I notice that most "modern" forums are using tags: nodebb, discourse, flarum and lately xenforo with the latest release 1.5. I am wondering what do you think about this functionality in a forum? Are they really useful?
p.s. I know there is a tag addon for elkarte, I don't use it, I'm only curious what do you think about
It's useful to see what topics are with the same kind of tag or subtopic, like in AnimeSuki forum. But it should be limited, many users will spam tag because they can. Maybe some kind of upvote or downvote for tag is good to weed the irrelevant tag.
I had issue with tags and spammers. They were putting sex related keywords in tags. Even when I ban a spammer and delete his posts, the tags used to remain. The nightmare it gave me.
PS : I am talking about Woltlab Burning Board.
I'm tempted to say hashtags would be more relevant in a discussion environment.
Not because hashtags are "cool", but simply because from my experience, people tend to do everything in the textarea they write in, if something is outside that textarea is kind of ignored.
Then, on the "are tags useful in a forum", the answer is that one day I would try to build the forum (the script I mean) based on tags, and not on categories and boards, converting admin-selected (or personalized at user-level) tags into categories and boards. But that's for the future. :P
that's another interesting point, I see more and more forums set up in this way.
Sounds really interesting,
@emanuele - Great idea! I would give it a try to with my board! Reminds me of Google inbox.
Yep, indeed nothing new, though something that in certain contexts could be useful I think.