Does anyone actually use thread tagging?

[LanciaStratos]

I'm deep into web 2.0 and have been running my own site for more than 7 years, but never have understood why people found "tagging" to be such an interesting feature. Del.icio.us and Gmail are the only places I use "tagging", because it's basically a streamlined version of folders and it's a personal way that I organize information. In a collaborative environment, I gloss over tags entirely, and I don't think I've ever used them to reliably find information. Now, I'm struggling with the decision to implement this on my own forum, afraid to introduce yet another feature that won't get used. What do you guys think? Are you using tags on your board, and have your members found them useful?

[Mr_Butter]

Depends on the maturity of the audience.

On forums which don't have a lot of idiots (or at least have mods which will actively fix abuse) then tags DO help and if vBulletin devs decide to use tags in order to find related threads then it would be even more useful.

[Vtec44]

I use them mostly for seach engine indexing (auto thread tagger + tag cloud mods).

[TylerK10]

I think a lot of members will simply leave the tag box empty when they create a new thread. That is what usually happens to me.

[Floris]

Yes, I use it. Every time I think the thread is worth to be included, for the info I put in it, I try to tag it.

[Chazel]

I use an auto-tagger. It's extremely useful.

[Dean C]

Nope, don't think I've seen many threads where people use the tags.

[1QuickSI]

I tag my posts (when I remember ) Otherwise I rely on the AutoTagger over at .org

[Gladius]

I can't see tags being of much use (or rather way more work to weed out abuse than gain) until Jelsoft implements the auto-tagging option.

[Floris]

Auto tagging is helpful, but they should be suggestions.

The point of having good content tagged helps finding good content from the tag cloud. Having every thread about "vb3" tagged as vb3 for example, might not show up the announcement with the most important and accurate information. In such situations I wouldn't like it to auto tag.

[Gladius]

You can't rely on regular users to properly and neatly use tags like that. Jelsoft would need to implement a feature that would allow selecting specific users only to tag threads. I trust maybe a handful of our most literate users to tag threads properly (besides the mods) - but certainly not the masses.

[cheat-master30]

I use tagging on my own site, but I forget to actually add the tags a lot of the time, so I'm all for an auto suggest tags feature.

[Razasharp]

It depends how it is implemented, and the type of forum it is to be used on.

Ideally we need tag categories, and a quick find solution that allows clicks to be used to find your tag. Think Flickr.