Isn't this what you want basically? Have a way to show someone a thread and make 'em more active?
>Abuse
You abuse tagging mods or admins = ban
Remove the possibility to tag mods and admins?
Am on 2 forums which use this system and I'm yet to see a problem.
And that's an amazing option to have.
Being continuously harassed by annoying pop-ups has never yielded any kind of positive results ever anywhere in my experience. No one is going to like it when they log in and suddenly see that they have been tagged in +30 threads about multiple topics in 5 different sections.
Also potential abuse is really not limited to mods and admins, it's for everyone as I think it wouldn't be a matter of "if" but "when" a specific fanbase decides to use it to harass people of an opposing fanbase. I see it really happen that in a thread that's meant to glorify character x that every person then starts tagging a fan of character Y in all their posts, resulting in that person receiving dozens or more notifications.
The arument of abusing is stupid..I can literally quote you in every thread and you'd have 30+ notifications...so having tag won't do any harm...besides how do you want to advance when every new forum has tag system nowadays...for 2 years I"ve been on this forum I havr just seen like dislike system added.
Only couse u have that problem doesn't mean other will have the same...
Point one the quoting system is flawed, so it's highly doubtful that you would receive notifications of all those quotes.
Point two the quoting system and the tagging system you suggest are not the same. You can only quote someone if he already posted, with other words the amount of time you can quote someone, is limited. However there is no limit on how much time you can start tagging people.
Point three using potential abuse with the quoting system as an argument for a tagging system, isn't really working in your favor as why would we add yet another system that's prone to abuse while we already have one?
Point four there are a lot of things wrong with NB, but I seriously doubt that whether we have a tagging system is the key here for advancement.