When you decide which tags to apply to a new post, think about who you want to find your post and how they will be searching.
All logged in users have permission to create new tags, but we recommend consulting the list of current tags (as well as how often they been used) to get a sense of which tags get the most traffic. If your topic fits comfortably under one of the existing tags, use it – or use a combination of tags that better defines your scope.
For example, nutrient-analysis is a tag in the methods group – but analyzing nutrients in saltwater is very different from freshwater, is different still from soils. So you might want to tag a question about nutrient analysis in marine systems with both “nutrient-analysis” and “marine” habitat.
Of course, if the existing tags really don’t fit, don’t be afraid to create new ones.
Also, we have a couple of organizational tags that you may want to know about, including:
- tags for each site (using the three-letter acronym)
- new-paper: for sharing and promotion of interesting new papers
- jobs: for promoting jobs and opportunities of interest to LTER students, education staff, information managers, or researchers – whether or not the jobs are associated with an LTER site
- introduction: for letting the community know who you are and what interests you
- work-out-loud: wish you had a colleague around the corner to bounce ideas off of? Try this tag – especially useful in combination with role-related tags like information-mgmt or education-committee.
- shared-joy: Just wrapped up a challenging sampling effort or getting an analysis to run right? Post your successes here to share the joy (also great for inspiring photos from the field).