The tags are already separated by commas.

In normal threads: yes, but in your profile (scroll to bottom) for example: no

> But allowing *everyone* to mess around with the tags of each and every thread kinda seems twisted.

The idea is that the masses may want to tag a thread in a way that the thread starter wouldn't, or wouldn't think of, as another way of organizing DaniWeb. Over time, the goal is for a standardized system to evolve in the way people tag other people's threads. For example, coming up with a standardized system to tag threads that end up going wildly off topic. If a good number of people do this, you'll now be able to quickly identify these threads while browing the thread listings. Or the community coming up with a standardized tag for the most exceptional threads. Etc.

Every thread can have a maximum of 10 tags, only 6 of which can be applied by the thread starter.

Regarding the tag clouds not looking right with multi-word tags ... Tag clouds never have borders and IMO it would look very weird if we added borders around individual tags in a tag cloud. However, for the most part, tags are required to be only one word and separated by a space ... not multiple words separated by a comma. I am thinking I am most likely going to change it to conform more to universal standards.

> The idea is that the masses may want to tag a thread in a way that the
> thread [snip]

I do understand the rationale behind your using tags but concerned about the ways in which they can get abused. As long as you are aware of those issues, its cool with me.

> Tag clouds never have borders

Not *never*, normally maybe? Take a look at this.

>I am thinking I am most likely going to change it to conform more to universal standards

Sounds good but needs to be taken on priority since you wouldn't want to have a lot of legacy multi-word tags floating around along with the standardized single-word tags.

> I do understand the rationale behind your using tags but concerned about the ways in which they can get abused. As long as you are aware of those issues, its cool with me.

I don't see them being abused by others any more so than they would be abused by the thread starter. Plus there is the additional functionality in allowing threads to be tagged with terms describing how the thread has evolved or terms characterizing the thread by others, beyond the thread starter simply listing off topics their question is about. This adds a whole additional layer of functionality to the tags to allow them to be categorized in this way.

Plus, tags can be easily removed by moderators and there is a limit to the number of tags that can be applied to any given thread, how many can be applied by the thread starter, and how many can be applied by other people so I can't see it getting too out of control. Severe abuse of the tag functionality will be added to the forum rules as a no-no.

> Sounds good but needs to be taken on priority since you wouldn't want to have a lot of legacy multi-word tags floating around along with the standardized single-word tags.

Applied. There are already 5,000 tags in the system. To keep things backwards compatible, multiple word tags had their spaces removed so that "web 2.0" is changed to "web2.0" which, from what I understand, is the standard way of doing it. In cases where there already were spaced and non-spaced versions, a dash was added to make "web-2.0". And in cases where all three already existed, an underscore was added to make "web_2.0".

The tag clouds at the bottom of the page are cached hourly, so it can take up to about 50 additional minutes from now for everything to reflect the changes.

> [snip]Plus, tags can be easily removed by moderators and there is a
> limit to the number of tags that can be applied to any given thread, how
> many can be applied by the thread starter. [snip] Severe abuse of the
> tag functionality will be added to the forum rules as a no-no.

But you are still missing the point. Let's say that I decide to screw around with the tag functionality to promote my site "sos.net". I fire-off a greasemonkey script or write a simple HttpClient which:
- traverses each thread [pretty simple with the sequential ids]
- edit each thread tag, un-check the existing ones and add tags like "www.sos.net", "programming-articles", "anime-fan", "hentai-fan", "more-spam" etc.
- rinse and repeat this for each thread [and yes, this can be easily done using a greasemonkey script]

I hope you see the problem now. No matter what the punishment be or the capability of mods being able to edit tags, you are pretty much hosed since along with losing your existing tags, you are a target of some smart spam marketing. Even if you have a backup of all the tags, bringing things back in action would take some time.

I do understand that you are very much excited about this collaborative editing of tags but posing some minimum requirement like at least 50 rep points or at least 100 posts might make more sense here if you still want to keep this feature around. Of course, all IMO, YMMV etc. etc.

> Applied [snip]

Nice work; though I still feel that keeping a thin 1-2 pixel border around the tag name would give it a nice look and feel.

I'm not sure what you mean about losing existing tags or having a backup of all tags?

Oh I see, you replaced the existing tags with spam. Well you were only able to do that because you're a moderator, so that would be seen as an abuse of moderator privileges. You could just as easily edit every post in a forum you moderate. At that point, it comes down to just having a moderation team that you trust ... whether it's with the threads, the posts, or the tags.

>Oh I see, you replaced the existing tags with spam.

Maybe you missed some of the important points of my previous post. My point being, if a member with zero posts can edit the tags for a given thread, nothing prevents him from automating the same. Think of it as being along the same lines like the programmatic rep-attack which happened about a year back initiated by Rashakil.

Regular members can add tags, but they can't remove existing ones.

However, I do understand your point and so I did make some adjustments. Now, only members with a reputation of over 100 or more than 50 posts are allowed to create new tags. Newer members are allowed to tag threads, but they have to choose from the existing tags already in the system. So, for example, they can't tag a thread with their website name.