This is the third edition in a series highlighting the tools and capabilities that set OPIEWeb’s Q&A section apart from listservs and regular discussion boards. To see the complete series of Feature Spotlight articles, click here. – RA

There was a big push a few years ago in the clothing industry to go tag-less. Well, we’re bringing back the humble tag. Call it retro. Call it bold. Call it daring. Call the police if someone removes your tag under penalty of law. Whatever. Its all good here at OPIEWeb.

Tags are useful little things. On OPIEWeb, we classify questions using up to 5 different keywords we call tags. Tags are searchable, combinable and can be subscribed to via RSS just like a newspaper or email list.

By properly tagging your questions with relevant keywords, you will not only attract more knowledgeable users to your question, but also make it easier for people with similar questions to find yours and any answers you have attracted.

On your user profile page, under the “prefs” tab, you can even tell us what tags you want to ignore, and which tags you really want to see more of. Any questions tagged with tags in your “Interested List” will be a bit brighter on the question page. Items in the ignore list will be dimmed or can even be excluded entirely from view. It’s up to you.

Tags are so important to OPIEWeb that we even have a silver badge for creating a new tag that others find useful. And, one of the first abilities that users get as they gain reputation is the power to re-tag questions they didn’t even ask!

So, go forth, eat, tag and be merry.