A quick guide on how to tag

ok, before i start, i just want to mention that i'm not intending to hurt, insult or talk badly about anyone. honestly.
i reckon everybody who started a topic some time since early august noticed the large box saying categories. i mean, how could you not, it's so big it doesn't even fit on my screen. and most probably wondered what the heck is this. the answer is, it's for tags. tags are little keywords that describe the content of a topic and helps google and other search machines find the content (and can improve our ranking in the result list). there's also a so called tag-cloud on the homepage of thud, on the very bottom, which you could use to find topics via their tags. obviously topics don't tag themselves though, which is why us librarians are here. in theory only we should be able to tag, in reality it's not that easy and everybody can do it when they create a topic. which is why i'm writing this. please read it, try to understand it, and in the best case, don't just forget it again the moment you go on to the next topic

step 1) if you're not a librarian, DON'T TAG! this may sound harsh, but as i already said, you're not even supposed to be able to do. it makes us more work to fix bad tags than to tag a topic ourselves.

step 2) should you have decided to ignore step 1, or if you are a librarian, then it's now important to understand the categories. most of them are pretty self-explanatory, but i guess thud and discworld can be a bit confusing. thud is used for anything to do with the site or the game, whereas discworld is the rest of the stuff, even if you're talking about something roundworld like tv.

step 2.1) the category "german forum" is obviously only used for anything posted to the german forum or in german. the tags in this category are in german and should be repeated in english in the other categories.

step 3) once you have decided what categories your tags belong to, you enter the first couple of letters of a tag. the little grey circle at the end of the field will then change colour and the category will be searched for tags with those letters. once it's grey again you'll get, if available, a list with those tags. like if you enter "sit" in the thud category it'll give you site, site suggestions and site safety. choose the one you want. if you don't get hits, try a synonym. if you still don't get hits, create a new term by just entering it anyway.

step 4) make sure that the words you enter a) describe the content in a sensible manner and b) are complete, existing and proper words (eg. "incomp" is not, nor is "pingu", as cute as he may be). also, please be careful about the spelling, if in doubt, look a word up.

step 5) putting a tag once and in only one category is enough. there's no point in tagging a topic with the same word in thud, waffle and nonsense and discworld. choose one!

step 6) you may now write the actual topic

step 7) if in doubt it's always better if you only do step 1 and 6. we librarians check every new topic and if there are no tags yet or we think there's a tag missing we'll add it.

finally, thanks for putting up with me and reading this. i hope i didn't offend anybody. if yes, i'm truly sorry. if there are any questions, you are welcome to ask.

--When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained. – Mark Twain

Save the rats, eat a dwarf!