Feature suggestion.

Some people start threads because they want help with something. Concept applies to lots of topics (technical forums, hometown, gd, urban commandos, etc).

We already have "flair" (such as Troll) - how about the ability to add searchable tags. It could be implemented similar to Flair (the OP can tag their own post with Help Wanted), then anyone who follows the Help Wanted flair can see all active/open threads in any group or subgroup with that flair.


Thread that inspired idea:

https://www.ar15.com/forums/General/Need-some-help-I-want-to-start-a-National-Sick-Day-against-the-mandates-/5-2502122/

He could use help in lots of different categories/areas, so it doesn't fit neatly in Politics or neatly in Urban Commandos for example.

Also, help wanted posts tend to get less activity than "omg outrage of the day" or "guilty/not guilty" threads, but we should have a way to keep them visible so we can collaborate together and accomplish things.

You could subscribe to your thread of interest, but I don't know if that applies to non-team members, in which case, you aren't paying for any features..

I'm talking about creating a flair that could be subscribed to, so that any thread that gets tagged with that flair will show up in a feed for that flair, and if the user is following the flair, their feed will show the thread with that flair.

Here's another thread that could be flaired "help wanted"

https://www.ar15.com/forums/General/I-am-the-proud-owner-of-www-kamalablows-com/5-2501935/

It's currently on Page 3 of GD where it will have low visibility.

Threads asking for help/work get fewer comments than outrage threads, and so they slide off page 1, even though they really deserve more visibility.

I can see some potential. I could see where more than 1 tag could apply too. Filtering would cut down on dupes and make it easier to find what you're interested in at the moment.

Some ideas are tags related to 2nd amendment advocacy, firearm products/reviews, nonsense , politics, 1st amendment or censorship, technology, sports, entertainment, ...

Every feature is going to get abused from time to time and will need some sort of moderation, preferably delegated to the site users as much as possible to relieve formal moderators.

For the 'help wanted' tag:

1. Allow the author to tag the thread when it's created
2. Allow the author to tag the thread after its created (most users won't know of the new feature right away)
3. Allow people who add comments into the thread to tag it as help wanted
4. Allow the author to remove a help wanted tag (e.g. if they think the tag doesn't apply, or they have all the help / solutions they want)

I think arfcom also needs upvote/downvotes on threads and comments on threads too. Combined with the help wanted tag, it would be similar to Stack Overflow (proposed solutions could be upvoted/downvoted, etc.)

"Upvotes" provide users another way to interact with a thread even if they don't feel like they have anything else to say (type out as text) - they can upvote a thread or upvote a comment or emoji a comment.

I went down a few rabbit trails above. A site-user moderated help wanted tag would be useful even without the up/downvote idea.

We already have way too many of the reddit types here. We don't need to make this place any more like it

Also, not only allow people to search for certain tags but you could also allow people to exclude certain tags from their GD view. It could go a long way to improving readability, especially in times when certain topics are excessive (covid, Ron Paul, etc. )