You Know Best: Intro to Topic Tagging

Today's biggest change is one that I wanted to mention specifically, since I think it represents a huge step forward for the atmosphere of our forums. I introduce to you topic tagging. As most of you know, the Bonanzle forums are only the most happenin' place EVAR these days. We're averaging about 200-300 posts per day in the forums, with much hilarious, funny, and helpful banter being flung about. The volume of messages passing through the forums every day has already reached the point where Mark and myself are hard-pressed to read through all of it all the time. So the question we've debated amongst ourselves: how to make sure that the forums stay a friendly and positive place, even when we can't be there to keep an eye on them? Many forums pick a moderator or two to police threads, deleting as they see fit. We don't like that idea. First of all, because you're entrusting a lot of power to one or two people, and who's to say that those people are the best choice? Secondly, because it opens up the participants in the thread to get upset when the moderator sides against them and chooses to remove a thread. The solution we ultimately arrived at was to solve the problem the same way we solved the problem of "how to find the best items on the site." When you have 2000 (woot!) sleuths on the case, how can you go wrong? You'll now notice when you visit the forums that instead of that list of three online users in the lower-right corner (huh? why the heck was that there, anyway? :)), each topic has a list of tags that you can apply to it. A full explanation of what each of the tags does is right there, so I won't re-explain here. But the gist is that we're trusting you to be the best judge as to when a topic reaches the point that it doesn't reflect the upbeat spirit of most Bonanzlers. Once enough people agree with you (we're not giving specific numbers or details on our method of determining, since that would potentially allow people to game the system), the topic will either be moved or removed, and all will rejoice throughout the land. Thanks you in advance for your help keeping the scoundrels in check!