Hashtags in social media are, unquestionably, #ugly. But is that really a problem for news and engagement, especially at the community level? In a recent controversial article, a New York Times social media editor argued against hashtags -- a perspective that probably makes sense for a national/global news organization. But from the community perspective, hashtags can be very helpful indeed.

First of all, Daniel Victor, a social media staff editor at The New York Times and author of Hashtags considered #harmful in Nieman Journalism Lab this week, is an extremely bright guy. I admire his work and often learn from him. So I dislike that he's taking a big dose of reflexive flack today for this statement at the end of his article:

"I believe hashtags are aesthetically damaging. I believe a tweet free of hashtags is more pleasing to the eye, more easily consumed, and thus more likely to be retweeted (which is a proven way of growing your audience). I believe for every person who stumbles upon your tweet via hashtag, you're likely turning off many more who are put off by hashtag overuse."

Predictably, that's triggered sharp retorts such as this, from CUNY journalism professor and noted media blogger Jeff Jarvis: "So NYT would not approve of #occupywallstreet on aesthetics? Ridiculous."

Yeah, OK. Harsh, but point taken. Ugly or not, hashtags can be useful in a lot of ways -- and that value probably outweighs their ugliness, as Jarvis indicates. For instance, the #occupywallstreet hashtag was itself a big part of the news of that movement, and a touchstone for a lot of coverage, including at top news organizations like the Times.

But to be fair to Victor, in his article he did note:

"There are many useful exceptions, but hashtags for big news stories are particularly vulnerable to mathematical futility. ...In some cases, they can indeed be useful. They're great for gathering small groups of people; at a conference, there's no better way to connect with other attendees and read brief summaries of sessions. When kept to a small scale, they can ably perform their service as a filter of relevant tweets (#EastVillage is more manageable than #NYC)."

Here are seven reasons why community news and engagement projects should use hashtags in Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest -- and equivalent tags in other popular social media, such as Tumblr tags, and the reported hashtag equivalent that Facebook may soon launch:

1. Effective for smaller audiences, niche topics. True -- a single hashtag about a huge national event like today's U.S. Supreme Court hearings on marriage #equality, or an overly broad topic like #science, is likely to generate a ton of noise, with many virtually identical posts plus a lot of spam, far more quickly than anyone could keep up with.

But for local issues, hashtags like any of the ones used for specific Colo. wildfires, or #oakmtg (to track meetings of the Oakland, Calif. city council and municipal government) can be incredibly useful. A great hashtag strikes a careful balance between specificity, obviousness, popularity, and brevity.

2. Community connectors rely on hashtags. In any community, and on any issue, there is always a small but strongly influential contingent of highly engaged people who follow the issue or community closely over time, talk about it a lot, and who are tech savvy. Such "community connectors" often use social media quite effectively to spread the word, keep an eye on developments, and build networks of influence or support. Think of the role NPR's Andy Carvin played in creating awareness of the Arab Spring uprisings, but at a community level.

Community connectors are potentially powerful allies and resources for community news venues and engagement projects. And hashtags are their tool of choice. So if you hope to engage and involve community connectors in your efforts (and you should!), you need to speak their language -- which includes a lot of # signs.

3. Low overhead, and fast. All you need to do to start or adopt a hashtag is to just start using it in your social media posts. That's it. You don't need to register anywhere, publish something on your website, or otherwise jump through hurdles. When it comes to engagement, especially for fast-breaking news, speed and efficiency count. Community news venue tend to have small staffs, often part-time or volunteer, with meager resources. Anything effective that's also fast, simple and free will probably get more use, and attract more engagement.

4. Powerful in combinations. Sure, by itself a broad hashtag like #basketball probably wouldn't be very useful. But combining it with a location-related hashtag like #Indianapolis, or a university hashtag like #Temple, often yields a more focused and useful stream. This technique can help attract wider attention to local or niche angles on high-profile issues and events.

5. Linkable, trackable, repurposable. Notice all the links in this article so far? Most of them point to Twitter pages displaying the latest tweets for a hashtag -- something you can generate by doing a Twitter Search for your desired hashtag(s) -- or any character string. Many social media, including Twitter, allow you to track hashtags and even generate RSS feeds for them, constantly delivering new results either for direct perusal and curation, or for incorporation into a customized aggregation app.

6. Support crowdsourcing. Encouraging people in your community to use certain hashtags in their social media posts, such as posting photos to Instagram, can be a simple, low-overhead way to fuel crowdsourcing projects.

7. Media is for machines, too. This may sound arcane today, but in the long run hashtags are a powerful tool not just for people, but for programs that increasingly predigest ("parse") almost every kind of online content -- especially search tools and recommendation engines. In that sense, hashtags are one aspect of the semantic web: a variety of techniques, tools, and efforts to add useful layers of meaning onto online content. This will help the machines that comprise the internet, and that use online information, to produce results more like human brains might, helping us spot all sorts of patterns in what otherwise would be overwhelming noise.

Given the growing flood of data and content that hits the internet every single second, any tool such as hashtags that aids semantic parsing is an opportunity to ultimately help people more easily find and understand what they need. And the more focused the need -- such as community concerns -- the more valuable that support becomes.

SO: GO AHEAD and use hashtags and their other social media equivalents. Just take the time to learn to use them well -- not merely to engage your community in what interests you, but to discern what people in your community currently find interesting. And don't overuse them.

Consider adding to your website a reference page that keeps a running list of the most important hashtags for your community's current and ongoing issues. Or maybe curate a Twitter List of recommended users to follow for certain key community matters.

But definitely don't worry about being ugly. Aesthetics are relative, especially compared to functionality in communication. Remember how clear and crisp analog landline phone calls always sounded? Yeah, that was really nice. Still, you wouldn't abandon your cell phone with its considerably crappier audio simply for the sake of audio aesthetics, would you?

Sure, some people in your community will question or complain about your hashtags. But those hashtags are not there for popular aesthetic pleasure. They're there to do several important semantic and engagement jobs. Anyway, people are getting used to them -- which means eventually they may not even notice them anymore, even if they are ugly.