Have you seen the "tags" at the top of threads?

You may have noticed little tags that look like this popping up around the site. These tags can help our fellow TMSers find threads that might help them. For example, if someone clicks on a tag about Journaling, they should find all of our best threads about journaling. Likewise, if someone clicks on a thread about intersticial cystitis, they should see some of our best threads on intersticial cystitis.

You can see how this would be helpful, right? In general, tags help fellow TMSers find threads that will help them. Even better, not only can they help people on the wiki, but they can also help people who don’t know about TMS and are searching on Google or other search engines. (More on that in a later post.)

If you think someone else might like a thread, you can help them find that thread by tagging it. It’s quite easy. At the top of the thread, it will say “Tags:” and then either “Add Tags” or “Edit.” Just click that link and type in a new tag. A list of suggested tags may pop up, and if you can see your tag in the list, that’s even better.

Here’s what it looks like:

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As you read the site, I’d encourage you to explore tags and to tag the threads you read. There will be some guidelines that I’ll post later, but for now, just imagine what would be helpful for someone like yourself. Try clicking on a couple tags and imagine the type of threads you would want to find if you clicked on the tag. Those are the threads that should have that tag. If you think the thread you are reading should have a specific tag, then add it!

A good tag:

• Is descriptive rather than poetic or flowery
• Conveys useful information to the reader. For example, just about every thread on this forum could be tagged with “TMS,” so tagging a thread with TMS doesn’t help the reader very much and should be avoided except for with our very best threads (these are the threads that we want people to find when they click on “TMS”).
• Will eventually be applied to at least 5 threads. If you create a tag that will only ever apply to one thread, that will disappoint people because they will click on the thread and only find the thread that they started with! That’s okay in the short term, but in the long term, when people click on a tag, it would be nice to see a nice collection of tagged threads.

In the future, I’ll provide more guidelines on applying tags, but for right now I thought it might help for people just to get started! Tags that you apply are likely to be edited, but by tagging a thread that you've read and liked is what gets the ball rolling.

Just remember, think what would be helpful to you if you were searching. Also, threads don’t need a million tags. It's quality over quantity, after all.

Thanks for your help!

 

Hi @Susan1111, I'm so glad to hear it. This is exactly what tags are for. There is a tremendous depth of information on this site and there have been some amazing conversations and some tremendous sharing of knowledge. Tags help us tap into that and help people get up to speed quickly.

I think your experience highlights the importance of being selective in applying tags. Susan, you clicked on the following tag, right?

• eye movement and desensitization reprocessing - emdr

The word EMDR probably shows up in 50 threads on this site. Yet most of those threads only mention EMDR in passing and don't have information about EMDR that would help Susan. If we had tagged all 50 threads with that tag, it probably wouldn't have been so helpful. In other words, what matters is quality over quantity, and we should be selective in choosing threads that are relevant and helpful for someone clicking on the tag.

I hope you don't mind me putting you on the spot, but would you agree with that, Susan?

I just wanted to also take a moment, also, to thank the people who have already started applying tags to threads as they read them. @Simplicity did a terrific job of tagging a bunch of threads this morning, so thanks for that. For anyone else, you can start whenever you want, but the sooner the better. The tagging system will be around for a long time and will grow steadily, but each tag you apply will help a fellow TMSer.

Speaking of which, does anyone have any questions about tagging? Is there anything which is stopping you from diving in?

If anyone is curious, here are some of the tags that have been applied since last night:

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Yes, I think that that is just a wonderful feature. For example, if you are interested in neuroscience, gabor mate, or insomnia, you just click on the tag and then click on "watch tag." Then, the next time you come back to the site, you'll see a little red "Alerts" box in the upper right hand corner to let you know that the topic has come up again.

It's a great way to keep up to date. Now that we can watch tags, I'm planning to replace the "Research" subforum with a tag that people can watch if they want to keep up to date. (It may take a little while to implement it, as I want things to go smoothly.)

Currently we have 363 tags, so this is a great way to participate in the topics that you are most interested in:
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/tags/insomnia-and-sleep-problems/

Here's how you watch, for example, the "Gabor Mate, MD" tag. It only takes 3 clicks. Afterward, when you return to the site, you will be alerted to new posts by a little red box that appears in the upper right hand corner of the screen near the word "Alerts".

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