What are the black boxes for? 0

[Just Bob]

I have noticed that a lot of the newer posters use the "tags" option when creating a post, and the tags show up as little black boxes with words related (or not) to the title (That is actually a guess on my part; I have never tagged a post that I created, so I am not actually sure. I just assume that this is how the boxes are created.) Regardless, my question is: "Why are these being used?" If you are only seeking an answer to one question about your coin, why bother to tag it at all? Your new post will show up as "unread," so anyone who looks at the forum will see it and have the option to answer. What advantage is there to tagging it? And why use 9 different tags? Is it to make it easier for future generations to find your post? Someone please enlighten me.

Edited April 2, 2020 by Just Bob

[RWB]

It means "You're It!" and you are required to chase everyone around searching for the answer.....

well -- maybe. :)

[Crawtomatic]

@Just Bob Looks like they're user driven keyword tags for metadata search functions.  Not a bad idea honestly and should theoretically result in more accurate search results from within the forum search and possibly external search engines.

[Just Bob]

4 minutes ago, CRAWTOMATIC said:

@Just Bob Looks like they're user driven keyword tags for metadata search functions.  Not a bad idea honestly and should theoretically result in more accurate search results from within the forum search and possibly external search engines.

I get it if it is an educational or informative post, like one of RWB's mint reports, or some information that is of general interest to the community, but why bother when all you are asking is, "Is this an error or damage?"

I am not putting anyone down or complaining. I guess I just don't understand the need for it.

[Crawtomatic]

2 minutes ago, Just Bob said:

I get it if it is an educational or informative post, like one of RWB's mint reports, or some information that is of general interest to the community, but why bother when all you are asking is, "Is this an error or damage?"

I am not putting anyone down or complaining. I guess I just don't understand the need for it.

Agreed it's probably not worthwhile in most cases.  In a previous career role I had we were in discussion with a company that would compile the metadata from documents to make them searchable.  I recall one point of the discussion regarded how far in detail they went in the OCR process and the cost associated followed a steep curve.

I guess if we have metatags on posts that could be like level 1 of the search returning results quicker and level 2 would be scanning the text in the actual body of the post (all posts) to find a keyword.  So even with some near worthless metatags it still imroves results a little better.  The upside is if a post of "is this error or damage?" is tagged with "Lincoln Cent" AND "doubling" but the replies point out how it's not and contain reference sources we may be able to avert future similar posts by other newbies just by getting them to the correct reasoning and references.

[RWB]

It seems to me that time and expense are red herrings - or maybe fish sausage.

Software to fully index data and metadata on any file is available, inexpensive, fast and highly efficient. In it's most primitive commercial form it takes approximately 60 seconds per gigabyte of data. The software I use (15 yr old) can search any file on my XP OS computer by nearly any set of parameters (Boolean, stemming, fuzzy, phonic, synonym, etc.) in less than 1-second for a set of folders containing 30,000 files. The 2020-year high end SW is much faster and more efficient.

[kbbpll]

It's the hashtag generation.

[Conder101]

1 hour ago, kbbpll said:

t's the hashtag generation.

I think he's got it.