Obviously my sub-category ideas were meant to be taken as silly, not sensible.
But @What_Exit has pointed out something valuable. Tags are a powerful organizing feature that runs more or less orthogonally to categories.
In all sorts of information organizing contexts, the paradigm of nesting folders has become, if not passe, at least no longer the sole acceptable organizing principle. Nested folders demand that each item fit in exactly one category and no others. That’s too restrictive. Information wants, if not to be free, at least to be wooly.
Tags lets us do a lot more of that wooly connectedness. And they smoothly handle the case of cross-cutting interests, such as a factual question about a feature of music.
I am NOT suggesting any wholesale changes in our existing folder taxonomy. I AM suggesting that increased use of tags by the users, and supported by the mods checking and correcting as necessary, will bring dividends to all of us.
AIUI @What_Exit has been at the forefront of adopting tags in the categories they manage, predominantly Cafe Society. IMO we could all do with embracing more of that and supporting them more in the effort.
The Café and the Game Room are the ones I’ve been diligent in tagging. The burden is very small on me. Our cross-forum tags I’m far less on top of.
#ai which ECG just added. #ukraine-invasion a very busy tag with over 200 threads. #breaking-news up to 41 threads. #weed-pot-marijuana only 9, didn’t take off the way I expected or I missed a bunch of threads. #roe_vs_wade_abortion which has 17 threads. Another, where threads were probably missed as it was outside of the Café & Game Room. #factual which was for QZ so will possibly be removed eventually. Those are the ones it would help for OPs to tag.
BTW, a fun tool for linking to tags or forum, is type # and few letters of the forum or tag and Discourse suggests any tags & forums that fit the letters.
So “#mp” suggests #mundane-pointless-stuff-i-must-share-mpsims & #olympic-sports.
So is there any way to see tags attached to the thread name when viewing unread, or latest, or new topics; in the way that, if that’s how you usually view the boards, the forum name is visible for each thread right under the thread?
I may well be missing things; but the only way I see to see the tags is to click on “all tags” at the top of the page; and that doesn’t show them attached to topics, it only shows a list of the tags. So while that may be useful for me if I decided I wanted to look at all the threads with a given tag, it’s no help for looking at a thread title and seeing which subcategory it belongs in.
– apparently if you view an individual categories page you do see the tags below the thread like that. But I very rarely view the board that way.
I would like to take full credit for the title suggestion, but I have a suspicion it was previously floated on the board before and I just stuck it in my subconscious or something. But carry on with the praise as if I didn’t say this!
Factual is to tag QZ threads so that FQ rules apply, instead of the normal QZ rules. It’s not used very often, but as long as we are keeping QZ around we should keep this tag so that folks still have this option.
Okay, this exchange gives me a serious concern: if you remove those tags, it makes it more difficult for future readers. Please do not remove any tag that has significant use. If it’s not applied to new threads any more, so be it, but don’t prevent would-be readers from using it to find old threads.
Jumping in here to agree wholeheartedly with this change. How many threads have started with, effectively, “ This is neither mindless nor pointless, but…”?
Yeah, unless people are using it to do something illegal or something, or there are two similar tags that cause confusion, i can’t think of a reason to remove any tags.
But seriously folks, where does it explain how the board wants tags to be used? Sometimes when I create a thread, a mod will swoop in and add a tag or three, and I don’t want to create make-work for the mods. Is there a Tags 101 page or section somewhere?
Tags are just a way of grouping different posts together. For example, let’s say you have an interest in Chess and you happen to be reading a thread about Chess. Let’s say for example you are reading this thread:
If you go to that thread, you will note that one of the tags under the thread title is Chess. If you click on that tag, Discourse will bring up a list of all threads that are tagged with Chess, so it’s a quick and easy way to find a bunch of threads all on a particular subject that you are interested in.
Most of the tags, like the Chess tag, are specific to one forum, because that is where most of the posts for that topic well go. There are 68 threads tagged with Chess, and all but one of them is in the Game Room (the one oddball is in CS since it’s looking for a video).
Some tags span multiple forums, though. The ukraine-invasion tag is a good example. This has breaking news threads in MPSIMS, rants in the Pit, opinion threads in IMHO, etc. But if the war in the Ukraine is something that you are interested in, clicking on that tag will give you a list of all of the threads that are tagged with it.
