Admin

Well, theoretically yes. A person should be able to find what they are looking for using the search.

But here is a thought experiment.
If we extend this line of thinking to the extreme, a question arises. Why do we need sections at all? Why not just dump all topics into one giant section? As a matter of fact, we can remove all sections at all and only leave the Recent Topics listing and the Search page.

For some people it would be OK. I'm sure there are users who only look at the recent topics list and don't wander off into the sections at all.

Yet, it's obvious that a message board without sections/categories/sub-forums (whatever they are called) wouldn't be a message board.

Now if we reverse it and go to the opposite extreme, we would have a home page with 1,000 sections in it, each one containing just a few topics.

As you can imagine, that wouldn't be good either.

So the idea with virtual sections is simply a way to combine the opposites.

As an added benefit, it would (hopefully) stimulate curiosity.

That's what I like about tag clouds. Just by looking at it, you might get interested in some narrow topic of which you weren't thinking just a minute ago.

With search, you would only find what you are already looking for. If you aren't already thinking about it, you won't find it.

Searching and browsing are two fundamentally different activities.

Admin

Nope. It won't be based on search at all. It would be about browsing, not searching.

ghostrider

It's the tag(s) that would send a new thread to a virtual section, is that right? And is it only the original author who can assign the tag(s) to their thread? Or can anyone assign a tag to a thread and send it to their own private virtual sections? And what if the author does not assign a tag to their thread?

butterflywing

okay. when it's all set up, let me know. that's when i'll find someone who understands it to explain it to me. LOL!

Admin

We'll see how it turns out.

Admin

Hopefully. That thought bothers me somewhat though.
The reason I didn't implement tags is because any specific implementation I thought of seemed like it would be a difficult and awkward system to use.

Admin

Those are all good questions.

If everyone is allowed to assign any topic to any virtual section, we would end up with a big mess. And if only authors are allowed to assign their own topics, then no doubt a lot of topics would remain unassigned.

But then, not every topic needs to be assigned in the first place.

ghostrider

Tags work well for blogs, but I don't think they are a good idea for a message board, especially one the size of this. Between the search function and being able to bookmark threads, it seems tags would not be necessary (just my opinion, of course).

Tags are basically a filing system and, like any filing system, the more people doing the filing and the more people doing the retrieving, the more confusing it gets! Would it maybe be more efficient to refine the capabilities of the search function?

littlehud

Great idea.

Admin

That's why I abandoned the plans for the tag system.

In addition to my reply above about everyone assigning any topic to any section, it could be a good idea to simply limit the creation of new virtual sections on demand.

So if a few people decide they want to "establish" a new virtual section, we would create one and they would be in charge of assigning topics to it.

Maybe that would work.