Frankly, I don't enjoy the idea of having to follow some kind of mandatory "tag glossary", but on the other hand, it might possibly make the Search function useful
I'm not overly keen on using someone else's filing system, either, but this way it would be Toady's call, which tags are significant and which aren't.
Something that looks like a unique topic to
us might (codeside) be a trivial sideshow or conglomerate of other features that doesn't... fit.
And the whole point of the forum is to serve the master - not me and not you.. =)
The system I proposed would require little to no moderation. Probably none at all once a sufficient number of tags exist.
That's basically the key point. Doability.
Improved (not perfect) structure and searchability at a very low cost.
Yes, a Wiki
can be more powerful/structured but potentially grows in all kinds of directions and some of that growth can turn out cancerous, overlapping multiple pages or otherwise mudding up the searchability.
It's also a lot more volatile because everyone can delete/replace content they personally disagree with.
Besides, a Wiki
is far less simple to operate than forum posts. I've heard some good ideas from creative people who were practically tech-illiterate. Building any artificial elitist barriers doesn't serve the purpose.
Everyone suggests searching be mandatory. Let me restate that the Search function is currently crap.
...
So make it mandatory, but I doubt that will fix a lot of problems.
I don't expect it to work perfectly all of a sudden.
I don't even expect such a rule being observed all the time.
It's just another wording for: "For the love of god at least
try to search for an existing thread!"
It just
works better when barked in a stern command voice. =P
Realistically, any rule that cannot be inforced is pointless... and there is no way to check if someone did search or not.
Still...
having such a rule will do some good - if only for the psychological effect.
Just having a stickied list of topics that have threads associated with them already-and links to those threads-might do as well as tags, however.
That requires moderator action (a precious commodity round here =) for every single thread, cataloging and adding them to the sticky thread.
For that matter, "discussion" is a good thing. I'm pretty certain that the social nature of the Forum not only helps generate contributions (I know I'd rather give money to my friends' projects, than to a faceless corporation), it also helps maintain that "reasonability" that we apparently have here, since on some level everybody knows everybody a little bit.
In any "normal" forum I'd totally agree but a suggestion forum should be more curt and to the point.
Nothing wrong with adding to an existing idea but I doubt that a 20 page thread is all ideas.
Friendliness is fine and dandy but having to sift through 19 pages of discussion or chatter is wasting the man's time.