I use Tags a lot in my organization of my business and personal activities, but the tags on here are not very friendly. I also noticed that they are not getting used by many contributors, an example is the Science Tag. It should have hundreds of posts, but as I write this, it has 5. So I guess I am complaining about something the doesn’t matter.
Should I be addressing this to the Discourse designers?
Yes they don’t work as well as they could.
We have the ability to make tags for a category - so we could have a cuisine type for recipes … but once we set that we can’t add any new tags to posts in recipes. So we removed category specific tags.
Can users PLEEEAAASSSEEEEE be able to add tags to posts when they reach Member status? I just added an article about someone setting up a low-carb non-profit to address the Type 2 Diabetes epidemic and there were no pre-existing tags for “Type 2 Diabetes”, “T2D”, or “diabetes” at all (this was in the News section)! The worst part is, I can’t add them! I post in Show Me The Science and News probably more than anywhere else, but I can’t tag things unless there is already one there. “Make a list so we can add them” isn’t a practical solution because we don’t know what tags we’ll need until we’re posting.
Please? 
If the fear is a giant jumble of tags no one will ever use but once (like Twitter hashtags), I’m offering to personally go through periodically and clean them out and apply proper tags pertinent to the actual post.
Thank you.
I haven’t played"tag" since childhood, I’m afraid I wouldn’t know how.
I have lowered the trust level required for creating tags to 2.
You might mention this to the Discourse designers too. They seemed very focused on not having topics repeated on the site by having a side search monitoring the text you want to add. However, tags seem to be much more haphazard. When I click on the tag text area (when I post a new topic) the suggested tags never come close to recommending any appropriate tag. I usually open a side tab and just look through all of the existing tags.
Thanks. Just trying to make our little forum not only a wonderful but intuitive place to interact and share.
My next question is: when adding a tag for an article (say one that doesn’t already exist), is that tag only for that category or is it forum-wide?
Example: I post an article in News and add the tag “fasting”. Can someone in Supplements or Humor or wherever also use that same tag?
From previous experiments, I’d say yes. But we did have a glitch in the tags in Recipes (or was it Food?) where the tags mysteriously disappeared if you moved a topic in there. Not sure if the problem is something that will crop up again, or if or was solved completely.
This is super tricky, what is the process that you go about finding more appropriate tags?
Usually, I have a list of tags by folder since most of the time I use tags to drill into or filter a topic. After that I will look at my text, there are typically a couple of words the jump out. Either because they are repeated, or they are in the start the post (which for me is usually a summary or a statement of why I am posting).
What do you use @DBatting?
If I’m posting an article, I usually go with prominent descriptive words or themes. I generally tag similarly to how someone might use search. “What was that one article about insulin pumps?” If that’s what the article is primarily about, I would definitely tag insulin and pump, probably as well as T1D. I try to be as intuitive and targeted as possible without including everything but the kitchen sink.