GURPS redirects

Someone has done a very thorough job on GURPS redirects, including redirecting a large number of GURPS worldbooks to the main GURPS tag. I'm just a little bit worried that some of them might have been too sweeping, that people who are trying to find and attract something much more specific than GURPS players.

For example, someone who has tagged themselves "GURPS: Traveller" or "GURPS: In Nomine" might want to attract the attention of only that specific small slice of the GURPS playership, and they might want to catch the eye of non-GURPS players of those games.

-Brett

I'm hemming and hawing in similar vein over the Buffy the Vampire Slayer group of tags. The scale is much smaller, but the issue is the question is the same:

Which is more useful to most users, whom we presuppose use the site to find gamers near them with similar interests?

- Numerous, separate, more specific tags - Fewer, grouped, more general tags

At first, I went with the general for BtVS, because it was tagged by far more users than were the RPG-specific tags. Without asking them, I can't know whether all those general-taggers meant that they like all BtVS games, whether each only knew of one BtVS game so assumed that the general tag was sufficient, whether they were generalists concerned with simple tagging, etc.

And I have since inadvertently ADDED to the numbers of unknowables by hiding the specific tags from new users with redirects.

So I'm coming to think that maybe specific is preferable, and that we might satisfy the need to connect game families by cross-linking them, rather than redirecting.

Ugh. And this speaks to the D&D/AD&D discussion, too, doesn't it? We're running into the same question over and over.

Lee

Its a bit diffrent then the D&D discussion though isint it?

There are a billion versions of GURPS, there are 3 primary versions of D&D.

I think the whole issue will be eventually solved with meta tags.

Then you can have a Gurps primary tag, and a Gurps: Traveler tag under that.

A Dungeons & Dragons tag to signify the entire game through its history, and sub/meta tags for AD&D and the rest, and the Campaign settings and RPGA tags...

Same goes for World of Darkness.

Actually, there are only five versions of GURPS, counting GURPS Lite. All of the things like GURPS Traveller &c. are not versions of GURPS, they are world-books to use with GURPS. More like Dark Sun than a version of D&D.

As for D&D, there was original D&D, Advanced D&D, Basic D&D, Expert Set, AD&D 2nd edition, D&D 3rd Edition, and D&D 3.5e, besides which the Rules Cyclopedia came in there somewhere.

I think we should generally leave the more-specific tags alone. Let folks tag themselves with both GURPS and GURPS: In Nomine.

This is a situation where we should improve the help text. Right now it says "Comma-separated labels for games; how others find you", anyone have a good wording for how to work this in?

"As for D&D, there was original D&D, Advanced D&D, Basic D&D, Expert Set, AD&D 2nd edition, D&D 3rd Edition, and D&D 3.5e, besides which the Rules Cyclopedia came in there somewhere."

"Original", Basic, and Expert can all fall under one tag, Advanced and 2nd edition are usually just collectivly reffered to as AD&D, and 3e or 3.x or whatever can also be clumped together.

In general WOTC wanted the latest edition to simply use Dungeons & Dragons for the name, so if we ever get meta-tags it should just be a single tag for Dungeons & Dragons with all the diffrent versions and variations being sub tags.

IMO.

Yes, and all five versions of GURPS can fall under one tag, too.

As for things like GURPS Space and GURPS In Nomine, they are not version of GURPS any more than Greyhawk or Ravenloft is a version of D&D.

A person who tags his or her self GURPS Space is looking for something more specific than GURPS players, and it is of questionable helpfulness to prevent him or her from doing it. And a person who tags himself or herself GURPS In Nomine would probably like to attract the attention of other In Nomine players rather than, say, mine.

I doubt that redirecting all the GURPS worldbook tags to GURPS is going to help people get what they want out of this site.

-Brett

Well, what I am looking for from this site is nearby gamers. It doesn't help that every time I bring up a page from this site that my location is presented in the map, even though I did not participate in the discussion. Being one of the northern most locations means I am highlighted even if I do not want to be.

As for tags: this is not a well thought out classification. There should be a hierarchy of tags; so that the viewer can navigate through them as his heart pleases. Up, down, or sideways should be a click away.

Unfortunately designing a hierarchy of tags would require an encyclopaedic knowledge of RPGs, settings, card games, board games, miniatures games, InterNet games, CAGs, and console games. It would be difficult and costly to set up, and would continually go out of date. It's a fundamentally different approach from the one this site has adopted, which is to allow users to decide for themselves what to use the site for.

Something like what you want can be built by creating categorical tags and putting a lot of well-labelled links on them. And I've tried to do a bit of that with, for instance, the 'SF RPGs' tag and others. That sort of thing saves the site owner from an Herculean task, but it means that creating and maintaining the network of links requires:

1. A consensus about what should be done, and
2. A collective effort to build and maintain the site

We thrash out the consensus with discussions like this. We build the network of tags one edit at a time.

-Brett

For what it's worth, Clay Shirkey's Ontology Is Overrated was a heavy influence when I was designing the site. It's long, but it's an excellent read on organization.

Shawn, your location (and all other fields except handle, mail address, and password) is entirely optional. Please don't feel you have to put one there, I don't want anyone to feel unsafe.

Okay. I read Ontology is Over-Rated, and following the reasoning it provides I undid the GURPS re-directs and replaced them with links on the tag pages.

I think we could do with some sort of policy statement linked from the 'home' page or the 'about' page.

-Brett

I've moved these help tasks up near the top of my todo list for tomorrow:

• Tags: better help, like "don't c&p", explain wiki mentality
• Profile: better tag editing tips, like LFG
• Add HTML help in tag/profile editing pointing to a tag
• Point "jabber im" link in profile edit to a tag with help