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Tagging is an easy and important way to help this community

Discussion in 'About This Site' started by Forest, May 5, 2015.

  1. Forest

    Forest Beloved Grand Eagle

    I'd like to take a moment to introduce something that is easy to do but can make a big difference for our community and help spread the word about TMS.

    What am I referring to? Well, after the first post of each thread, you may have seen something that looks like this:
    upload_2015-5-4_23-22-52.png

    Tags are just keywords that we can attach to threads that makes it easier for Google users and people on our site to find the threads. I'd like to encourage people, once you've read a thread, to take a look at the tags and see if you can make them better.

    Here's how you do it: to add a tag, click on Edit Tags. Start typing your desired tag. Related tags should appear in a drop-down menu. For multi-word tags, you should be able to start typing any of the words in the tag and it will show up. For example, if you want to tag a post with "john e. sarno md" you could start typing "sarno" instead of "john" and the tag would still appear.

    Click on the tag you want. If you want to add multiple tags, add a comma. This indicates to the tagging software that you are done typing your first tag and are ready to start entering a new one. Although it is not necessary, I would recommend adding a comma even if you are just using one tag.

    There are only a finite number of tags (237 as of this writing), so if you start typing something and no options pop up, just try again with a synonym. It may take some persistence at first, but it gets easier as time goes on and we'll be rolling out tools to make it easier.

    Once you have chosen an available tag, your tag should appear inside a blue box, like so:
    upload_2015-5-4_23-23-26.png
    Click Save Changes to apply your tag(s) to the thread. It should show up instantly.

    But why would we want to do this? Well, fundamentally tags are about making it easier for people to find threads that can help them. This is because tags are a hand-curated list of the best threads that we have on a whole host of topics. To see this for yourself, click the following link, which brings you to a list of all of our tags:
    http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/tags/
    By clicking on any of the tags, you can see threads related to the subject of the tag. Of course, you might not see many threads for some tags right now (especially the ones with the light background). However, that is exactly why we need your help - to make our tags a better resource for all members of the site who need help. Some day, that person who needs help might just be you!

    You might not have seen tags around much so far, but over the coming years, you will see them more and more. We've been working on the tagging system for about 18 months now, and they are an important for the continued growth of our community.

    One of the reasons why they are so important is that not only do they help people on our site find our threads, but they are also very good with helping people find our site. If we carefully apply appropriate tags to our best threads (not random tags and not to every thread), this teaches Google to send more people to our community, which helps us show more people that the mind-body connection can help them.

    Overall, we'll want to exercise some restraint when tagging. We don't want to apply every tag to every thread. For example, if someone starts a thread about healing their back pain but doesn't really discuss Dr. Sarno himself, you wouldn't want to apply the "john e sarno md" tag to it because the thread is about a specific person's back pain rather than being about Dr. Sarno. In general, we want to apply more tags to our best threads and fewer tags to threads that would be relatively less interesting to third parties. In general, when you are considering tagging a thread, ask yourself the following question:
    Will this tag help someone find information relevant to their search?
    Returning to the example above, if someone was searching our site for "John Sarno" there would be other threads that would tell them more about Dr. Sarno than would the thread about someone's back pain, so the thread about the specific person's back pain shouldn't be tagged with "john e sarno md."

    In fact, if people get overzealous, you may even want to remove some tags (sometimes people misunderstand how tags are meant to be used and apply every tag they can think of to a rather pedestrian thread). To remove a tag, just click "Edit Tags" and then click on the x mark, shown circled in red in the graphic below:
    upload_2015-5-4_23-26-11.png
    In general, though, if you think that someone who was searching for a given tag would be happy to find that thread, go ahead and tag it! Over time, we as a community will learn more about tagging and which tags are best to apply to a given thread. However, right now we just want to dive in and start using them. One of my students once said, "It's time to get our learn on," and, well, that's the way it is.

    Eventually, I'd like to ask people who are committed to this site to join me in what will be called the "tagging team." Our community is volunteer run (thanks to @Ellen and @PamD who have been helping out hugely for a while), and my goal is to divide up responsibilities into very small tasks in the spirit of "many hands make light work." Being on the tagging team just means two things:
    1. A commitment to, after you read a thread that you like, take a moment to think if it needs tags or if the tags it has need to be adjusted.
    2. A commitment to read this post and the one following it, which will have a bit more information about tagging. (I'm trying to rush the current post out before volunteer day on Wednesday, because we'll do some tagging then, but it may take a bit before I figure out what to write for the intermediate material in the next one. I want to make it as simple as possible, but that can be hard!)
    My hope is that these two things will be easy enough that people might end up being members of the tagging team without even meaning to. I mean, if you visit this forum regularly, you're probably going to want to read the post anyway. And it doesn't take but a minute to think about which tags can go on a thread.

    What makes this community so very special are the incredibly generous members who keep coming back to help others in pain. I don't love writing myself (you'd never guess it!), but I always love the terrific advice that I see posted in this forum and am inspired by the compassion that goes into posting it.

