Thread Tagging

[adrian]

The more observant may have noticed a new feature at the top of the threads. With the recent software upgrade it has now enabled us to apply tags to threads.

There have been a few posts recently discussing indexing of posts and finding stuff of interest. Whilst there were plenty of suggestions for us to try - I do think this might be a good step in the right direction.

So what does it mean? When you are creating new threads or if you revisit an old thread you find useful that you can apply a tag. As you can see in the screen shot below there are a couple of tags - pale blue luggage labels describing the contents of the thread.

The edit button will allow you to add more tags if necessary. If you click on one of the tags, e.g. live steam then it will take you to a list of every thread that has been tagged 'live steam'



I've set up a reasonable selection of tags which I think should cover most of the threads, these can be seen if you go to the 'search forum' page and search tags tab. This should list most of the tags being used.


When you start adding tags if you start typing a word it will pop up anything that matches, so for example again using 'live steam' if you start type 'li' then it will pop up with the suggestion of 'live steam'.

Also note that when searching for threads you can search on many tags, this works as an 'and' filter, i.e. if you select 'live steam' and 'german' then it will only show the threads that are marked with both tags.



So a couple of other points to note, there is currently a maximum limit of 20 tags per thread, each member is limited to 7 tags per thread to give others a chance to tag it for them.

Also I would prefer to keep the number of tags to a minimum required, so although you can create new tags if required then if there is something close then please use that. For example for magazines, videos I have created one tag called 'media' for these threads. I can monitor how popular tags are and this is just a way of sorting out threads of interest. So if a tag isn't used very much then I might try to merge it with a similar tag, on the other hand if one tag is getting used over and over again that might indicate that it needs splitting out to a couple of new tags to differentiate between the threads.

These are not fixed and will evolve - it just depends on how people start using them.

Any comments or feedback would be appreciated.

Regards

Adrian

 

[Mike Sheardown]

Hi Adrian,

Would the above also work for individual posts / subjects within a thread?

One of the problems I often experience with search engines on forums, is that they might deliver a Thread accurately, based on the particular search I've instigated, but if it's a large thread, I then might have many pages to search through manually, in order to find the relevant part that I'm looking for.

Might this help with that?

Best wishes

Mike

 

[Neil]

Very good, but how do you apply a tag?

 

[adrian]

Very good, but how do you apply a tag?

When you are creating a new thread there will be a text field for tags.

If there is an existing thread with no tags then at the top between the thread title and page numbering there is a add tags link to click on.


if there are already tags on the thread it changes to an edit link



Click on the link and it pops up a dialog box for you to add the appropriate tags.

Would the above also work for individual posts / subjects within a thread?

No it doesn't work on individual posts just the full thread. This is one area where people might wish to create new threads for specific topics. For a long thread if there is a useful bit of information then please don't hesitate to contact one of the Flying Squad, we have the ability to split/copy and merge threads. So if you think there is something useful in a thread that is deserving of a separate thread then we can and have done split out those specific posts into a new thread so the discussion on that issue can continue separately and with this system we can then apply the appropriate tags.

Regards

Adrian

 

[Neil]

Thanks Adrian, I've found the add tags on one of my as yet untagged threads but the edit tags box seems absent from other peoples threads that already have tags. Should I be able to add tags or is this only for the thread originator to do?

 

[daifly]

I can only see the option to add tags in threads that I have created - the same as Neil.

 

[Steve Cook]

I've just ticked an extra box, can you see if you now have the ability to tag other peoples threads?
Thanks
Steve

 

[Puddlejumper]

Steve
I've managed to tag this thread as "useful info" will go back and delete it now.


Have also managed to delete the tag I added so seems to be working ok??

 

[Steve Cook]

Cheers PJ
Theres another thing to check with Adrian when he pops in but by and large, I think it should be working as expected now.
Thanks
Steve

 

[adrian]

Thanks for that Steve - hopefully the edit tags link should now be visible.

 

[Dog Star]

... For a long thread if there is a useful bit of information then please don't hesitate to contact one of the Flying Squad, we have the ability to split/copy and merge threads. So if you think there is something useful in a thread that is deserving of a separate thread then we can and have done split out those specific posts into a new thread ...

My workbench thread is in the style of the "rolling english drunkard"... here, there and wherever a model and / or technique has thought fit - I often have difficulty in finding something that I know that I wrote somewhere. Heather (@Heather Kay) has a slightly simpler approach in that She starts each new build with a separate topic - I have often thought about splitting the Old Man's workbench in a similar manner.

So what can be done to extract, say, all of the posts about Mk.1 carriages from my workbench topic? How do I describe which posts are relevant to the intention? and equally, which posts are not relevant?

regards, Graham

 

[adrian]

So what can be done to extract, say, all of the posts about Mk.1 carriages from my workbench topic? How do I describe which posts are relevant to the intention? and equally, which posts are not relevant?

Just give me a rough idea of the post range - i.e. first post and last post to cover. I can go through those and select which I think are relevant and copy them to a new thread. After that if you think I've missed any just send me a link to the relevant post and I can quite easily copy and merge this into the new thread. It automatically sorts the posts chronologically so the flow should be preserved.

 

[Neil]

Thanks Steve and Adrian, tags now visible.

 

[Mike Sheardown]

No it doesn't work on individual posts just the full thread. This is one area where people might wish to create new threads for specific topics. For a long thread if there is a useful bit of information then please don't hesitate to contact one of the Flying Squad, we have the ability to split/copy and merge threads. So if you think there is something useful in a thread that is deserving of a separate thread then we can and have done split out those specific posts into a new thread so the discussion on that issue can continue separately and with this system we can then apply the appropriate tags.

Regards

Adrian

Hi Adrian,

Thanks for that - I understand.

Do you think the tagging of individual posts might be possible at some time in the future though, as it'd be really useful.

Cheers

Mike

 

[adrian]

Do you think the tagging of individual posts might be possible at some time in the future though, as it'd be really useful.

There are quite a few discussions on the xenforo community site about post tagging but it doesn't seem to have much headway. People are raising quite a few pro's and con's with it so I'm not confident that'll it be implemented any time soon. Even if it was I'm not sure at the moment that it's something that I'd actively pursue. My concern is that it would end up being like RMWeb with all the various 'likes', 'funny', 'informative' tags associated with each post - which at times seem to be used in an un-constructive way.
For individual posts I liked one of the earlier suggestion from someone that would allow users to bookmark posts, that way if you found a post useful and needed to be filed away for future reference then you could bookmark it. This would then become your personal list of useful posts. One the dust has settled on the tagging formats then I will take another look at it.

 

[Mike Sheardown]

Thanks again Adrian - I appreciate you taking the time to reply.

I wasn't aware of the bookmark facility, and it sounds like that would achieve the selective recall of 'posts of interest' that I was after.

I really enjoy WT as a forum, and it seems with these latest improvements, it is continuing to go from strength to strength!!

Best wishes

Mike

 

[adrian]

I wasn't aware of the bookmark facility, and it sounds like that would achieve the selective recall of 'posts of interest' that I was after.

It's an add-on for the software which we can try but I've not installed it yet. Next week is half term so there's less running around for rugby and Scouts etc so I'll see if I can install it on the test area to see how it works - as long as it doesn't mess up the rest of the site I'll try to roll it out as soon as I can.

I really enjoy WT as a forum, and it seems with these latest improvements, it is continuing to go from strength to strength!!

Thanks for the feedback, it really is appreciated and makes the effort worthwhile. I'm just grateful that people keep contributing and showing all the different aspects of our hobby. I have been looking at your figure painting and thinking what a nice little self contained project they are - so thank you for the inspiration.