=][= Liber Tags =][=

[Messor]

Fellow Liberites!

 

Below is a briefing on the use of the "Tags" feature as it pertains to the Liber. Please read it well:

 

The tags feature is intended to make sorting and referencing Chapters and finding inspiration easier than ever. However, in order to do so, we need to make sure these tags are useful, which may take a little practice. Note that the though the mods can adjust your tags if needed, we are all individually responsible for making the system work. Please consider the following when tagging your topics.

 

Discussion is the principal function of any forum, and here on B&C and especially in the Liber that discussion is focused on feedback. Please avoid tags that are universally applicable, such as 'Feedback', 'DIY', 'C&C', 'Review', or 'Custom'. We're all here for these things, so tagging that will not sort much.

 

Acceptable Tags:

 

Allegiance tags, so like-minded DIYers can see examples of loyalty portrayed: Loyalist, Renegade, Traitor, Warband, etc.

 

Primogenitor tags, noting that because abbreviations can be associated with many things in the 40k universe, appropriate lineage tags should be spelled out, not abbreviated. Additionally, please distinguish your tags from those related to Primogenitors themselves by using "Successor". For example, instead of simply tagging your Chapter "Ultramarine", use Ultramarine Successor". You can be specific by naming the parent chapter, or more general and refer to the legion.

 

Theme tags, if your Chapter has a particular source material for its theme: Celt, Mayan, Historical, Literary, Movie, Game, Archetype, etc. For the sake of sorting, it will be easier to use general tags here. Instead of referring to a specific work or time period (which another user is less likely to use and, therefore, tag), use the civilization or genre.

 

Specialty tags, keeping in mind that Space Marines are extremely versatile. What does your Chapter specialize in: Siege, Boarding, Ground/Air Superiority, Stealth/Ambush, Ranged, CC, Heavy Weapons, etc.

 

Information tags, to label what type of article you're posting, such as "Index Astartes" or "Index Traitoris". Preferably they should be written out instead of abbreviated. Should you be posting a question, or looking for info that could be useful to all, tags like 'Q&A', or 'Advice' will be appropriate, but not usually on IA/IT articles.

 

User tags, especially if you find yourself at the helm of multiple IA/IT articles. It will be easier for you, and others to peruse your work if you include your Username in the tags, rather than crowding your signature/blog with link bbcode.

 

Unworthy Tags:

 

Subtitle tags, as the subtitle function is gone, so please no 'The Emperor Protects' or 'These are my lads' tags.

 

Common tags, as mentioned above, please use the tags to distinguish your chapter, not bury it with the obvious. Do not use tags like: Chapter, DIY, WIP, C&C, Successor, Space Marine. None of these are effective tags by themselves.

 

Conjoined tags, because your tags will be of little use if yours is the ONLY chapter that has them. Separate terms/ideas where possible: "Traitor Ultramarine Successor" becomes two tags, "Traitor" and "Ultramarine Successor"

 

Avoid a word where a symbol(or nothing) will do, meaning use '&' over 'and', or stick to simply 'Stealth' instead of 'Stealth specialists'

 

These are only examples, and open to interpretation. If (Emperor forbid!) you should not want C&C, that might be a way to inform us. The idea is simply to help keep our forum streamlined and make it ever more accessible to future recruits. When describing your article with tags, remember that uniformity is what makes this system work. If some people tag 'UM' and others tag 'Ultramarines', these separate tags now have to be sought out by anyone looking for related material. Keep to the above guidelines, and if you see a tag that pertains to your article, use that same tag instead of the synonym you were thinking of using. These things in mind Liberites, make the Legio and the Liber proud.

 

The Emperor Protects.

Edited January 8, 2014 by Messor

[Madwolf Shadowmane]

I like the idea of Tags, but how do you add them to old posts? I seem to be missing where you can do this.

 

Madwolf

[Messor]

I'm fairly certain that tags can only be added to the first post in the thread, right under the title. You need to be using the full editor to see it.

[Ace Debonair]

OK, I'll admit, I've never used anything like these before.

Could be fun, but I do have some (probably very dumb) questions to ask first.

 

Question the first: Is it possible for tags to be multiple words, for example "DA Successor" or "Khornate Warband"?

 

Question the second: If so, what do you type to seperate tags?

 

Puzzled Liberite Requests Clarification!

[Messor]

Claro, caro.

 

You can do multi-word tags, as they will only separate when you put in a comma. So as soon as you type Khornate, Warband, you have a Khornate tag and Warband tag.

