Introducing Tags

[Sam (Sam Solomon)]

You may have noticed that some of your posts have been updated or moved around on the homepage—don’t worry. No content as been edited.

I’ve added tags to Product Dork today in an effort to keep the site organized as it grows. You can click a tag to see all topics related to that tag. Tags will also appear when searching.

Here are the three types of tags we’ll be using:

• Types of products (e.g. coffee makers, apps and air purifiers)
• Companies and Manufacturers (coway, logitech, vizio
• Brands and Product Lines—I’m still working on this one.

There’s also one additional tag for the Deals category, expired. Deals now are wikis and when someone discovers a deal is no longer available, they can be tagged as expired.

Admins and moderators will be the only ones able to create new tags; however, anyone can add them to a topic (and I’d encourage you too!). Currently, there are a maximum of 5 tags per topic. We’ll see if that needs to be expanded, but ideally topics are focused around a few products, companies or brands.

Open to ideas and feedback as we continue to experiment!

[carriewald (Carrie Waldron)]

It seems like a good idea. I like that they appear in searches as well. Good job!

My only feedback is that it does seem to take up a lot of room on the homepage. Maybe make the squares a bit smaller?

[lisan88 (Lisa Nguyen)]

@Sam

There’s also one additional tag for the Deals category, expired. Deals now are wikis and when someone discovers a deal is no longer available, they can be tagged as expired.

I think the expired tags might be a problem. It looks like updating tags bumps the topic? I don’t think it makes sense for sales that have been ended to get a bump.

[Sam (Sam Solomon)]

That’s a fair point.

I’m not sure how impactful tags will be or if it will be too much to manage going forward. If they become difficult to manage or people don’t really use them we may get rid of them.

Until both of those things are clear, I’m hesitant to make changes to them.

[Sam (Sam Solomon)]

It doesn’t look like tags bump the topic.

I think the expired posts at the top of the homepage are probably there because I unlocked them.

Update: Deals will no longer auto-close

Trying to rethink some of the deals discussions here. I’m going to remove the topics auto closing. That way threads can resurface when they appear again. Open to other thoughts on this. What do y’all think?

Deals used to automatically close after 14 days, but I decided to remove that because I didn’t want that to signal a deal had ended. However that was only for newer deals or deals that had appeared again.

Hopefully the expired tag is a better solution. We’ll see.

Update: I’ve change the timestamp of those expired deals back to when they were opened. Hopefully the homepage is a little cleaner now.

[Sam (Sam Solomon)]

I’ve figured out how bumping works now—it’s a bit odd, but it is consistent.

Tags will only bump the topic if there are no comments. This is an issue as most deal posts receive no comments. This means that they get bumped when the expired tag is added.

To prevent this from happening, I’ll have the @productdork account make a single post everything in the deal category. Here’s an example:

25% Off L.L.Bean's Bean Boots with Promo Code

If you notice that the deal or promo code has expired, please add the expired tag to alert other members of the community. If there is a discount elsewhere feel free to comment and we’ll update this topic.

I think this should fix the issue. We’ll see.