    It may take weeks or even months, but I look forward to building a tagging team with the same enthusiasm as we see in the replies to threads. This will help the newcomers find the help they need, lift the overall discussion because we'll have easy access to the best old threads, and last but not least, bring new people into the conversation because they are able to find our site via Google and other search engines.

    If you have any questions, feel free to ask them below!
     
    Last edited: May 5, 2015
    David85 likes this.
  2. Forest

    Forest Beloved Grand Eagle

    I'm reserving this post for some additional information about tagging that will help make tagging easier and make decisions a little more clear cut. There will always be some grey areas, but there is no harm in that.
     
  3. Forest

    Forest Beloved Grand Eagle

    This post has a list of all of our current tags, divided up into categories. Looking it over may help you to get a sense of which tags are available. I'll update the list with some comments as time goes by and will try to keep it up to date. The master, uncategorized (alphabetical) list of all tags can be found at:
    http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/tags/

    People
    Alan Gordon LCSW
    Andrew R. Miller MFT
    Arlene Feinblatt PhD
    Candace Pert PhD
    Claire Weekes DSC
    David Clarke MD
    David Hanscom MD
    David L. Schechter MD
    Derek Sapico MFT
    Eckhart Tolle
    Eric Sherman PsyD
    Frances Sommer Anderson PhD SEP
    Fred Amir REHS
    Gabor Mate MD
    Georgie Oldfield MCSP
    Herbert Benson MD
    Howard Schubiner MD
    James Alexander PhD
    John E. Sarno MD
    John Stracks MD
    Jon Kabat-Zinn PhD
    Lorimer Moseley PhD
    Marc D Sopher MD
    Michael Brown
    Monte Hueftle
    Nicole J. Sachs LCSW
    Peter A Levine PhD
    Peter Zafirides MD
    Richard H Rahe MD
    Scott Brady MD
    Steven Ray Ozanich

    Books
    8 Minute Meditation by Victor Davich
    A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
    Back in Control by David Hanscom
    Back Sense by Ronald Siegel and Michael Urdang and Douglas Johnson
    Chronic Pain: your key to recovery by Georgie Oldfield
    Evolving Self Confidence by Terry Dixon
    Explain Pain by David Butler and Lorimer Moseley
    Freedom from Fibromyalgia by Nancy Selfridge and Franklynn Peterson
    Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn
    God Does Not Want You to Be in Pain by Eric Watson and Walter Oleksy
    Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection by John Sarno
    Healing Trauma by Peter Levine
    In an Unspoken Voice How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness by Peter Levine
    Mind over Back Pain by John Sarno
    Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine by Candace Pert
    Pain Free for Life by Scott Brady
    Paths to Health and Resilience Manage Stress and Build Coping by Richard Rahe
    Pathways to Pain Relief by Frances Sommer Anderson and Eric Sherman
    Rapid Recovery From Back and Neck Pain by Fred Amir
    SIRPA Recovery CD by Georgie Oldfield
    Teach Us to Sit Still by Tim Parks
    The Divided Mind: The Epidemic of Mindbody Disorders by John Sarno
    The Great Pain Deception: How Faulty Medical Advice is Making Us Worse by Steven Ozanich
    The Hidden Psychology of Pain: the Use of Understanding to Heal Chronic Pain by James Alexander
    The Master Practice by Monte Hueftle
    The Meaning of Truth by Nicole Sachs
    The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body Healing the Pain by John Sarno
    The MindBody Workbook by David Schechter
    The PEAR Process by Olivia Stefanino
    The Power of Focusing by Ann Weiser Cornell
    The Presence Process by Michael Brown
    The Solution aka The Pathway by Laurel Mellin
    The Warrior Mind by Jim Pritchard
    The Way of the Journal by Kathleen Adams
    They Can't Find Anything Wrong by Dave Clarke
    Think Away Your Pain by David Schechter
    To Be or Not To Be...Pain Free by Marc Sopher
    Unlearn Your Pain by Dr. Howard Schubiner
    Use Your Mind to Heal Your Body by Stephen Conenna
    Waking the Tiger Healing Trauma by Peter Levine
    What to Say When You Talk to Yourself by Shed Helmstetter
    When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress by Gabor Mate
    Writing to Heal by James Pennebaker