 

I simply suggest that, as long as your tags aren't long, avoid multi-word tags. Individual tags will make sorting easier, as in the example above: If someone is just wanting to see DIY Khorne forces, they'd click the Khornate tag, but if they want to peruse warbands in general, they'd use the appropriate tag.

 

Olisredan and I will discuss the possibility of forming official tags for use in the Liber, so that we can also avoid duplicates such as DA/Dark Angel/Unforgiven which still have the same meaning, but in the mean time I'm sure common sense will serve us all just fine.

[Olis]

I think some guidelines to making appropriate tags, alongside some suggested tags (and some discouraged ones) would serve purpose reasonably well. :)

[Ace Debonair]

Oh well, at least I warned you my questions were probably dumb beforehand.

 

I'll be sure to try this new-fangled gadgetry out just as soon as I think of something sensible to tag my IAs with.

[Reyner]

Interesting ... I'll make use of them if I ever create a new IA thread. Thinking of reviving my Ghost Dragons or making something new for when the Librarium comes back to life.

[Messor]

The first post has been edited with additional information about suitable (and unsuitable) tags, and making effective use of them. I encourage all Liberites to tag their old topics as needed, though do so with care. Because of the continued unstable nature of the upgrades, the edit function has been finicky with the old code. Brother Ravenfeld lost almost all of his Iron Hands article during an edit, so save copies/backups of your articles in whatever text editor you use, before and after hitting that 'edit' button. If you have any questions or suggestions on how the Liber can get the most out of this or other new functions, do post!

 

edit: and on that note, a question for all: When tagging a Chapter's specialty it felt a little naked to just put the word, so I added 'adepts'. Does anyone share that sentiment, or are we satisfied with the one word? Heck, while we're looking at it, is there a preference for using full Chapter names or abbreviations?

Edited January 16, 2013 by Messor

[Olis]

Looks good, Messor. Very nice indeed.

 

Here's something that could be included: The use of the word 'and' in a tag. It isn't needed, especially at the end of a tag. The symbol & would suffice if absolutely necessary.

 

edit: and on that note, a question for all: When tagging a Chapter's specialty it felt a little naked to just put the word, so I added 'adepts'. Does anyone share that sentiment, or are we satisfied with the one word? Heck, while we're looking at it, is there a preference for using full Chapter names or abbreviations?

 

Personally, I'm satisfied with the single word approach as some people might put adepts and some would not, if it happened to be acceptable or suggested for use. My opinion is that 'adepts' should be discouraged to avoid a diversity of tags for the same subject.

 

As for Chapter names I think brevity and uniformity would ask for suggesting abbreviations only, even if some members might still enter the full name. I think differing tags will be unavoidable in that regard, imo.

[Messor]

 

Here's something that could be included: The use of the word 'and' in a tag. It isn't needed, especially at the end of a tag. The symbol & would suffice if absolutely necessary.

 

Personally, I'm satisfied with the single word approach as some people might put adepts and some would not, if it happened to be acceptable or suggested for use. My opinion is that 'adepts' should be discouraged to avoid a diversity of tags for the same subject.

 

Awesome, reflected in the first post.

 

As for Chapter names I think brevity and uniformity would ask for suggesting abbreviations only, even if some members might still enter the full name. I think differing tags will be unavoidable in that regard, imo.

 

Aye, you're probably right. At least that's one of the easiest things to search for.

[Ace Debonair]

As for Chapter names I think brevity and uniformity would ask for suggesting abbreviations only, even if some members might still enter the full name. I think differing tags will be unavoidable in that regard, imo.

 

Aye, you're probably right. At least that's one of the easiest things to search for.

 

With the best will in the world, sooner or later if we were using the full names for the original legions we'd wind up having 'Dark Angles' or 'Iron Hnads' tags.

 

On another note, adding tags to my Sons of =][=DELETED=][= IA has wiped out the formatting (headers and sidebar mostly) very effectively, so I'll have to second the use of caution when tagging existing IAs.

I'll have a bash at fixing it later, but for now I'll wait and see what further upgrades might bring.

[Olis]

Just make sure you have that info saved elsewhere, just in case. We don't want another Ravenfeld Incident. :)

[Messor]

Also of note, the forum page will only list the first few tags that take up a certain amount of space, so don't worry about crowding the forum page with a list of tags. You can use the full ten if you feel the need.

[Octavulg]

I've been updating my old threads with tags (and will restore the formatting when I get around to digging out my backups :P).

