Question About Tags

I've just been doing some experimentation and as far as I can tell it matches the whole term - so for example if I add "Nintendo Wii, foo" as my tags it will be picked up by people searching for "Nintendo Wii" or "foo" but people who search for "Nintendo" or "Wii" will not find it. The space basically doesn't seem to work as a subtle delimiter, for separate terms you need to use comma to break it up otherwise it will be treated as one longer string.

John

Thanks John - rep added.

That's good to get confirmation, although it does mean you end up having to put several tags to cover all bases. It would be good if there was some sort of guide so that there was consistant usage of tags between deals/posts, in the same way we get guidance when selecting the retailer for a deal (e.g. Tesco.com, Tesco Direct, Tesco Jersey, etc), but I guess there's not really a practical way of doing that given the wide spectrum of items/deals/topics that get posted on here.

There is an explanation about tags from Admin HERE

Tags are really for individuals to find something that they wish to 'Bookmark', they can be totally unrelated, or make no sense to anyone but themselves.

The Advanced search is obviously the better way to search for individual items.

Thanks Saint. I actually read that before posting.

I got the impression that they weren't just meant for individuals to bookmark the deals they were interested in, but that they were also meant to help everyone tailor their RSS feeds to their particular needs. So for example, if you are interested in computer games, you should be able to just get an RSS feed with all the deals with "Computer Game" as the tag. The problem is though, with the way the tags work and because there is no standard set of tags to work to, if you set your feed up to supply posts with just the "Computer Game" tag, it wouldn't include those just tagged with "Video games" or "Computer Games", etc. or not tagged at all.

Seems like there is a potentially very useful tool going to waste, but I can't think how you could impliment it in such a way that it would actually work, given the scope of this site.

Totally agree and I've thought the same thing before. I guess there could be a set list of 'standard' tags which had a drop-down list or an autocomplete feature.. a bit like when you enter the retailer name - people could add 'custom' tags but they wouldn't generally get added to the 'standard' tag list. Don't know if it would work though as there are so many different possible fields for posts on this site (and if the list was small it would do little that the topics/forums fields don't already do)...

It's best as far as I'm aware to stick to single words and commas in between. So using the example, just put:
Nintendo, Wii

That way, those searching for either would find the individual terms. I also put my username at the start of all the tags, just helps me find deals easier as the subscription still doesn't work on the site.

I think an auto-complete or auto-suggest would help make them more useful. Like when you go to make a deal it could suggest tags, or when you start typing 'nintendo' it would suggest other popular tags like 'nintendo wii' 'nintendo games' 'nintendo fans' etc. I think that would help group important tags and allow tag groups to form more organically.

You should give it a try, the tags feature is definately not used to its potential...

Is there a way to search for certain tags? (Is there something I can type into the search box that will just bring up threads with a certain tag?)

You can search specific tags:

emma's explanation

Thanks, hadn't seen that It appears broken however, comes up with a very bizarre set of results...

Yes, I tried it also. It brought up every thread apart form the ones with the tags I was searching for.

Yeah, that doesn't seem to work any more as all the tags have a number attached to them now!

E.g. Nintendo - http://www.hotukdeals.com/?tag=11547

So the only way I can think of to search for a particular tag would be to search for the word you are interested in, use ctrl+f on your keyboard to quickly skim through all instances on the page, until you perhaps hit one with the tag you want.