[Toadling]

After extensive use of a few of tagging systems over the past year or two (primarily in Yojimbo and Things), I still prefer hierarchical structures. They allow me to visualize my data more easily and find my way in a spacial environment rather than a cognitive one (tagging is a high-level cognitive function, often leading to distraction and additional mental effort).

But that is not to say that tagging is without merit. On the contrary, tagging is an extremely useful tool in the right circumstances. It makes perfect sense in a large reference library, for example. But in a GTD app, I think it adds unnecessary complexity (which I think was the gist of Merlin's argument against tags).

But I also appreciate jvas' call for moderation, for a middle ground. And the flexibility afforded by a "Tag" field in OmniFocus sounds like it would help out a lot of people (maybe satisfying the desires of the "priorities", "multiple contexts", and "additional metadata" camps all at once).

So with that in mind, I'd begrudgingly accept a tag field in OmniFocus. Whether I would personally use it depends largely on implementation and if other supporting features came with it (like smart folders or view bar filters with AND/OR/NOT logical operators).

What I don't want is a partial implementation like Things has. In Things, tags can only be filtered in a very basic manner and the system quickly breaks down under any reasonable load. There's no good way to manage or use any significant numbers of tags; no way to create or preserve the more sophisticated combinations that are required to make the system truly useful. But maybe Things suffers from this deficiency because it relies almost entirely on tagging for all organization, which wouldn't be the case in OmniFocus.

-Dennis