Tags for posts in Add-on Releases

[nightingale]

I'm seeing a few mods that now have tags for their topics in Add-on Releases, and it got me thinking.  Although the tag system is completely free-form, the more consistent the tags are across mods, the more likely they will be actually useful for users looking for mods, and not just a bunch of silly words taking up screen real-estate.  For my contract packs, I added the "contractconfigurator" tag to tie things together, but I could also see adding the "career" tag to indicate that they are career-specific mods.

The way the forum displays them, you only see the first two tags and have to click "and X more" to see the rest.  So I'd say there's very diminishing returns after the first two tags (although you do see all tags in the topic itself).

It is recommended that the first tag indicate the type of add-on from the following broad categories:

• plugin
• part
• collection
• content pack

This should be used as the "prefix" tag (which shows up in read ahead of the topic title):

There are many cases where an add-on adds using an enabling mod (such as contract packs and planet packs).  It is useful to categorize that under a tag that names the "parent" add-on.  Some examples:

• contract configurator
• kopernicus
• texture replacer

Otherwise, tags can be used to give a general categorization of what the add-on supplies.  Some suggestions:

• career
• science
• gameplay
• control
• physics
• propulsion
• resources
• structural
• aeronautics
• navigation
• modding tool
• gui
• performance
• visual
• universe alteration
• library
• automation
• miscellaneous

Thoughts?

Edited December 1, 2015 by nightingale

[Gaarst]

Yes.

Edit: seems like there's no 5char limit anymore.

Edited November 30, 2015 by Gaarst

[Diazo]

The one standard I would think should apply is a "part" and "plug-in" tag.

Any mod that adds a new part should have the "part" tag and any plug in that has a .dll file should have the "plug-in" tag. This means several mods would have both, but it at least serves as a starting location for searching.

Looking for new lights for your plane? Filter by the "part" tag.

Looking for a controller to keep your plane level? Filter by the "plug-in" tag.

Also, is there a way to see all tags that have already been created? I'm going to use the "actions" tag on a bunch of my mods, but has someone else already used just "action" for their mod relating to handling actions and/or action groups?

D.

edit: How do you list existing tags? Without that ability they are going to be pretty useless. Yes, you can search by tag but that only works if you know what you are searching for.

Edited November 30, 2015 by Diazo

[DMagic]

Since we can only see two tags without expanding the list I would say that there should be three basic tags:

• Parts
• Plug-In
• Parts/Plug-In

Otherwise a large number of mods will just be Parts and Plug-In with any further tags relegated to the hidden list.

This way you could have one basic tag (that essentially everything in the addon release forum has) and a second category-type tag; something like Nightingale's list.

As for what I think should be included in a standardized list of secondary tags, anything that relies on a framework type of mod is good (Contract Configurator, Kopernicus, EVE, Texture Replacer, etc...), along with broad categories (similar to what you find on Curse, but with a bit more fine-grained options).

[nightingale]

Personally, I wasn't a fan of the Plugin-In designation on the old forum because it's just too broad (although it was worse there, because it might as well have been Parts and Not-Parts).

The other use is if one author wants to put all his stuff under one umbrella (I've noticed @RoverDude has already tagged all his stuff as USI).

For the most part, I'm willing to follow the crowd here, as these types of things are more useful the more aligned different topics are.

[Valerian]

I agree that we should have some guides and rules for tagging in the Add-on section.

@nightingale would you be up for the task of maintaining this thread and collecting community suggestions?

I asked @KasperVld on IRC if it would be possible to increase the number of tags, up to about 6, and he said that he would think about it if we come up with a set of tags and rules.

 

So here we are:

One point to discuss is if all add-on threads should add the "add-on" tag, and in my opinion it's not necessary if those are all in the add-on release subforum.

 

I think all add-on threads must have one "Type" tag, and no more than one.

Suggested "Type" tags:

• Plugin
• Parts (add-ons that are not plugins and provide parts)
• Pack (or maybe Collection, in the sense of a "mod-pack")
• Content (things such as textures for TextureReplacer, I would like to find a better name for this tag)

Maybe the type tags should have an "add-on:" prefix, so those would be: add-on:plugin, add-on:parts, etc.

 

Then obviously we should have category tags, in the same way curse have, but better (curse is really lacking some categories).

Add-ons can have as many category tags as they wish, as long as it is relevant.

