My two three cents on the tags/groups debate

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Scott Beeson · Mar 17, 2016 1m read

Option 1:

Groups are renamed "Forums". They are segregated and have their own sets of tags. If I'm viewing "Ensemble" and I click "Create a Post", it is posted in that forum. I must tag the post with one or more tags from that forum, "Business Service", "Production", "DTD", etc. Tags can be assigned to multiple forums. I am never prompted to choose a "group"/forum. It's based on the context I was viewing.

Option 2:

Groups and tags are completely removed and replaced with "Topics" and subtopics. These work just like tags except that the first one chosen is the topic.

Option 3:

Complete tag chaos! No groups. Everything is tag based. No "primary tags". Very modern and flexible and sexy and scary.

In all cases, the following improvements need to be made:

Uniformity. The words "Topic", "Term" and "tag" are all currently used to refer to the same thing. This is not cool.
Simplicity. It takes 3 clicks to add a topic/term/tag. That doesn't include scrolling.
Descriptions. Tags need descriptions. As usual, see SO for a wonderful example of how this could work (wiki-based)

My <s>two</s> three cents on the tags/groups debate