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When I see new posts appear on this Doing Dance, I frequently think how useful it would be if the thread starters used tags: if you click on a tag, it will bring up a list of other threads tagged the same way (say, "summer schools", "Royal Ballet School", "ballet classes") which may be relevant to your query. It's very easy to do: the Tags box is immediately below the Title box when you start a thread. The contents of your title will often give a clue as to what might be an appropriate tag (say, "summer schools"). Click in the Tags box and start typing, and if there are existing tags beginning with the same letters they should start to show up, so you can just select and click on them rather than carry on typing.

I wasn't able to get tags to work in the testing section but have managed it here. Is there a list of 'approved' tags to choose from? Thanks

We have quite a few tagged threads on this forum now: tagging is supposed to make it easier to find other threads on a similar topic - clicking on the "tags" tag at the top of this thread should take you to any other threads on the same subject. Only trouble is that, while I can run a search on one tag, I don't seem to have found a way - if one exists - of searching on multiple tags at the same time. So, while I can select all the threads tagged "cinema feedback" I can't then search on a thread for, say, "Sleeping Beauty" as well in order to narrow down the number of hits. Has anyone found a way of doing this, please?

I just wanted to remind people of the possibility of entering tags when you start a topic - where relevant, of course. These can be used to highlight important elements of the thread: company name, dancer name, production name, choreographer, or whatever fits, really - the choice is yours (although maybe it would be useful if we were consistent in using either the full name or abbreviations for company names, and full names or surnames for people). It's quite easy to do: you just click in the "Topic Tags" field and type a name, say, and then a comma, and the software converts it into a tag! You can have any number up to 10. What do they do, you ask? Well, apart from the "tag cloud" which shows up, I think, on the forum home page, where you can click on any of the words there and be taken to relevant threads (so clicking on "Tamara Rojo" will take you to other threads about her), they may give you an indication that a thread which you might otherwise have passed over might be of interest. Plus, the forum software is clever enough that, if you're reading a thread which has tags it may then refer you to other threads which have the same tags, so you might find something else which is of interest. Of course, this only works if we remember to add tags when we start a thread, so if you're starting one please don't just ignore the "Topic Tags" field, but add anything you think might be helpful - I don't think it's possible even for Moderators to add them once a topic has been started. There was some more discussion on this in the early days of the forum here: http://www.balletcoforum.com/index.php?/topic/34-adding-tags/

You may have noticed that the menu bar has been simplified by the removal of various items that we haven't as yet been using (Calendar, Blogs, Pages, Chat). Think of it as Spring Cleaning! Something I've added which may or may not be useful is the Popular Tags panel on the right. If posts are tagged (e.g. Royal Ballet for any RB-related new topics) then clicking the Royal Ballet tag in the panel will bring up a list of all such postings. This is potentially very useful, but obviously only if people use them and that's just one more thing to have to do, albeit in a public-spirited kind of way. I would propose leaving the panel there for a while and encouraging people to use tags and then we can discuss further and see if it's worth retaining - all of these things can be switched on and off.

I've done this totally by trial and error, as I couldn't find any relevant information in the Help files, but: When you start a topic, under the box for "Topic title" there is a "Topic tags" box. Having looked in vain for an appropriate list of tags, as I've found on the one site I've bothered with them for, I've realised that the system here seems to be that you make them up as you go along. Presumably as we get more familiar with the workings of the site, they'll start to make more sense and we'll find some way of actually selecting threads with tags that interest us, but the tags seem to be basically keywords, so you could put in things like production name, dancer name, venue, company and so on. If anyone knows more about the workings of tags than I do (hardly difficult!), perhaps you could share your knowledge with the rest of us