LQ's Tag system is a really handy tool, but it's benefits can be neutered rather easily. I think a few tips are in order.

1. Keep your tags down to a bare minimum

Right now, you can only see 15 of your tags. Any more than that are wasted. This limitation will be expanded at some future time, but, even then, if you have 100's of tags on various posts, finding the one you are looking for is more trouble than it's worth. Only tag posts to which you know you will be returning, and those which include explicit information regarding your subject of interest.

2. Choose meaningful tags

There are hundreds of threads on LQ tagged "linux." Why? If you click on that tag from the LQ Tags link, it will return them all. Good luck finding the one you tagged, because it included something you needed to keep track of. More to the point, the tag needs to be meaningful to you, and it should be somewhat unique. If clicking on a tag keyword returns less than a dozen or so threads, it's fairly easy to click on them individually, and find the one with your name at the top. Any more than that, and you are clearly in the realm of diminishing returns.

3. Tags should be one word only

Should here is an understatement. If you tag a thread, "Compile Suse kernel," you have, not one, but three separate tags ... "compile," "suse," and "kernel," none of which will make it easy for you to return to that thread. This is directly related to Rule #2. You should instead tag that thread "CompileSuseKernel," and you'll have a perfectly good, easy to locate, tag.

4. Clean out unused tags

Every now and then, take some time and look at your list in LQ Tags. When you see one that you can't even remember putting in, the chances are good that its not needed. For example, if you have "Alsa" as one of your tags, and you can't remember why, click it and go through the returned threads until you find yours. Look at the post you tagged and decide whether or not you really need it. If you don't, blank it out on the post you marked, click the Save button, and the tag will be gone. If it turns out to be something you really did want, change it to something more meaningful like, "AlsaOssFunctions," (Save), and you'll know why it's included on your list.

****************

Since I can edit this post, if you have any other suggestions, go ahead and list them, and I'll move them up into this top one, if it seems necessary.

Once you have what you consider to be a "final version", submit it as a Linux Tutorial and I'll include it with the other how tos on using the site.

One more time thru the board, and if no one has anything to add, Xavier, go ahead and move it. I'm afraid that. like the "other how tos on using the site," it's doomed for low readership.

Hey a quick question... and maybe the answer could be included into this.

When you click on the what is this? link there at the bottom in the tag "box" you get taken right to the generic "What is Tagging" entry in the FAQ. The following quote grabbed my interest:So unless I'm told otherwise I've made it my mission to (intelligently) tag the most helpful posts as I come across them. Obviously I type a tag and it gives me this little drop-down list of already used tags and I pick one that best suits the topic. Is this really an advisable tactic? It seems that slapping a tag on something for the sake of having a tag could be abused.

Another thing I noticed is that searching by tag is exactly the same as clicking the tag link on the LQ tags page. You only get posts that have that tag. It would be much more helpful if searching by more than one tag is supported in any capacity. Currently I can search for posts having a "slackware" tag but not a post that's tagged "slackware" and "kernel+source." I also cannot search for "slackware" or "kernel+source." If tagging were to become popular enough so that every useful post were tagged, a search by tag or an advanced search including the tag field would be greatly enhanced by multiple argument, and/or functionality. Of course the drop-down list that comes up as you type will give a little boost.

Okay I swear there's one more thing but my mind is empty now. If I can remember it I'll edit in. But as my mother used to say... "If you can't remember it then it probably wasn't that important."

EDIT: I remembered that last thing. I was wondering if the Top 15 could be expanded. It would be nice to see all my tags rather than just the top 15. Maybe somethat that could be configured or filtered on the fly?

Regardless, I found this thread (Jeremy's announcement thread) since I posted so I apologize if my post is redundant or annoying.

It may not be read, but it will be there - and we can point people to it.

I'm afraid I can't move your thread to LQ Answers - could you click the link in the Tutorials section and copy/paste it there please?

As mentioned, we are going to expand the top 15. As for the search, it will be improved in a future version. Thanks for the feedback.

--jeremy

I thought that the tags were publicly accessible. If I had known that only I can see my tags I wouldn't have tagged anything. I thought I was helping to organize posts into a searchable keyword database that everyone shared.

Tags are publicly accessible - that's where the distinction between "Your" tags and "Popular" tags in a thread come from.

--jeremy

Please also note that as zetabill eluded to the accepted syntax for multi word tags is to seperate using a plus "kernel+source" rather than "kernelsource".

I'm also not sure why you would clean out unused tags. By all means remove them if they don't make sense but if people start removing tags just because they don't expect to use them again themselves we lose out on being able to search for other user's tags.

Remember if you are looking specifically for posts or threads that you have tagged then you can use the full search system rather than the LQ tags page:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/search.php

david_ross brings up a couple very good points, especially with regard to removing tags.

--jeremy

The tag tutorial can now be found here. Enjoy.

I'll update it later, as 3 and 4 should reflect how things actually work Thanks all.

--jeremy

Good idea - thanks Jeremy

Looking closer, 1 3 and 4 are somewhat incorrect so I am putting this back into the queue while I can think about it. In the meantime, feedback is welcome. Thanks.

--jeremy

To me, the key purpose of tagging is to aid in categorization and searching/finding answers.

Therefore, they should be simple, follow syntax, (edit first post in this thread?) and relevant.

One of the applications for tagging means less double posting- does you question potentially belong in server, hardware and networking? Multiple posting of the same thread is not allowed by the LQ rules, but with tagging, you could pick the most relevant forum, and then tag "hardware, networking" on the thread.

titanium_geek