Hashplus and Hashminus

By Ashok Argent-Katwala

Twitter's a pretty handy way to vent about something good or bad that's happening.

Here's a really simple way to flag that:

• #+
• #-

They're just hashtags. They're as short as can be, but I think their meaning is pretty clear.

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Take a couple of my recent tweets, commending or criticising something:

• Gah. Global TV's not the only one to do this. Please check that the video on your site works before showing me the fecking advert! #tbw
• Great lineup of beer at @barvolo right now, and all the draughts are stupidly cheap. Go! (This theme will recur this week.) #torontobeerweek
• Oh look, phishing spam for Verified by Visa (& MasterCard equiv). Must really help that the legit version is run just like a phishing scam.

It's easy to see the positive and negative tone there, but not if you are a simple-minded robot. I'm sure there are fancy natural language processing techniques to extract it but I'd hate to have to codify how sarcasm works. As with the usual hashtags - we can let the user say what they mean, and then even the dumbest of bots can recover the meaning.

They'd be useful as machine-grokkable recommendations for things. If you link to something in a "#+" message, then that's a positive association from you to that link. You could tip restaurants, bars, films, articles, ideas and all sorts this way. Similarly, links or mentions in a "#-" message can be read as dislike or disapproval.

I think we should use these two ways:

• #+ or #- at the end of a message applies to all links, usernames and hashtags in the message (that don't have #+/#- before them)
• #+ or #- just before a link, username or hashtag just applies to that link

For example, that Global TV annoyance could have been written like this, with no criticism of Toronto Beer Week (#tbw):

• Unimpressed by #- @Global_TV: it's just not civilised to play an ad and then say the video's not available. #tbw

Or this one would recommend all three links, including the reference to the beer on BeerAdvocate:

• Amazing beer from @barvolo and @biergotter; loving their Caustic Commencement saison: http://is.gd/fl2La #+

Let me know what you think. If people start using them, then we can think about useful ways to extract and use their tips.