    Symptoms/Diagnoses
    Acid reflux and gastroesophageal reflux disease - GERD
    Adrenal fatigue
    All the Rage – a documentary about Dr John Sarno by Michael Galinsky and Rumur
    Allergies
    Anxiety
    Arm Pain
    Asthma
    Back pain
    Bodily Distress Syndrome - BDS
    Breathing related symptoms such as hyperventilation and shortness of breath
    Bursitis
    Buttock and gluteal pain
    Carpal Tunnel Syndrome - CTS
    Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - CFS
    Chronic Prostatitis/Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome – CPPS
    Coccydynia and other tailbone pain
    Complex Regional Pain Syndrome – CRPS
    Computer vision syndrome - CVS
    Depression
    Dermatalogical and skin problems such as rashes and eczema
    Diversion Pain Syndrome - DPS
    Eczema
    Elbow Pain
    Facial pain
    Fatigue
    Fibromyalgia - FMS
    Foot pain
    Generalized Anxiety Disorder - GAD
    Groin Pain
    Hand Pain
    Hashimoto's Thyroiditis
    Herniated disc
    Hip pain
    Hives
    Insomnia and sleep problems
    Interstitial CystitisIC and other bladder problems
    Irritable Bowel Syndrome - IBS
    Joint pain
    Knee pain
    Leg Pain
    Lyme disease
    migraines and headaches
    Moving pain
    Muscle Tension Dysphonia - MTD
    Muscle tightness
    Myalgic Encephalopathy - ME
    Myofascial Pain Syndrome
    Myofascial Pain Syndrome – MPS
    Neck Pain
    Nerve damage
    Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - OCD
    Panic attacks
    Pelvic pain
    Peripheral neuropathy - PN
    Piriformis Syndrome
    Plantar Fasciitis - PF
    Raynaud's Phenomenon
    Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy - RSD
    repetitive strain injury - RSI
    Restless Leg Syndrome - RLS
    Sacroiliac SI joint pain
    Sciatica - low back butt and leg pain
    Scoliosis
    Shin Splints
    Shingles
    Sinus infection
    Spasmodic Dysphonia - SD
    Spondylolisthesis and Spondylolysis
    Temporomandibular Joint Disorder – TMJ
    Tendonitis
    Thoracic Outlet Syndrome - TOS
    Tinnitus
    Tooth Pain
    Vertigo and Dizziness
    Vision Problems
    Vulvodynia

    Geographic

    Australia
    Boston
    Canada
    Chicago
    New York City
    Los Angeles
    United Kingdom

    Special categories of posts
    Forum moderation
    Advocacy - awareness raising - outreach
    Inspirational progress
    Success story
    YouTube and other free videos
    What helped me the most

    Terms for TMS
    Bodily Distress Syndrome - BDS
    Mind Body Syndrome - MBS
    Tension Myoneural Syndrome - TMS
    Tension Myositis Syndrome - TMS
    The Mindbody Syndrome - TMS
    Psychophysiologic Disorders - PPD
    Psychosomatic Disorders
    Somatic Symptom Disorder - SSD DSM5
    Stress Illness - SI

    Techniques and Approaches
    Accepting the TMS diagnosis
    Alexander Technique
    Cognitive Behavioral Therapy - CBT
    Discussions about journaling and journaling techniques
    Emotional Freedom Technique and tapping - EFT
    Existential therapy
    Eye Movement and Desensitization Reprocessing - EMDR
    Focusing and Eugene Gendlin
    Imagery and visualization
    Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy - ISTDP
    Internal Family Systems therapy - IFS
    Mindfulness and being present
    Mindfulness meditation
    Psychoanalysis
    Self compassion
    Self monitoring
    Somatic Experiencing and Peter Levine
    The power of laughter
    TMS Recovery Program by Alan Gordon
    TMS Wiki Structured Educational Program – SEP

    Stressors
    Aging and getting older
    Goodism
    Holiday stress
    Inner bully or inner critic
    Life changes transitions adjustment and readjustment
    LGBT and sexual orientation - lesbian gay bisexual transgender - homosexuality
    Motherhood fatherhood parenthood children
    Parents children and family as a source of stress
    Perfectionism
    Traveling

    Concepts
    Automatic Negative Thoughts – ANTs – and mental chatter
    Conditioning
    Extinction burst - behaviorism
    Outcome independence
    Placebo effect
    Reservoir of Rage
    Symptom imperative and symptom substitution
    Thinking psychologically
    TMS personality traits

    Other
    Discussions of the TMS recovery process
    Emotional triggers
    Fear and anxiety about physical injury
    Inner child
    Inner parent and the superego
    Medically Unexplained Symptoms - MUS
    Musicians and playing music
    Neuroscience - brain science
    Overcoming issues from childhood
    Public figures such as actors musicians media politicians athletes
    Relapse or setback or flare-up
    Repressed feelings or emotions
    Repressed memories
    Reprogramming
    Resistance to the TMS diagnosis
    Resuming exercise sports or other physical activity
    Self-harming
    Surgery
    The impact of childhood or other early experiences
    The power of fear and anxiety
     
    Last edited: May 5, 2015
  4. North Star

    North Star Beloved Grand Eagle

    Forest…once again, your labor of love blows me away. How do you, dear man, find the time?

    I'll be happy to start tagging. I can see what a valuable tool it is when used properly.
     
  5. Forest

    Forest Beloved Grand Eagle

    Awww... thanks, North Star! I really appreciate your support.

    I went through and tagged a couple threads from the general discussion subforum this morning and was surprised at how easy and fun it was. Together we can build up a wonderful resource that will be of use to our whole community.
     
    Markus likes this.
  6. Forest

    Forest Beloved Grand Eagle

    Thanks for your help with this, everyone. It has been great to see new tags appearing on threads. The tags that you add now will be helping people not just for weeks or years. Tags may seem new at the moment, but with your help we can make them a core part of the "TMS Wiki Experience."

    It's 100% fine if not every thread has a tag, as the important thing is the great threads that we add tags to, not the threads we miss.

    Keep it up!
     

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