About
Describes what tags are and how to use them
Who is this for?
Anyone who is creating topics on the forum, or wants to discover topics based on content.
What are tags?
Tags are metadata attached to topics that can be used to search for related content based on content.
Tags allow for more organic organisation of topics than categories
Creating and applying tags
Topics can, and should, be tagged. When composing or editing a topic enter text into the tag dialogue next to the category chooser, and matching tags will be suggested. Choose an existing tag or if it doesn’t exist you can create it if you have sufficient trust level:
Tags can also be adjusted when quick editing an existing topic title:
References to tags can be embedded in posts using the familiar hashtag syntax, e.g. #python renders as python and creates an embedded link to all posts with the python tag. If a tag doesn’t exist, e.g. #blahblahblah, it won’t create a clickable link.
Using tags
Topics display their tags underneath the title:
Those keywords are links, click on one and it will display a list of topics, e.g. clicking on jupyter displays:
which is a search window with all topics tagged jupyter.
The same page is linked from the jupyter embedded tag.
When using the discourse search function tags matching search terms are suggested, and again selecting the tag links to the same result as above
More usefully, tags can be used to filter search results. For example searching for python yields 50 results:
By selecting the “Advanced filters” menu, selecting jupyter in the “Tagged” menu and pushing “Search” again narrows the search down to 5 topics:
Tags can also be watched, like topics, which means you can get alerts when new topics are created with tags you are interested in.
There is more information about the myriad ways to use and configure tags in this tag admin guide
Summary
Tags make topics more discoverable, providing a layer of organisation that spans categories across the forum.