I will take your previous suggestions and add mine:

• Career
• Science
• Visual
• Part
• Gameplay
• Control
• Physics
• Propulsion
• Resources
• Structural
• Aeronautics
• Navigation
• Modding tool
• GUI
• Performance
• Universe Alteration
• Library
• Automation
• Miscellaneous

I will also suggest a "category:" prefix to those, so it would be: category:career, category:science, category:visual, etc.

 

 

[Valerian]

There is also the tagging of multiple threads about the same add-on or add-on collection, examples that come to mind would be USI or RSS.

Should we use only the name itself, or add some kind of prefix? Or use the "add-on name:" prefix, and for the type use the "add-on type:" prefix, same thing for the categories? Damn, this is getting ugly :/

Edited November 30, 2015 by Valerian

[Valerian]

I forgot to suggest the obvious!

We should definitely put a tag with the compatible KSP version, I think just putting the version without anything else would be clear enough, such as "1.0.5"

[*Aqua*]

Don't make it to complicated.

Version Number, Part, Plugin and Other (for stuff like PDFs, etc.) tags would be very nice. It immediately gives the user an idea what to expect. If the mod dev want to use additional tags like USI, just let him do.

[Valerian]

11 minutes ago, *Aqua* said:

Don't make it to complicated.

Version Number, Part, Plugin and Other (for stuff like PDFs, etc.) tags would be very nice. It immediately gives the user an idea what to expect. If the mod dev want to use additional tags like USI, just let him do.

 

The idea of tags as they are implemented in this forum currently, is that by clicking on a tag you can see all other topics that share this tag.

So yes, the "mandatory" part should stay very simple, but it would be nice to have a common standard for some tags potentially shared by many addons.

[Diazo]

I actually don't like the version number tag, a couple of my mods go back to 0.23 support. Not the current version of course, but I still have the download links up for the old versions of my mods that support older KSP versions.

Do I tag my mod with every KSP version they support? If not and I just tag it with the latest KSP version, that is misleading that if someone searches the 1.0.4 tag, none of my mods will show despite the fact they work on it.

Beyond that, I like the idea of first tag as Part/Plug-in/Both, second tag from a predefined list of categories, Valerian's first post has a good start on this. After that, pretty much free with the tags. I can tag AGX with 'actions', 'action groups' for the third and fourth tag because that suits that mod, trying to come up with a sub-list for the third tag for each second (category) tag is too much I think.

D.

[nightingale]

EDIT: Didn't even notice the double-post.

Edited December 1, 2015 by nightingale

[nightingale]

I tried to add more poll options, but instead it broke the forum.  I've said @KasperVld's name three times into a mirror, which should summon him to add it to his ever growing list of minor issues.

EDIT: Kasper, if you see this, it seems the problem has fixed itself.

 

Anyway, I'm against version numbers as tags, we might as well just keep the current system that has it in as part of the topic title.  The only benefit that a tag has over that is being able to click/search - but a search that returns 90% of all mods probably isn't that useful.  I'm personally against the plugin/part/others type identifier, but it sounds like I'm in the minority on that one.

I'll update the OP with Valerian's suggestions, as well as any others that come up.

EDIT: Oh, just noticed this:

When tagging, there's the option to select one of your tags as the "prefix".  Doing so makes it show up like above (which means you technically get 3 visible tags in the listing).  I suggest that "type" tag gets set as the prefix.

Edited December 1, 2015 by nightingale

[DMagic]

43 minutes ago, nightingale said:

When tagging, there's the option to select one of your tags as the "prefix".  Doing so makes it show up like above (which means you technically get 3 visible tags in the listing).  I suggest that "type" tag gets set as the prefix.

 

Yeah, that makes it much better. Three tags should be enough to usefully categorize most mods.

[Valerian]

5 hours ago, *Aqua* said:

1 hour ago, nightingale said:

I tried to add more poll options, but instead it broke the forum.  I've said @KasperVld's name three times into a mirror, which should summon him to add it to his ever growing list of minor issues.

Anyway, I'm against version numbers as tags, we might as well just keep the current system that has it in as part of the topic title.  The only benefit that a tag has over that is being able to click/search - but a search that returns 90% of all mods probably isn't that useful.  I'm personally against the plugin/part/others type identifier, but it sounds like I'm in the minority on that one.

