General Woodworking

[MSWood]

If you haven't noticed already, we have the ability to 'tag' each forum post.   

What that means in practice is that you can select the tag option (it lives below and to the left of every post and every reply) and apply a label to the post.   So if, say, it's a post about wood turning, then you can tag it as 'turning'.    Or it could be 'scroll sawing'.   Or 'finishing secrets', or any other thing you'd like to keep tabs on.

THEN... the point to the excersize becomes a little clearer.   Let's say that you wanted to check out posts about wood turning.     Go to the COMMUNITY page and on the left you'll see a box for TOP TAGS.   And at the bottom of that you'll see "view all'.

Click to view all and you'll be able to see all of the tag names that have been created thus far.  Then, say, selecting the turning tab will present all of the posts that have been tagged as 'turning'.

The point to all of this is that you folks have the ability to do some intelligent sorting on the FRONT side, so that it's easier to search through the posts on the BACK side.       And there's nothing preventing you from dropping a tag or two on a post you see, and which nobody's tagged yet.

The tagging process is only as complete as you guys choose to make it.   If a post sits out there all lonely and without a tag, then it won't be searchable under the tags process.

In all - it's just another way of sorting through the noise.    And the cool thing is that you guys define how effective it is by choosing to tag the posts (er.... or not!).

[Sawdustr]

Hey Matt,

Thanks for the lesson in tagging and as you will see I also gave you a kudos for helping us out on this situation and I am also going to tag it.

[william young]

Hi Matt.

I clicked on "tag"  for   the thread where some were dissapointed about the turning board being discontinued and when I go to community like you explained there is no " Tag" to the left at the top. All there is there is a whole bunch of bloggers and I never participate in blogs because I like to share in discussion forums and simply do not have time for both.

[ductape]

I think you clicked on the community in the red box at the top of the page under wood Magazine. So come on down under that to where it has your name. Just under that is WOOD Community, click on that and scroll down right below that. You should see tagged post or something to that effect.

[MSWood]

You start by clicking on the TAG option to the lower left of any given post.  It works on original posts as well as replies.

In the box you select what you'd like to call it.   Let's say, for sake of example, that you call it 'turning'.   Type the word and then click 'ADD".   This works best if you only type ONE WORD in the blank.   If you typed "wood turning" then you'll get two tags for the same post - - both 'wood' as well as 'turning'.    So single word tags work best.

This now joins the rest of the collection of tagged posts.

To sort via tags, go to the Wood Community page, go to the TAGS block to the left and then VIEW ALL (the option at the bottom).

All of the tag names come up (with a bit of a delay - the computer database does a sort process periodically - not necessarily immediately).   You can then choose the one you want to see.

[william young]

OK, thanks Matt.

I think I have finally got the tagging  thing figured out but it seems like too much of a run around and hassle for me. Perhaps it is just me  and it is  probably a wonderful feature for others.

I will become a lurker for now and follow messages of interest under General Woodworking and see if turning topics have started and in tiime I will need to decide if I want to continue to  navigate this out of the ordinary software system  or not. I will be looking forward to dedicated boards being added  like they were in the old site and are present  in  most other sites and I know I am not alone in being wishful that it will happen at some point in time.

Best of luck to all woodworkers  and I will check in  on a fairly regular basis  for a while  and see if the site has got more user friendly for my particular purposes. .

I really enjoyed sharing with some real good turners from  beginners and pro   on the turning board in the old  site and learned a lot from them.  Hope I will still be able to find some of their  messages somewhere  here  on the General Woodworking board whenever they post them. .

[handyman john]

Matt, I believe a little bit more O J T is in order. Tagging should be ONE word descriptors, such as ROUTER, or RADIALARM. Make it ONE word or you get TWO tags.

I looked at one of the forum tags and there is "I, Me, IT, A..." etc. I must assume (and I'll go there this time) that someone typed a PHRASE which is separated into several individual WORDS.

Let's be careful of the tag descriptions or we'll never be able to find anything.