It seems like there’s enough interest in this to make it happen, so here we go: TagFest 2024 now officially exists!
Ground rules:
- The event will run from Oct 1 to Oct 31.
- Participants are highly encouraged to read the thread cited by @alyshkalia. (See the first item on the list of related threads below.)
- Competition elements will be informal and unofficial. Stats will be provided at a future date.
General guidelines:
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Tags are by their nature free-form, uncontrolled and messy. Don’t worry about it. It’s fine. (Really!)
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The most valuable thing about a tag is that it points out something distinctive. When considering a new tag, look through the list of existing tags to see if any of them are close enough, and check the games that are tagged to see how other people are interpreting the term.
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The second most valuable thing about a tag is that it is applicable to more than one game – even games that you don’t know about or which haven’t yet been written. Use your judgment when deciding whether a tag is likely to be applicable in the long-term.
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The third most valuable thing about a tag is that it represents a type of perspective. Your perspective will differ from that of others. When tagging, stick to aspects that are at least potentially demonstrable, i.e. that you could write an essay citing game text or context to support.
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Both subset and superset tags can be valuable. For example, if a game features a crow, you could add “crow” or “bird” or both! A tag “corvid” is less likely to be generally useful, but that’s because fewer people know what it means. Go ahead – it doesn’t really hurt, and a future ornithologist might appreciate it (and start extending it to other games).
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The system supports multiple users applying the same tag. You may wish to “repeat” a tag that you already see on a game. Doing so might make it easier to judge a tag’s validity via automation, and definitely helps to preserve tags should a given user account be deleted.
I’m laying out those guidelines not as some kind of “master of tags” but as someone who has spent a lot of time trying to convert the tag data into something useful for recommendations. To me, those are generally good guidelines for making useful tags, but see point 1: Tags are “uncontrolled” by design.
For the competitively-minded, you can help make this into a spectator sport with these polls:
- at least one game
- a few games
- several games
- many games
- a lot of games
- a whole lot of games
- ALL THE GAMES!
- no new tags
- at least one new tag
- a few new tags
- several new tags
- many tags
- a lot of tags (which is probably enough)
- none of my tags are covered by existing tags
- a few of my tags are covered by existing tags
- some of my tags are covered by existing tags
- about half of my tags are covered by existing tags
- most of my tags are covered by existing tags
- nearly all of my tags are covered by existing tags
- all of my tags are covered by existing tags