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Introduction
What is a tag? I gave a shallow explanation in my recent How To Search Moorcock's Miscellany. As Michael Moorcock always says, "Context defines." An ordinary search for a term at any given search engine will yield as many indiscriminate results it can find. Some search engines allow you to require a specific word be or not be present in the results allowing you to wheedle down the results to a hopefully smaller set. Alas, you might trim your results down from five million to 1 million. Hopefully the results you care about are closer to the top. Try as you might, adding more words gets you fewer though more relevant results.
How does one get mostly relevant results? What if all your friends were to attach a word to a thread suggesting to you what they thought it was about? They could contextualize raw words for you at a glance, driving you toward more relevant information.
How would you like to help us help our friends by tagging threads at the site?
Add Tags
Okay then, let's take a glance then at how tags here at Moorcock's Miscellany work. I will assume that you have read or are going to read the afore mentioned How To Search Moorcock's Miscellany article.
In this first image you can see I've circled an area on a thread that you might be curious about. The paper clip means the thread has one or more attachments in it like a PDF. The trash bin means that the thread contains one or more posts that have been deleted. The little tag symbol means someone has taken the time to tag the thread. If we hover over the thread, we can see words associated with the thread. This is not the maximum potential of our tags, I assure you (see the article).
If you were reading the latest post in this thread or started at the beginning or if you found the middle of the thread on a search, you can tag this thread by scrolling down to the bottom of the thread. Review the image below to find the Tags box, and the tags within.
It is simple to add a tag. Click on the "Edit Tags" link in the upper right hand corner to enter into tag editing mode.
Once you've added one or more tags to the "Add Tags" field, click the "Save Changes" button.
You'll be returned to the thread where you will see that your tag was added. One of the features of the tags is that when you click one of the, you will get results for that tag, instantly building a relationship between what you were just reading, and what you might be reading next without having to conduct a search.
"That's contextualization, and it's very shagadelic."
\
TARDIS is now among the other tags.
Please Help
Right now if you were to begin using tags at the site you would be very disappointed. There aren't a lot of tags yet. Four or five of us have been adding tags, but there simply aren't enough to matter. You could change that. Anytime you read a post, why not drop down to the tag section and add a tag or two?
What kind of tags should you add? I can't tell you what to add, but I can suggest what not to add. Don't add words like "the" or "fast" or "car". Don't try to be overly humorous with your tags. Don't add obscure or meaningless tags. If its a thread about "Stormbringer, Mournblade, Broken Sword, Leigh Bracket, violence and epic tales", don't use the tags "sword, writer, book, story". Instead use tags like these: "Stormbringer, Mournblade, soul stealing, limbo, final destiny, epic book ending, Broken Sword, Leigh Bracket, episodic fiction, violence, destruction, Elric, Yrkoon".
Why should you do it? No other reason than to make searching Moorcock's Miscellany much more useful to yourself and future visitors. How To Search Moorcock's Miscellany will really contextualize this whole thing for you.
What is a tag? I gave a shallow explanation in my recent How To Search Moorcock's Miscellany. As Michael Moorcock always says, "Context defines." An ordinary search for a term at any given search engine will yield as many indiscriminate results it can find. Some search engines allow you to require a specific word be or not be present in the results allowing you to wheedle down the results to a hopefully smaller set. Alas, you might trim your results down from five million to 1 million. Hopefully the results you care about are closer to the top. Try as you might, adding more words gets you fewer though more relevant results.
How does one get mostly relevant results? What if all your friends were to attach a word to a thread suggesting to you what they thought it was about? They could contextualize raw words for you at a glance, driving you toward more relevant information.
How would you like to help us help our friends by tagging threads at the site?
Add Tags
Okay then, let's take a glance then at how tags here at Moorcock's Miscellany work. I will assume that you have read or are going to read the afore mentioned How To Search Moorcock's Miscellany article.
In this first image you can see I've circled an area on a thread that you might be curious about. The paper clip means the thread has one or more attachments in it like a PDF. The trash bin means that the thread contains one or more posts that have been deleted. The little tag symbol means someone has taken the time to tag the thread. If we hover over the thread, we can see words associated with the thread. This is not the maximum potential of our tags, I assure you (see the article).
If you were reading the latest post in this thread or started at the beginning or if you found the middle of the thread on a search, you can tag this thread by scrolling down to the bottom of the thread. Review the image below to find the Tags box, and the tags within.
It is simple to add a tag. Click on the "Edit Tags" link in the upper right hand corner to enter into tag editing mode.
Once you've added one or more tags to the "Add Tags" field, click the "Save Changes" button.
You'll be returned to the thread where you will see that your tag was added. One of the features of the tags is that when you click one of the, you will get results for that tag, instantly building a relationship between what you were just reading, and what you might be reading next without having to conduct a search.
"That's contextualization, and it's very shagadelic."
\
TARDIS is now among the other tags.
Please Help
Right now if you were to begin using tags at the site you would be very disappointed. There aren't a lot of tags yet. Four or five of us have been adding tags, but there simply aren't enough to matter. You could change that. Anytime you read a post, why not drop down to the tag section and add a tag or two?
What kind of tags should you add? I can't tell you what to add, but I can suggest what not to add. Don't add words like "the" or "fast" or "car". Don't try to be overly humorous with your tags. Don't add obscure or meaningless tags. If its a thread about "Stormbringer, Mournblade, Broken Sword, Leigh Bracket, violence and epic tales", don't use the tags "sword, writer, book, story". Instead use tags like these: "Stormbringer, Mournblade, soul stealing, limbo, final destiny, epic book ending, Broken Sword, Leigh Bracket, episodic fiction, violence, destruction, Elric, Yrkoon".
Why should you do it? No other reason than to make searching Moorcock's Miscellany much more useful to yourself and future visitors. How To Search Moorcock's Miscellany will really contextualize this whole thing for you.
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