Branch is a step forward in better communication throughout the web. How could hashtags improve the way we have conversations and debates?

How would you feel about a chat room build around every hashtag in use? The limitations being the conversation is dictated by the top blog posts on that hashtag.

Hashtags are fascinating. Years ago I had this idea to make this thing called weeeble.com I never iterated into an actual functional service, but the idea was to allow people to use special words like music: food: loc: to give a more semantic meaning to something like a tweet so that it can be archived / processed later for a greater purpose. To me #hashtags are exciting for this reason- they can be used to give additional meaning and context to a simple message.

the idea that you suggest here with the chat rooms is almost what is achived on this website. Personally I dislike the use of hashtags mainly because of its missuse by kids work with and know. But Branch in a since could achive this goal in an odd way each topic is a hashtag to which you can branch off of to create a side topic. thus attempting to keep each topic on track and not derailing into something else. yeah its no chat room, but for this style id rather it be message board style anyway.

Discrediting hashtags simply because they are "misused" is a silly argument. Hashtags are socially created, they aren't the product of any company. The whole concept of the hashtag is owned by the community, it can't be "misused", only changed over time.

they get misused in a way that don't make since such as saying "my gradmother passed away yesterday #STLCardsWin" you cant tell me that that makes since.

What do you think could be done to improve how they are used? Hashtags are just a keyword protocol, and like Brennan said, they attach semantic data to a tweet so we know what they are about. I agree people don't get hashtags, but people didn't get computers at first either. What can we do to help people understand how hashtags are useful?

I see Scott's point with the grandma tweet #bogustag which may or may not have been generated by a spam bot- yes this will always be a difficulty when parsing natural language via a semantic analysis tool. Communities are best left self policed. WikiPedia is as great as it is because it is self policed. And, for philosophical speaking, there really is nothing "wrong" with the grandma tweet- maybe for that user to two big events of his day were his grandma's passing and the cardinals winning, both of which are very human issues- there's no law that says how / when people should express themselves

I'd bet most hash tag use is just in quick fly-by statements, used for flourish - #trollrockandroll!

I do get what Brennan said and I guess it could be accepted as used correctly. However in the use of this thread if we were in a chat room wanting to talk about a hash-tag of the cards winning, I'm personally not going to want someone coming in talking about how his grandma died. no matter how big a fan of the team she was. I don't know, it could just be me. and to Marshall I agree that many are probably used to be flourish, which leads me to say why would I want to join a chat room based on a piece of flourish added and not a topic to which stays constant on a main topic. sorry I'm not trying to be too critical, just playing devils advocate i guess

The different sites that have used hashtags have expanded upon their definition in different ways. Twitter--which is what I think is really being cited here--very much focuses on the hashtag as a "keyword". Tumblr heads off the hashtag section of each post with "File Under", and people use it as a kind of cataloging system, choosing tags to track or hide from their feeds. Maybe branch could add its own interpretation?

One idea: make the hashtag (like the Tumblr tags) accept a phrase, and use it as a kind of invitation to "branch off" from that idea.

@Jacke Nice! Good thinking. That's what I'm looking for, a new vision on hashtags, thank you.

If you wanted to break from the actual idea of the hashtag, I can see this working really well as a Reddit style link.

Take the above post. Say I thought the way that Tumblr used tags is something worth discussion. I might "tag" the word Tumblr so that it links to a branch idea. When someone clicks it, it could show a little more text in brackets, with an option to create a branch from there. I.e.:

Tumblr [does Tumblr count for hashtagging? (create), how do you tag on Tumblr? (create)]

...

I think once a discussion had been created, it could just link directly there. This would allow a conversation to branch into a lot of smaller discussions ONLY if people really wanted to engage in those discussions. This cuts down on branch-clutter while giving the conversation the potential to become more nuanced and sophisticated with some guidance from the OP.

@Jacke: Looking at Tumblr, I can't see any way to block tags.

There are two main approaches to categorising posts. One is tags where a post can have multiple tags. The other is groups, where each post can only be posted to one group and the group has moderators who, along with the community, determine rules on what kinds of posts are allowed. Think of Reddit or Usenet.

They both have advantages and disadvantages. Tags are nicer for categorising and searching for posts, however groups allow a community to form around them. I suggest that one of the main reasons for Reddit's success was their use of sub-reddits (groups) rather than simply tags. StackExchange uses this model too, except with separate sites, not groups.

Character limit is annoying. Everyone just does multiple posts instead. It worked for Twitter, but here the limit doesn't do anything, but annoy.

Of course, there are variations on this. There could be an option for groups to ban or allow cross-posting. Groups could have subgroups, or group and tags could co-exist. Certain tags could be given moderators with the approval to maintain certain standards (if this happens, I would recommend against giving admin over standard tags, like "#science", but instead less common ones like "#peer_reviewed_science" or maybe "#_science").

One advantage of tags is the ease using them for current events. For example, its much easier for everyone to tag their posts #sydney_science_conference, then to create a group specially for this. Event organisers don't have to even think of it