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🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Mar 21, 2021 02:11 PM UTC:

One of the quickest ways to populate the tags is to convert categories into tags. However, I don't think that a direct translation of every category into a tag of the same name is the way to go. So, I want to plan things out first by discussing the individual categories:

chess

This category is for pages on Chess, which we have a lot of despite being mainly about variants.

1D, 2D, 3D, 4D

I don't think the 2D category needs to be translated into a tag. 2D is the assumed default, and it is such a large category, I don't think anyone ever browses through it. We currently have a 3DBoard tag, which may be a little more informative than just the tag 3D. I wonder if 3D-Board or 3dBoard would be better, since it will not put a space between two capital letters when displaying the name.

Large, Small

These respectively mean larger and smaller than the 8x8 64 square Chess board. We already have a Large tag. Small would also work. These may have children for various common sizes, particularly for those created for contests for boards of particular sizes. So, based on values for BoardCols, BoardRows, BoardLevels, and BoardCells, it could be given an appropriate child tag instead.

Multiplayer

Seems useful, but it could be combined with the PlayerCount value to create appropriate child tags.

Oriental

This could be a child of Regional, which we already have a tag for. Regional:Oriental might be appropriate for the tag name. However, most of the regional variants are oriental, since we understand Indian and Muslim forms of Chess as historical rather than regional. So, it might be appropriate to just name the region, such as Regional:Chinese, Regional:Japanese, etc.

Historical

Okay.

Dice, Cards

Possibly include as children of Random. So, Random:Dice, Random:Cards.

Wargame

Okay. This is mainly a separate category from Chess variants, and we might not have many here.

Shape

This is it. Shape:Board and Shape:Cells are not categories. Perhaps Shape should be translated to UnusualBoard.

Hexagonal, Round

Can be children of UnusualBoard. Round may be translated to RoundBoard, which we already have a tag for.

IncompleteInfo

Okay. It sort of works how info is an incomplete spelling of information.

Other

Too vague to be useful. It does not need to be translated into a tag.

Usual-Moving, Usual-MovingOpponent, Usual-MultiMove, Usual-BoardRules, Usual-Winning, Usual-Setups, Usual-Capturing, Usual-Other, Usual-Modest

These categories all describe ways in which a variant played with the same equipment as Chess differs from Chess. The last two are not particularly informative. Other means a difference not included by the previous ones, and Modest means a small difference, though it could fit any of the previous differences. What has always bothered me about these categories is that they are not supposed to be used for games played on different boards than Chess. Yet the same things that distinguish games played with the usual equipment from Chess also sometimes distinguish other variants from Chess, and apart from Other, which I dismissed above, we have never had anything like these available as categories for other games.

One possibility is to give these all the same parent name. I prefer the longer UsualEquipment, because it is more informative. We could translate them to UsualEquipment:DifferentPowersOfMovement, UsualEquipment:MovingOpponent'sPieces, UsualEquipment:Multi-Move, UsualEquipment:DifferentRules, UsualEquipment:DifferentObject, UsualEquipment:DifferentSetup, and UsualEquipment:DifferentCapturing.

But I will note that we already have some tags that cover some of these without the usual equipment part. The Goal parent tag can be used for different goals. The Multi-Move tag can be used for any game allowing multiple moves. I also want to create a Piece parent tag for identifying individual pieces in a game. This might replace my attempt to create separate tables for piece information.

Crossover

We already have this as a parent tag, and it is probably more useful that way. It might be better to go through the crossover games and create more informative child tags for them.

Singleplayer

Okay, though probably uncommon. Perhaps renaming the tag Solitaire.

XiangqiBased, ShogiBased

These don't have to be children of Regional or Oriental, because people in the west have sometimes created games based on Xiangqi or Shogi. One problem with Oriental, mentioned above, is that some games based on Xiangqi or Shogi might have been given the Oriental category despite being of western origin.


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