A few months ago, I talked about implementing a tag system to allow people to group topics according to their interests. (I think the original conversation was about separate sections for EQ and for longarm quilters.)
I thought about it for a while, but I couldn't think of a good way to implement it. Every approach I came up with seemed to be too awkward and not useful at all.
So I'm thinking about giving up on the idea of implementing a tag system.
Instead, I want to try a concept of virtual sections.
Just like the forum has "real" sections like Main, Pictures, Swaps, etc.
We would also have user-defined sections.
So when a person makes a new topic, they would still do it in one of the sections on the board, but at the same time, they would be able to include the newly created topic into one of the virtual sections.
And others would be able to browse those virtual sections to see a listing of any new topics in virtual sections they deem to be of interest.
The board would still work as it does now, and all topics would be visible under their respective "real" sections. But at the same time it would be possible to form "collections" of related topics for quick navigation.
What do you think?