Tag based system vs. Categories

[sweeps78]

Thanks for the explanation

I definitely agree with you that a combination of both would be the best choice, which is sort of what I am intending to do. I do not wish to have a purely tag based forum system by any means. What my main goal is to do is bring my forums down to a 2 - 3 tier system, which it is currently at a 4 - 5 tier system. All of my forums have been analyzed efficiently to determine that what I currently have are the most appropriate categories. However, I just have way too many forums nested inside of other forums, many of which can be eliminated by the use of tags.

So, are you saying that there is a plugin/hack that would do what I'm asking, which would be to allow my users to "tag" certain posts?

I guess I should clarify something, because the only tag-based plugins/mods I've found are not what I am looking for. I do not want the users to be able to write in their tag for each post. This would get way too ugly way too fast, as I've seen in many forums already. What I am looking for, is when they find the forum that they want to post in, when they go to post a new thread/reply, I want them to have to select a pre-defined tag from a drop down, that I had defined for that particular forum.