🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Jul 4, 2018 04:05 PM UTC:
Let's think about the difference between categories and tags. In my Wordpress blog, I use both. Categories are fewer in number, and they tend to be mutually exclusive, though it doesn't always work that way in practice. I can assign multiple categories to a post, and I sometimes do, but there is the general intent that they should be exclusive of each other. The tags on my blog are more particular, and the same posts may have multiple tags without it being an issue.
Last.fm seems to use tags rather than categories to organize its site. I can go to an artist page or an album page and add tags. Many of the tags on last.fm are genre tags, and it makes sense to allow users to enter tags, because genre is something of a subjective matter, and different people sometimes organize the same music into different genres. By recording how multiple people tag artists and albums, they can show the most popular tags and usually get the genre correct without having to hire staff members to meticulously go through all the music there and place each artist or album into the proper genre. They also allow members to edit the text of tag pages, so that we can get descriptions of the genres people tag various music with.
The tags that are appropriate for Chess variants are usually less subjective than genres. Tags about ways in which games are different from Chess usually convey objective facts about these games, not merely subjective opinions. But people could use them for subjective opinions too.
One difference between categories and tags is that categories should be exhaustive, while tags don't have to be. For example, we have an Other category, but it would not make sense to have an Other tag. With tags, we could shift the emphasis from an exhaustive categorization of games to tagging how various games differ from Chess. With the exception of games playable with a Chess set, the general idea would be to assume similarity with Chess except when differences are tagged. The tagging system is also more open-ended and flexible than the categorization system. Anyone can add a new tag, but to add a new category, someone has to edit the structure of the Categories column in the Item table, then update some scripts.
The options before us are
To use both categories and tags and figure out how they can work together.
To improve the category system and forget about using tags.
Let's think about the difference between categories and tags. In my Wordpress blog, I use both. Categories are fewer in number, and they tend to be mutually exclusive, though it doesn't always work that way in practice. I can assign multiple categories to a post, and I sometimes do, but there is the general intent that they should be exclusive of each other. The tags on my blog are more particular, and the same posts may have multiple tags without it being an issue.
Last.fm seems to use tags rather than categories to organize its site. I can go to an artist page or an album page and add tags. Many of the tags on last.fm are genre tags, and it makes sense to allow users to enter tags, because genre is something of a subjective matter, and different people sometimes organize the same music into different genres. By recording how multiple people tag artists and albums, they can show the most popular tags and usually get the genre correct without having to hire staff members to meticulously go through all the music there and place each artist or album into the proper genre. They also allow members to edit the text of tag pages, so that we can get descriptions of the genres people tag various music with.
The tags that are appropriate for Chess variants are usually less subjective than genres. Tags about ways in which games are different from Chess usually convey objective facts about these games, not merely subjective opinions. But people could use them for subjective opinions too.
One difference between categories and tags is that categories should be exhaustive, while tags don't have to be. For example, we have an Other category, but it would not make sense to have an Other tag. With tags, we could shift the emphasis from an exhaustive categorization of games to tagging how various games differ from Chess. With the exception of games playable with a Chess set, the general idea would be to assume similarity with Chess except when differences are tagged. The tagging system is also more open-ended and flexible than the categorization system. Anyone can add a new tag, but to add a new category, someone has to edit the structure of the Categories column in the Item table, then update some scripts.
The options before us are