Tags

Could someone please walk the rest of us through how this whole tagging system works? Like, who actually has the authority to add them, when does it happen, and can I get a little more context on what they're even for? Thanks.

You actually have the Help! subforum for stuff like this. Just go ahead and ask there.

I didn't even realize this wasn't supposed to be in this PDF.

I’ve scoured every corner of the internet, and yet, I still haven't stumbled upon an answer to this specific question.
Could someone please drop a link to those instructions?

Every single time "tags" are mentioned, they seem to be discussed strictly in terms of HTML tags rather than keywords—for instance, right here http://www.example.com/showthread.php?t...ghlight=tags

Right now, the tagging system is more of a concept than a functional tool. We’ve barely tagged any keywords, which means searching by tag is pretty much useless at this stage.

The admin handles adding tags based on what the moderators decide. (If I'm off base here, please feel free to set me straight, mods—I tried to tag a thread myself earlier but couldn't find the option anywhere).

As for finding them, you have to use the search bar. Once you start typing, it should suggest existing tags, though more often than not, it just shows nothing, implying the tag doesn't exist yet.

Apologies for that massive screenshot; I tried resizing it in Photoshop, but then it became completely illegible.🕺

I appreciate the effort, really—but I wasn't actually talking about the search function... what I mean is that whenever I attempt to draft a new post, the "tags" field refuses to let me create anything new. It would be incredibly helpful if there were at least some sort of autosuggest feature to show which tags are already in use. (I tried testing it out with simple terms like "taxation," but it just sits there staring back at me...)

Look, I already explained to you who actually has the authority to create tags. Is there some master list somewhere? I don't think so. 😢
Besides, if you're looking for something that specific, you might as well just use a standard search engine.

If I need to find something, I just throw it into Google

Like, say, "Empire State Building + Reddit"

And 95% of the time, it hits exactly what I'm looking for. Honestly, I think that's way more efficient than messing around with tags.

That’s how everyone does it 😬
I just type in my search term followed by site:reddit.com
It’s the only way to get more relevant results specifically from Reddit. Here are some examples.





But I suppose you prefer doing things "your" way.

By the way, I noticed a bug in the search engine. When you search for "taxation," it fails to pull up any results using variations of that word, such as "taxes" or "taxed."

I've already reported it.

Solid idea, thanks 👍

With all due respect, and I truly appreciate the assistance provided thus far, I don't believe we have quite hit upon the core issue here 😁
To reiterate—I am not asking about how to perform a search. When I need to search, I simply use Google, or if I want to target this specific forum, I just type
site:reddit.com tags

My intention wasn't even about the creation of the tags themselves—since, logically, a tag can only be attached to a post if it has already been established in the system.
Suppose the administrator sets up certain tags: dog, cat, rabbit
In that scenario, we users would be able to utilize those specific tags, but if I attempted to input "mouse," the system wouldn't permit it because it hasn't been defined.

The underlying motivation for adding tags to posts is quite simple: it makes them much easier to highlight, search for, and categorize down the road...

So, you seem to be under the impression that tagging works here like it does on Twitter or Instagram. It simply doesn't work that way on this forum.
Threads get tagged, not individual posts. Which, if you think about it, is perfectly logical since a forum is built out of subforums and threads, unlike those two social media platforms which operate on an entirely different concept altogether.

Casey Bennett said:So, you seem to be under the impression that tagging works here like it does on Twitter or Instagram. It simply doesn't work that way on this forum.
Threads get tagged, not individual posts. Which, if you think about it, is perfectly logical since a forum is built out of subforums and threads, unlike those two social media platforms which operate on an entirely different concept altogether.

My line of thinking is more along the lines of Stack Overflow and sites of that nature.
For instance, imagine a question regarding taxes on an automobile, yet the thread is filed under the "Automobiles" category—rather than "entrepreneurship, accounting and taxation," since a thread can't reside in multiple categories at once.
Someone might be browsing specifically within "Automobiles," but having a "tax" tag would allow someone searching through "entrepreneurship, accounting and taxation" to easily find it if they happen to know the answer.

Casey Bennett said:So, you seem to be under the impression that tagging works here like it does on Twitter or Instagram. It simply doesn't work that way on this forum.
Threads get tagged, not individual posts. Which, if you think about it, is perfectly logical since a forum is built out of subforums and threads, unlike those two social media platforms which operate on an entirely different concept altogether.

He’s talking about the kind of tags you see in CMS platforms like WordPress or Joomla, where they’re used to group content that mentions the same topic. For instance, articles about skiing could fall under two different categories, like tourism and sports. Clicking a skiing tag would pull up all those articles from both categories because they share that specific tag, regardless of where they live. On the other hand, clicking a category like tourism or sports would just show everything in that one category, ignoring any specific tags.

By that same logic, a love tag would pull up every single thread on the forum that mentions the term, no matter what subforum it's in. You'd see threads from Relationship Advice, Lonely Hearts, maybe even the male and women's corner. In this setup, the "category" is essentially the subforum, since that's how vBulletin organizes everything. If you click a subforum, you see all its threads, but they aren't sorted by a shared keyword or tag—they're just grouped because they belong in that specific section.

The first purpose of tags is to let users find what they're looking for more easily by adding an extra layer of filtering. The second is SEO—helping search engines index the site using those tags as keywords. Comparing them to social media tags misses the point entirely; they don't serve that purpose and they don't follow the same philosophy. They just happen to be labels, which is why we call them tags.