Difference between 'tag' and 'label'

[Akilan R]

Hi, we are using Confluence as the interfacing tool and the Microsoft Sharepoint 2010 as the document respoitory. Is there any subtle difference between labels - the terminology used in the Confluence and 'tags'used in the share-point (used in the OSQA application as well) ?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Not really, the terms are pretty much interchangable. There's a few subtle differences in nuances in the code and there's certainly differences in the way they work, but the concept is the same - they both really do mean "stick something on an object so we can readily identify it as belonging to a certain group".

[David at David Simpson Apps]

Yes. Same thing.

[Akilan R]

Thank you very much, it could be that the search can be optimised based on 'label'in Confluence as it uses the Lucene Search Engine whereas the share point may use a different search algorithm same as Microsoft 'Bing'

[James Card]

In the version of JIRA that we are using (7.9.2) there seems to be a very subtle but important difference between `labels` and `tags`.

When you use the bulk edit feature you have more flexibility with `labels`. You can:

* Add to existing
* Clear field
* Replace all with
* Find and remove these

That doesn't seem to be available for `Tags`. You can only set the tag line (although you MAY get multiple tags if the current selections all have the same thing (I think).

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Jira doesn't have "tags" natively.  How have you added them and why are they different to labels?

[James Card]

Well, that's an interesting question. It was already present in our JIRA (in a very large company). So perhaps someone added it. And I just noticed that this is a section on confluence and not JIRA :(

I had googled "JIRA difference between tag and label" (or something like that) and ended up here and didn't pay enough attention.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I think you paid plenty of attention - you spotted something odd about your implementation and found something related. 

Jira has quite a lot of power and it sounds like one of your admins took advantage and added "tags" for some reason.  I suspect they used a field type other than "label" for it, so it behaves differently.