Tags
What are Tags, What is Tagging?
Someone mentioned this site had a problem with searchability. If you're looking for a job, or you want to find help, it's not obvious that the Community page (for example) is a good place to find people or employment.
So a new standard has been introduced, where we add tags (keywords) to the bottom of pages, so that the Search feature of this site will find related pages, even if the content itself doesn't include those words.
The standard (which I just made up but it can be changed if required) is to put a horizontal line at the bottom of the page, and follow it with keywords after the word Tags. Edit this page to see how this page was tagged, and use that as the model for other pages. Note that the word [[Tags]] is surrounded in double brackets to cause it to link back to this page. Please maintain that standard to help people find this page, and encourage them to do their own tagging.
Why the funky standard?
This wiki software doesn't allow us to actually tag pages like some wikis do. If we follow a standard now, and the wiki software is changed later, we may be able to programmatically import all the tags into new software, and instantly benefit from this effort, while moving forward with a more standard tagging mechanism.
Why not just put keywords in text?
Some people are afraid to modify content. This mechanism allows anyone to contribute to site searchability without feeling like they need to change someone else's content. If you're comfortable changing content (without changing the meaning or intent) then feel free to do so. Keywords found in content don't need to be redundantly listed in tags.
When do I tag a page?
Feel free to tag any page, and to augment pages that already have tags with keywords that you believe will help people to find those pages.
Let's say you're looking for something on the site, and you don't find it using some "obvious" keyword. Search with other words. When you find the content, just add tags at the bottom of the document (using the standards please) with the word(s) that you believe will help others to find the content.
What about variations on a single word?
Be mindful of how singular and plural words are used. If you save a page with the word "job", then search for jobs, you'll immediately realize "jobS" was not on that page an the page isn't returned in the search, so just go back and modify the tag with "jobs" and now someone will find the page with the singular or plural reference. It's not necessary to have both "job" and "jobs" as a pure text search will see that "job" is included within "jobs". So the rule of thumb is to pluralize everything, and only use singular tags where the singular and plural words are different - like maybe with 'octopod', 'octopus' and 'octopi'. Similarly, "employment" will allow people to find the page with the search word "employ", so you don't need to include both.
Also note internationalisation of words, where some people will use the letter "s" instead of "z", and try to add terms like "colour" next to "color".
Abbreviations may help people find pages too, so adding I18N on a page might help people to find "internationalization", and GFE might help people to find Group Format Error.
Tags: keywords search help find
