Hashtags - The Way XenForo Would Handle Content Tagging

[Divvens]

As per a discussion here, I decided to make this suggestion thread for hashtags.

What are hashtags?
Users who use twitter may know a lot about #hashtags, it has recently been added as a feature in Facebook as well. "Hashtags" are content tags, that can be clicked upon to view more content of similar nature. For example, if I were to add a hashtag #XenforoNews, it would turn into a hyperlink and can be clicked upon to see all content containing the same hashtag.

How is it useful?
Many communities are more than just a "community", they provide resources, articles of various kinds, news and information, products or even talk about everything under the sun. These forums always look for "organization" of content, most prefer using "tags" that can be added and auto-linked so that users can find similar content or it can be searched for easily.

Hashtags make it easier, by making it inline, you do not need to do anything or add any tags after the thread/content is created, and hashtags can be used in threads, replies (posts), member profile updates etc making it easier to organize content of the same type. This feature can be useful to communities/forums that provide news/information or even general communities for better organization and a bit more #fun.

Hashtagging is #useless
Many people may have this opinion, since some twitter users did make the hashtag look that way, but we cannot hate an idea just due to a certain few can we? Imagine, XenForo having its own hashtag system, similar to the user @ tag, it's going to make it more engaging and social, better to organize content, better to search for relevant content etc. And I'm pretty sure this will please everyone looking for a content tagging system. Maybe an official sidebar block to show the hashtag cloud? Wouldn't it be sweet?

Others may have even better ideas than me to make use of the hashtag, please feel free to share your opinions and if you feel this feature should make it into #xenForo core.

Edit: More Ideas (and future ideas) to improve upon base suggestion:

Users can "watch" hashtags and be alerted for new content containing that hashtag
Once you click on a hashtag, it takes you to a search like page where all content with that hashtag is displayed. You have an option to "watch" the hashtag, and be notified via Alerts/E-Mail when new content is created with that "hashtag", alert options can be set to alert for "threads", alert for "posts" containing hashtag, or alert for both.

 

[The Sandman]

Staff get picky about multiple threads about the same idea...

It's for the greater good!

 

[The Sandman]

I think hashtags could be useful as well although I agree that it would be better to do away with the # prefix until someone hovers over the link. I would also like to see the use of hashtags limited by usergroup with the option for staff to moderate requests for specific tags to maintain sanity.

A hashtag cloud widget in the sidebar might not be too shabby with rules like these.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Users can "watch" hashtags and be alerted for new content containing that hashtag

How about being able to watch regular tags !

 

[Digital Doctor]

There is a hashtag resource.
It works but is a pop up, not a page.

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/hashtagging.2110/

 

[Wildcat Media]

Just saw this thread...

Basically, I hate inline hash tags for the reason of it breaking up the flow of how I read a post, and as @Brogan, @Martok, and @The Dark Wizard have shown, it leads to no spaces or bad grammar, capitalization, etc. to get a hash tag to be there. (Which is also the reason I'll be removing the @ symbol from displaying with tags)

I not only find reading through hashtags annoying, there is a subset of users out there who have to "hashtag all the things" incessantly. Each sentence may have two or three hashtags, most of them unimportant. Then, what you end up with is a bunch of tags that are essentially "polluting" the truly useful tags. And then you have older users who only see hashtags but have no desire to ever use them, or even dislike reading them mid-sentence.

We turned off tagging on vBulletin because it was not well implemented (no user permissions), it was not traceable (to see who left the nonsensical hashtags), and in general, ended up being useless due to the number of useless tag words used for each thread.

So it is not so much the idea of tagging. It's the abuse of over-tagging with nonsense that pollutes it. And, that is why I do not want the average forum members out there to be able to "hashtag all the things."

(For abuse, I'm thinking of, say, a bicycling forum, where someone would write a sentence like, "I'm #tired, think I'll go to #bed after #dinner." None of the words relating to, well, anything other than the writer's vanity.)

 

[beerForo]

upvote

 

[beerForo]

I think hashtags could be useful as well although I agree that it would be better to do away with the # prefix

You realize HASH tag refers to the hash mark.