[Sayonara³]

Tags are a relatively new feature on vBulletin forums, and from looking at the tags which have been added to threads so far it looks like a short tutorial might be needed.


What are Tags?

Tags are metadata keywords. This means that they are data about data, in other words they describe content.


Why use Tags?

Tags have several functions:

• They let members and search engines find content by keyword,
  
• They give a brief overview as to what the main subject of content is about,
  
• They allow content to be ordered into related subjects,
  
• They can show how popular a subject is.

How should Tags be entered?

When you start a thread, you can add tags to the box directly beneath the post editing panel. You can add up to 25 tags to a thread.

• Tags should be separated with a comma.
  
• You should NOT end the list of tags with a period or any other punctuation.
  
• vBulletin does NOT separate tags based on spaces.

Therefore if you were discussing the philosophy of science, the following would be poor tag form:

Quote

philosophy, of, science

What does the tag "of" tell anyone about the content it is attached to? Nothing.

The following would be good form:

Quote

philosophy of science, philosophy, science

Conversely with more general topics you might want to split up all the words, so

Quote

ecology, evolution

might be better than

Quote

ecology and evolution

What should you not use as a Tag?

A good tag is a concise, high-level keyword or key phrase which is significant to the topic at hand, and above all it should be meaningful.

Therefore bad tags would be something like the following:

Quote

username is cool
p.t.
the
effects of turbulence on lesser spotted trout

Posting frivolous tags may be considered spam, which could attract a warning or infraction points.


Other general pointers

If you have an acronym, don't use periods to separate the letters and ensure you include the main words from the expanded version. For example if you were starting a thread in the computer science forum about denial of service attacks, this would be a good set of tags:

Quote

DoS, denial, service, denial of service, attack, computer, network

This would be a poor set of tags for that thread:

Quote

D.O.S. denial of service attacks on computer networks

Last but not least, check your spelling. A mis-spelled tag is useless.

This post has been edited by Sayonara³: 5 January 2009 - 11:06 PM
Reason for edit: Correction