I'll update the OP with Valerian's suggestions, as well as any others that come up.

EDIT: Oh, just noticed this:

When tagging, there's the option to select one of your tags as the "prefix".  Doing so makes it show up like above (which means you technically get 3 visible tags in the listing).  I suggest that "type" tag gets set as the prefix.

Don't make it to complicated.

Version Number, Part, Plugin and Other (for stuff like PDFs, etc.) tags would be very nice. It immediately gives the user an idea what to expect. If the mod dev want to use additional tags like USI, just let him do.

How did you manage to set a tag as a prefix? I just spent 10 minutes trying everything to achieve that ...

[nightingale]

9 minutes ago, Valerian said:

How did you manage to set a tag as a prefix? I just spent 10 minutes trying everything to achieve that ...

I put an image in the OP.  Under the tags box a dropdown for prefix appears (only shows up if you have at least one tag).

[Valerian]

4 minutes ago, nightingale said:

I put an image in the OP.  Under the tags box a dropdown for prefix appears (only shows up if you have at least one tag).

I don't see this box, I tried both on Chrome and Firefox, maybe you somehow have special privileges?

I even tried to remove all tags and save, then put tags again

Edited December 1, 2015 by Valerian

[nightingale]

2 minutes ago, Valerian said:

I don't see it, I tried both on Chrome and Firefox, maybe you somehow have special privileges?

Well, I am awesome that way.

I have no explanation - I'm on Chrome as well, and it's not like I'm a mod, so I really shouldn't have anything special.

[Diazo]

I don't get that drop-down either.

However there is something up with tags at the moment. If I go into a topic without tags I can click to get a text cursor and enter tags.

But if I then go back to that same topic with tags added, I can no longer get the text cursor to add tags, I can only click the little X on the tags to remove them.

This is on Firefox.

D.

Edited December 1, 2015 by Diazo

[nightingale]

From another thread:

4 hours ago, KasperVld said:

I'm not sure how Nightingale added that prefix to be honest, it's supposedly disabled. The thing about the prefix system in IPS is that it's much more limited. For example, we can't give you a list of prefixes to use on a forum-by-forum basis.

So it seems I'm probably not supposed to be able to do this.  Looking through Add-on Releases, I see RoverDude has also added "prefix" tags, so there's at least one other non-moderator with this ability.

I think we should try to get it added for everyone - at least for Add-On Releases, if it's possible to do it on a per-forum basis (I seem to be able to do it anywhere).

[Valerian]

4 hours ago, severedsolo said:

nightingale is always the troublemaker ;). Cheers Kasper - appreciate you taking time out.

Edited December 1, 2015 by Valerian

[sarbian]

With Roverdude in the KSP Dev group I guess it is safe to say he may have more permissions than most of us

[toadicus]

Is there some magic dance or fel incantation required to get the "prefix" drop-down to appear?  I've tried a few different things with adding tags to my existing posts and I can't get it to show up for me at all (using Chrome in Windows, currently).

[DMagic]

Maybe if we bug @KasperVld enough we'll get the prefix feature allowed for everyone, at least in the addon release forum where it's less likely to be abused.

Edited December 1, 2015 by DMagic

[Valerian]

@KasperVld this might be useful: https://community.invisionpower.com/files/file/7614-advanced-tags-prefixes/

Quote

Feature list:

• Define all prefixes manually through the Prefix Manager--even for open-tag systems.
• Show common tags and prefixes across your site with the Tag Cloud Widget.
• Add, fix, merge, and remove tags and prefixes in bulk through the Tag Manager.
• Choose a prefix when posting any prefix-enabled content, separate from tags.
• Control where and how tags and prefixes are displayed.
• Add custom HTML formatting to your prefixes, allowing colors, images, and much more.
• Limit prefixes by member group and location.
• Require a prefix in certain forums*.
• Add tags and prefixes to topics in bulk with Saved Actions or the Mass-Add tool.
• Apply a prefix to topics imported from RSS.
• Set a default prefix and tags for all new topics in a forum*.
• Override the global tag settings by forum*. This lets you enter custom tags in some forums and not others, or change how many tags are required, or have a prefix option without any tags at all.
• Display topic prefixes in the page title, last post info, and as filters under each forum's description, if you want.
• ...and more.

 

Edited December 1, 2015 by Valerian