how to disable tags display?
 

I want players to be able to USE tags and stuff but I hate how it displays all the tags in the forum display when it lists the threads, how can I disable this?

I'm not sure what you mean. Tags don't display on forum display other than as a little tag icon.

well when a user makes a thread and adds tags to it, all the tags show up next to the post count/views for the thread under the thread display. the only way i can hide this is to disable tags altogether

Are you sure your tag.png image is in the right place? Sounds like the image is missing, so the mouseover text is displaying its place. The image should be located at images/misc/tag.png

Yep, sounds like a missing image to me.