Tag Essentials - with AI auto tagging and XFRM support

Tag Essentials - with AI auto tagging and XFRM support [Paid] 2.7.0

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Question for admins using Tag Essentials on a busy forum - I'm finding the results from the AI tagging to be so good that I'm considering not allowing members to add tags, and instead only adding them from AI (with add/edit ability by moderators/admin).
This would require a permissions overwrite when threads are added by members since they wouldn't have permission to add tags, but we require tags to be added to their threads by Tag Essentials.
Do you have any thoughts on this?
Most of my members don't bother adding tags anyway, so it would work for me :)
 
Is it possible to let AI suggest tags upon creation?
In essence it seems like it would be best if members would not need to tag at all and just let AI handle it completely.
But if you have a very specialized exotic niche with loads of slang and ambiguous jargon, then it remains to be seen how well it performs when handling large numbers of topics / threads. I don't know how well it will do with tagging such things, but I have encountered LLMs completely getting it wrong when it comes to mixing up specialisms and ambiguous concepts.
AI adds tags upon thread creation. The process of using ChatGPT takes a little time plus we don’t want to spend money getting tags more than once, so it’s not feasible to suggest tags until the thread has been submitted.
 
i think manually adding a specific tag could still be useful...it may not necessarily find everything relevant in the first post? i can see how its a little of a can of worms to allow creation of random tags tho...perhaps just an alert for moderation if manual tags are created? and disallow removal of AI created tags...unless by moderation...
 
I am leaning towards not allowing normal members to add, edit or delete tags at all.
It would be possible though to have tags added by members put into a moderation queue, but that would be more coding and potentially a lot of work for the moderators to go through and authorise tags. At the moment I wouldn’t go for that particular option.
 
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Stuart Wright updated Tag Essentials - with AI auto tagging and XFRM support with a new update entry:

Significant improvement to the AI autotagging

  • OpenAI model selection option instead of hardcoded gpt-3.5-turbo
    • Refresh model button to manually fetch a list of current models from OpenAI
    • Filtering to exclude preview and specialised models
  • Editable ChatGPT prompt with testing facility under the tools menu at /admin.php?tags-test-openai/
  • Improved error handling for API failures
  • Fallback logic for when a selected model is no longer available
  • Tag rule filtering for when GPT returns invalid data...

Read the rest of this update entry...
 
We have had 2.7.0 running on AVForums for a week and have tweaked the prompt many times to fit our specific needs.
Here is the prompt as it stands right now on AVForums, with instructions to deal with products, which are discussed at length on our forum.
We found that some models (including the basic ChatGPT 5) return Markup which breaks the results, so we have explicitely excluded that.

Suggest up to {maxTags} lowercase tags (no # symbols) for the content below, posted in the {locationType} named '{location}'.

Rules:
  • Return only a valid JSON array of strings, with no explanation, formatting, or Markdown.
  • Tags are used as keywords for search engines (via structured data) and the forum's internal search. Prioritise those that improve discoverability and relevance.
  • Only include tags that are meaningful, distinct, and clearly supported by the title or message. Do not try to fill the maximum unless justified.
  • Exclude tags already listed in '{existingTags}'.
  • Tags must be lowercase nouns or noun phrases using only letters, digits, spaces, and hyphens (only in known product or technical terms like 'usb-c'). Do not include tags with slashes, punctuation, emojis, or symbols. Avoid slang, acronyms, emotional language, or generic words like 'help', 'discussion', or 'general'.
  • Use singular form unless the plural is standard or contextually distinct (e.g. 'glasses' vs 'glass').
  • Return product make and model as a single tag (e.g. 'sony a95l') when both are present. If only the model is mentioned, include the make only if confidently inferred. Use the model alone only if widely recognisable and useful. Do not also return the make, model, or partial fragments separately.
  • Use '{location}' only to help interpret the title and message - never generate tags from '{location}' directly. If the content is too limited to support useful tags, return fewer tags or none.

Inputs:
existingTags: {existingTags}
title: {title}
message: {message}
 
@Stuart Wright

in what situations do you find people using tags on your site ?
It depends on what you mean by “using tags”:
  • If you’re asking about situations where users manually add tags:
    I’m not sure, as we don’t have visibility into which tags are user-created and which are automatically generated.
  • If you’re asking how people use tags to find content:
    Tags are used when searching via the standard search box, and this applies even without the Tag Essentials add-on. They also play an important role in generating structured data, which helps search engines index threads more effectively.
My experience is that users rarely add tags. I think this is partly due to lack of awareness of their importance, partly due to laziness and partly due to the location of the tag box below the main message where it is overlooked (I think most people enter a thread title and the message and then click the Create thread button without looking at the tag box - particularly on mobile where the button is stuck to the bottom of the window). In fact I think it’s worth considering moving the tag box to below the title of the thread.

In any case, because tags are crucial for content discovery, we don’t leave their creation solely to users. Instead, we use AI to generate optimised tags specifically designed to improve search and discovery.
 
Last edited:
It depends on what you mean by “using tags”:
  • If you’re asking about situations where users manually add tags:
    I’m not sure, as we don’t have visibility into which tags are user-created and which are automatically generated.
  • If you’re asking how people use tags to find content:
    Tags are used when searching via the standard search box, and this applies even without the Tag Essentials add-on. They also play an important role in generating structured data, which helps search engines index threads more effectively.
My experience is that users rarely add tags. I think this is partly due to lack of awareness of their importance, partly due to laziness and partly due to the location of the tag box below the main message where it is overlooked (I think most people enter a thread title and the message and then click the Create thread button without looking at the tag box - particularly on mobile where the button is stuck to the bottom of the window). In fact I think it’s worth considering moving the tag box to below the title of the thread.

In any case, because tags are crucial for content discovery, we don’t leave their creation solely to users. Instead, we use AI to generate optimised tags specifically designed to improve search and discovery.
its happy enough if you allow the option for users.....its not only threads too of course as media items can be tagged and some cases like that it really benefits best by personal inputs
 
its happy enough if you allow the option for users.....its not only threads too of course as media items can be tagged and some cases like that it really benefits best by personal inputs
Well it depends on how much you care about the quality of your tags.
The reason why we need a tag blacklist is to stop people from adding crap tags.
Tags like ‘3/4’. Which is utterly useless.
Maybe we need to check manually added tags and delete ones which ChatGPT thinks are crap.

Anyway, admin can choose who has permission to add tags.
 
Well it depends on how much you care about the quality of your tags.
The reason why we need a tag blacklist is to stop people from adding crap tags.
Tags like ‘3/4’. Which is utterly useless.
Maybe we need to check manually added tags and delete ones which ChatGPT thinks are crap.

Anyway, admin can choose who has permission to add tags.

yeah im 100% in favor of the black list and synonym list and i totally agree....
it is sort of alot to go thru at first but then the rules you make stay there so its easy to progress organization at any time....that would be nice to let the list be scanned by ai, we did one bulk forum upgrade and it was alot of manual cleanup....it gets easier each time because the more it has tags you allow the more it will choose those and not make new one you have to filter etc....

now with more refined creation in the first place it makes me feel better to do the rest of the forums with less manual work so thanks for the upgrade
 
Hi Stuart,

For some reason no tags are being generated on my forum after updating the add-on. I have set the model to gpt-5-chat-latest.

Also, when I go to /admin.php?tags-test-openai/ I get this:

1755856502833.webp
 
Is it just me, or is it not working properly? I don't have any test page in the Tools menu in the ACP. What am I missing here?
 
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