Using tags to annotate a post could be easier?

[joelh]

Hi guys, new SAS community member here! 😀

Lot's of good posts here, and I made my first post today myself, and after this I want to leave some feedback to the site creators on the topic of "tags" from my perspective as a new community member. 

Labels vs Message Tags confusion: As I'm posting my topic, I can add meta data to the post in form of "Labels" and "Message Tags". I'm not sure of the difference, and there were no explanation next to the inputs. It would have been nice with an explanation, and from my own perspective, I rather just tag "once". 

Tags not autocompleting and error when adding tags as I'm posting (but not editing): when I tried to add tags into the "Labels" input (and I tested the "Message Tags" input as well), there were no autocomplete on existing tags. IMO, this really discourages the use of tags, to the degree maybe there should be a note to the user you should not use Labels or Message Tags unless you have been instructed otherwise?

When I tried to add a few tags as I was adding my post (security,git,github,saseg) 

I got this feedback as I was saving my post (had to remove them to save)

Wanting to add some (helpful) tags, I viewed my post, and saw that you had an "Add Tags" button. trying out this one, I could add the tags that the forum system complained were not available before. 

There was no autocompletion here either, but I could add both existing and non-existing tags. I noticed enterprise guide tag and security tags existed, but I was apparently the first using the git tag.

I think it would be nice if the SAS communities could support autocomplete on tags and if we could improve the messages to the posters on how to use this feature. 

[ChrisHemedinger]

Hi @joelh - Welcome to the community!

In general, Labels are "administered categories".  We use them quite a bit in our knowledge base (library) to categorize content, intentionally limiting the number of available labels so that they don't get so specific that they aren't useful for grouping.  Grouping similar topics together is the main advantage of Labels.

Tags -- we don't rely on them heavily.  Mostly content is "grouped" by whatever board you post in ("SAS Enterprise Guide" for EG topics, "Statistical Procedures" for stat topics, etc) -- and doesn't rely on tags.  (In this way we are more like Reddit than StackOverflow, at least as far as grouping topics.)  Anyone can add tags to a message after it's been posted, but without a strict tagging convention it's usefulness is limited. The autocomplete idea is good, but something our community platform doesn't currently support. 

The main ways that people find content are Google (internet) search (which takes you directly to a topic of interest) and community site search, which is pretty good at finding what you need.

Thank you for the ideas -- and we are always looking for ways to improve the experience. If you've seen behavior on other communities that you like and you want to provide examples, we welcome that.

[BeverlyBrown]

Hi @joelh, thought I'd share a link to a post of mine on tagging. Though a few years old, it sheds some light on ways other members use tags. A key difference between tags and labels is that you can subscribe to email notifications of new content organized under labels. I appreciate your ideas and am glad you're a member!