Topic: Tags for topics

How about using tags/labels for topics instead of categories? Then you could add multiple tags to a topic about multiple subjects. This system works very well at e.g. Gmail and Flickr and it would make finding topics easier.

Re: Tags for topics

surely thats a whole new kind of forum?

Re: Tags for topics

It wouldn't have to be very different from how PunBB works now. In fact, maybe you'd only have to call the forums tags and allow multiple tags for one topic. But still it might be more flexible than the system most forum systems are using now. I like the Gmail system better than having folders like in most other email services.

Re: Tags for topics

i'm not saying it would require much modification, but it would totally change the forum, and how would it work, just like gmail? with just one list of topics them you can filter it using labels?

Re: Tags for topics

Hm, the labels/tags could be shown at the front page, just like the categories are now. One page with all topics could be useful too, but maybe only if you click on the link for that.

Re: Tags for topics

so whats the advantage of this over each topic having one category?

7

Re: Tags for topics

Tags are cool but it adds another level of complexity.

You can see here a Nucleus implementation: http://www.ketsugi.com/

Re: Tags for topics

I made a simple static page showing how the viewforum.php page could look.

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Re: Tags for topics

What happens when you have a very large board with dozens of forums where members might only be interested in a small subset of the forums. You would need a setting in user profile where they could set from which forums they wanted topics to appear. All that filtering sounds like it would involve a lot of work for the database. I've seen comments about vanilla which suggest that their system of displaying all topics by default is fine for smaller boards but not so good for large busy boards. Isn't the same going to be true here.

Re: Tags for topics

Sander D. wrote:

I made a simple static page showing how the viewforum.php page could look.

That looks great Sander. Too bad it's not real. sad

Connorhd wrote:

so whats the advantage of this over each topic having one category?

The best example I can think of is a case where a topic can fit in more than one place. For example, what if you are having trouble with a mod? Then you could tag it with "Troubleshooting" and "Modifications". Or what about your PunDokuWiki mod, which one could argue involves both modification and integration? Just tag it with both.

Personally, I love the idea of having tags available for organization, but I hate actually having to tag thing myself. Anyway, this would probably be a great modification, but it doesn't seem like something that enough people would appreciate to make it a PunBB feature by default.

Looking for a certain modification for your forum? Please take a look here before posting.

11 (edited by Sander D. 2006-04-04 19:49)

Re: Tags for topics

Paul wrote:

What happens when you have a very large board with dozens of forums where members might only be interested in a small subset of the forums. You would need a setting in user profile where they could set from which forums they wanted topics to appear. All that filtering sounds like it would involve a lot of work for the database.

I don't see how that would cost a lot of work in the database. There might be one extra field in the users table ("show_labels") with for example the content "1,2,4" for someone who only wants to read about the topics with those IDs. Then that value could be converted to an array, and I guess it wouldn't be too hard to use it to select posts matching those labels ("SELECT * FROM posts WHERE label = 1 OR label = 2 OR label = 3").

Will it be possible to make such a thing with the upcoming extension system in PunBB? Can I modify the front page so that it looks like in my example?

Paul wrote:

I've seen comments about vanilla which suggest that their system of displaying all topics by default is fine for smaller boards but not so good for large busy boards. Isn't the same going to be true here.

I think that depends on what the forums are about. I'm hosting forums about Disney comics, and most visitors are interested in all topics discussed there. Putting them all in one category/forum would make topics hard to find, but using the 'classic' category system (instead of tags/labels) doesn't seem to be the best solution either. I understand that this is different when you have more general forums about various subjects, so probably it isn't a very good idea to use this tagging system in PunBB by default.

Re: Tags for topics

I think this kind functionality would do good as a mod. I know a few boards that use this and it works really great. For some kind of boards that is.

Re: Tags for topics

Adding the tag system to the current system, yes. Replacing, no.

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Re: Tags for topics

hcgtv wrote:

You can see here a Nucleus implementation: http://www.ketsugi.com/

That's just a blog renaming categories as tags...

pogenwurst wrote:

That looks great Sander.

No it doesn't!

I'm not sure where this craze came from, tag is just a sexier name for category.

I remember seeing a tag-based forum on Digg, but I can't find the damn thing.

Re: Tags for topics

Sometimes tagging on the web ('web 2.0') is a bit over-hyped indeed. But in this case I would think allowing multiple categories for one discussion can be very useful, when that discussion spans multiple topics. Then it would be more logical to call those categories tags or labels.

For the page I created there doesn't have to be tagging in PunBB. You can substitute the word 'label' for 'category' there if you want. What would you think about the design / functionality then?

Re: Tags for topics

Take a look at http://wordpress.org/support/ as a good example of tags being used in a forum.

You don't have to get rid of categories and forums - tags are just an additional way to navigate through posts.