Let me add that while I like the new tags, I could see putting them in a different location.

IMO, the left two columns on a forum home page are full of useless icons with no meaning/importance to me. (Serious question: does anybody pay attention to them? OK, maybe the lock icon, but otherwise?) Alas, I suspect it would take some serious VBB recoding to reallocate that space, and that this wouldn't happen any time soon even if there were consensus on doing so.