Tags
Tags are used on a number of websites, particularly blogs, to help people find content on connected topics of interest, and I think they would be useful on CMO.
A tag is simply a keyword or phrase which is added to an article or other content which refers to a subject, even if it's not the main subject. It can have as many tags as necessary to show the topics mentioned. Tags are chosen from a defined set of words, which can then be used rather like the larger number of categories suggested by Tess elsewhere. Tags are often more useful than using 'search' because you see the concepts, not just finding words which match your search phrase.
Site users will see these words as a "Tag Cloud", where the text size of each tag indicates the number of places that tag is used. You click on one tag to see a list of the articles with that tag.
Tag need to be chosen to be more distinctive than 'of, and, by, the' etc. but not so specific as to only be used once.
So please suggest some tags likely to be useful on CMO, and let's have at least a couple of dozen or so to start with. I'd like this list to be a collaborative exercise so please don't just sit down and try to do the lot on your own - post a few words and leave the rest for others with different interests to suggest. I expect we'll end up with 50 or more words which cover everything we need to categorise and we can add more as needed.
Here are a few to get us going: footpath, dogs, church, traffic, village hall, parking, wildlife, litter, shop
Please add your tag suggestions here.
Comments? Questions?
Tagging along
I obviously am not up to date with all this "new stuff" but trying to grasp it. I presume anyone writing in will then need to use the "tag" in their content similar to the old meta tags?
Also some clarity please. An example above being "wild life' wouldn't something like "nature" cover a wider content area?
Finally will there be a section listing the tags so that we have something to refer to?
Tagging: "new stuff"
I've used tags on other sites but not with this software so I can't give a very clear answer yet about tags here. I assume by "meta tags" you mean the fixed words search engines look at to categorise a site. This is similar but meta tags are chosen to represent a whole site, while these are set separately for each item on the site.
For example, if someone writes an article about the 'rec', they might add tags like walk, dog, sport, cricket, litter, public space. Someone else may write about another topic but mention litter (or rubbish) in passing, so they add the litter tag among others. Then anyone seeing the word 'litter' in the tag cloud will be able to find anything which has been tagged 'litter'.
We'll need some tag words which can describe site content such as an article, picture or discussion so that a contributor or site admin can apply them to help others find relevant content.
I can see that 'nature' is broader than 'wildlife' so it's probably more useful. We need "Goldilocks" terms, which are neither too broad nor too specific. Having a limited vocabulary of a couple of dozen well-chosen words will stop it spreading to include very specific but only occasionally used words. We need Parish Council, recycling and school but not giraffe, silkworm or cummerbund as they are unlikely to be useful.
The list of tags will appear as a 'cloud' of words, each of which is a link you can click to see all content with that tag. I think it will be clear when you use it.