 

I've been tagging them with "IA" for the format they're in and (in one case) with "Drafting" since I've still just got an outline. I've also been tagging them with my name, since that way I can quickly and easily find them.

[Messor]

I've added that to the recommended tags, and encourage everyone to do as Octavulg and Ace, tagging your articles with your name. Having all of your articles one click away is very useful, especially with the blogs down.

[Messor]

Have you experienced diluted results, Octavulg? I clicked both the IF and Loyalist tags that are on our front page and it only returned Liber results. Could be we're the only ones using those tags so far, but seems unlikely.

 

If the current primogenitor tags do turn out to be too broad, we might recommend making them 'Liber UM/IF/etc.', not because its any clearer, but chances of it getting misspelled and cut out of tag searches will be smaller.

[Octavulg]

The UM tag at least crosses over with stuff in the Ultramarines subforum. Of course, when I search tags, it doesn't show me 99% of the stuff that I know exists, and I don't know why. But that's another issue.

 

If people can't spell successor, I'm pretty sure they're not up to the intricacies of proper tag use. Plus, UM Successor's a lot more intuitive than Liber UM.

Edited March 7, 2013 by Octavulg

[Messor]

Brothers, one of our goals for the new year will be to bring more site-wide standardization to the tags feature, allowing us to connect Liber content with the B&C at large, but also fine tune our ability to find things in the Liber. The guidelines on the tag feature have been updated, with some noteable changes. Please review them, and make changes as necessary. If you aren't sure how to add or change tags, you simply go to the opening post in your thread, and edit it in the full editor. The tags bar will be under the title bar. If you haven't made use of the tags function yet, we encourage you to do so.

 

We (the mods) will begin editing tags before long, but you know your work much better than us, and the best way to ensure it's in the appropriate categories is your own hand. Initially, untagged articles/threads will be left alone on the assumption that the author is not necessarily concerned with them. Instead, focus will be on correcting/improving existing tags. If you have any questions about tags, feel free to post here.

Edited January 8, 2014 by Messor

[Conn Eremon]

Hm, it would appear mine are over-saturated, and would be best served changing some others.

 

Next time I am not online with just my phone, I will go about editing my list of articles accordingly.

 

The first post's information might be better utilized if full examples are given. Not just examples of worthy or unworthy tags in their respective descriptions but a full example of an article properly or improperly tagged, and a brief description of why the selection of tags are good or not.

 

Sometimes it is easier, especially when you are trying to reach large numbers of people, to provide an example of something that can be imitated rather than a lecture on how to build it yourself.

[Messor]

Duly noted, Cormac. I'll try to add in some specific examples in the next day or two.

[Messor]

As far as I'm concerned, Cormac, I wouldn't say your tags are over saturated. The DIY tags can go, and tagging each article/chapter with it's own name probably won't sort much, but other than that, you're fine. Each thread is allowed up to ten tags, and there's nothing wrong with using all of them as long as they are relevant.

 

I'll refer to a pair of my own more extensively tagged articles for both a good and poor example.

 

Below is my Basilisks IA article, which currently has eight tags. These are: Loyalist, Cursed Founding, 21st Founding, Boarding, Mythology, Iron Hands Successor, Index Astartes and Messor

 

Most of them are self explanatory. Normally, a founding tag probably won't be much help for sorting except regarding such "exception" foundings as the 13th and 21st. I tagged the article with both common names for the founding, so whichever people are most comfortable using, the article will fit into that category. Instead of using "Basilisk" to describe their specific mythology (and confusing with topics tagged about the IG artillery piece), I used a broader "Mythology" tag to describe the theme. Boarding is their specialty, and tagged accordingly. Notice that both of these are one word, rather than "Mythology theme" or "Boarding specialists". The meaning of the tags can easily be discerned without these extra words, especially in the context of the Liber, and makes reading the tags easier.

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/263442-ia-basilisks/

 

 

Next is my Thornbacks article, also with eight tags, these being: Traitor, IH, Crocodile Theme, Mythology Theme, Crossover, Boarding Action, Ambush, and Messor

 

The IH tag will see the article buried among others not related to the Liber. Crocodile Theme would probably be better served as a simple "Animal" tag, which is a more common thread than crocodiles in specific. The word theme is unnecessary in both the croc tag and the mythology tag, and the boarding action tag can serve it's purpose just as well without the action.

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/271065-it-thornbacks/

 

Again, any questions or suggestions are welcome.