How do you exclude useless tags such as a, i, is, are, but, etc other than creating a massive exclude list?

Set them as bad tags in the Tag module CP.

mk

is their a default bad tag list somewhere that can be shared?

Nope

Pretty cool idea though. Pie Man, make a note of at the very least having an extension hook for something like this.

mk

thanks, mk and pm.

If I mark tags as bad tags, do they not sow up at all, or just don’t carry weight to them?

I ask this for two reasons:
1. Some tags are just crap and i want to get rid of them across all posts, but i want to understand what happens to them when i mark them as bad tags
2. we are using tags for cross posting between sites and i don’t want the “related articles” to pull something in just because it has the same tag of another site name (ie. Gadgetell) as another post.

Thanks

dabbledoo,

When you set a Tag as a “Bad Tag” it basically puts that Tag in the garbage can
It means the Tag is unavailable for any regular use. It behaves the same was as if you deleted the Tag.
The only main purpose you would want to set it as a “Bad Tag” as opposed to deleting it is because it prevents the Tag from ever entering the “spectrum” again in the future, whether it be by your accident, another “unaware” author, or some of your users, if you allow them to assign Tags to entries.

Thanks for the quick response.

Is there a ways to semi-ignore a tag in the related articles area? We want to tag things with certain keywords for cross posting or for content pages (ie: ces.gadgetell.com is driven with tags), but don’t want the related articles to follow these tags.

yes, there certainly is!

Just add that parameter to the Tag:Related loop in that template.
I’m not sure how feasible that will work for you… but that’s reall the only way…

If that site is another weblog, you can also just specify the weblog="” parameter to use the “current” weblog