Does the forum support tagging? [tagtest]

Does the forum support tagging [tagtest]

Seems that there is a plugin that would need to be enabled… https://github.com/discourse/discourse-tagging

Enabling tagging on the forum can really reduce the need for creating many categories, give users control over their posts, and help them to conglom their posts with other posts of a similar theme and assisting forum users in making conversations easier to find.

dW Answers has tagging. And it is good. Tagging is good!

The fact that it is a plugin and not something native to the forum feature set may require planning: upgrade support, functionality, and performance impact would need to be validated ahead of use so as not to disrupt current forum goodness.

+1 for Tagging Plug-in

I’m hesitant to introduce a whole new categorization scheme that won’t include any of the old content, but let’s see how others feel. Poll to the rescue!

Would you like to enable topic tagging on the forum? https://meta.discourse.org/t/the-official-discourse-tags-plugin-discourse-tagging/26482

  • Yes, tags are way better than categories! :thumbsup:
  • No, I don’t like change. :thumbsdown:
  • I don’t care, but I may use them if added :neutral_face:
  • I don’t care, but I probably won’t use them :unamused:

0 voters

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As it is, people barely use the existing categories.

I could see it being useful to have something like tagging where multiple tags could be applied to the same post. A post having only 1 category is limiting sometimes.

That said, since tagging isn’t native, I do worry a bit about enabling too many non-native features and what that might do as far as stability, security, etc…

@BigFixNinja what is your use case?

The forum already has lots of features to manage content

  • Categories are already there
  • The search is good
  • I can easily see all my own posts on my profile page
  • I can bookmark any topic I want easily come back to.

What is the exact use case for tagging ?

If we’re expecting users to tag their content - then I think we’re on a looser. As @jgstew says categories are used a bit but not everyone cares.

So who’s going to do the tagging and to what purpose ?

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Tags cluster liked themed topics together making them easier to find. It is similar to how relay affiliation assists automatic relay selection by reducing the set of candidate relays a client is to search through and choose from; similarly, the potential for tags can help to reduce search results. Additionally, they help to provide a vertical thread or path of knowledge in which customers can follow to see and stumble across related posts.

Some use cases:

Tag all posts in which a client behavior is the central theme in the topic. For example “client-relay selection”

Tag all posts in which the post involves the publishing of a custom web report “custom report”

Tag all posts in the Release Announcements category in which the release announcement pertain to the Patches for Windows site, or the WebUI, or SCM_PCIDSS, etc.

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So I guess my question on use case is what’s the value to the user of this.
I don’t think we have answered just yet.

I’ve a couple of concerns here:

  • who would do all this tagging ?
  • if a topic is not tagged then it will get missed from what ever search is being used to find

What’s wrong with using existing search using the search terms “client relay selection” ?
Or within a category doing a search using the terms “web ui” ?
I think those achieve the same outcome.

BTW - I see that the discoure-tagging plugin is an alternative to categories, we’d have to get rid of categories.

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