan 26, 2010 at 13:21
  • 2
    @Arlen: 1. The SO team has only limited time, they should invest it where it's necessary. 2. I'd argue that less settings are preferable. The simpler the better.
    – Georg Schölly
    Commented Jan 26, 2010 at 18:01
  • 1
    It isn't our worry whether they have time or not. Our worry is that tags of interest won't show up if they are ignored. And like we said before, this would be an option.
    – Arlen Beiler
    Commented Jan 26, 2010 at 18:26

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