We understand that some teams like to use tagging as a means to categorize issues, but they can be categorized just as easily with and much more safely with, well, categories. It’s totally possible to create as many categories as you want to help keep issues organized. We wouldn’t advise that, but you can.
Typos are Dangerous
If you have a typo when tagging a photo, there’s probably not a real risk. However, if you accidentally type “securty” instead of “security” when tagging an issue, it’s a very different story. When you go back to find all of the “security” problems and make sure that they get fixed, it’s likely that the “securty” tag will slip through the cracks, and you may end up overlooking an important issue. There are some ways around this, but they defeat the purpose of having an open-ended tagging structure.
Using the Right Tags is Difficult
When a category is created, everyone understands its purpose and can easily decide which issues fall into that category. With tags the story is a bit different. What makes sense as a tag to me, might not make sense as a tag to you and when it comes time for you to submit an issue you might decide to use a different set of tags. For example, one person may classify an issue as “security” while another might say “login” and yet another might say “session”. After a bit of time the system has a whole set of tags that contain their own individual issues, which defeats the purpose of having them. The problems become similar to the problems with typos, and problems can unfortunately slip through the cracks.
Organizing Tags is Counter-productive
The more tags that build up, the harder it becomes to keep them organized. Having to spend time organizing issues and their tags is not an ideal way to get the issues resolved. Having someone worry about what tag they should use for an issue might also make them a bit hesitant to submit an issue or make them hesitate long enough to get distracted and we understand how difficult it can be to get someone to take the time to report issues as it is.
Summary
We want the issue tracking flow to be as simple as possible. Report, resolve, and review. The more steps that get added in between or the more thought required, the longer it takes to resolve issues and that means less time crafting new features and products. In theory, tagging sounds great, but for the time being we feel like it’s not the right feature for Sifter.