using tags

[miyakoji]

Should we have a list of tags in use? I'm just thinking, if I tag a post with JR West, and others use JRWest or JR Nishi, one of the tags won't find the other two.
 
117 series
16番
20 series
300 series
350 series
80 series
80 series
accident
a class
aerial view
agatsuma
air pollution
akita
aomonoya
asakaze
asakusa
ayokoi
banetsu
blue train
chip board
club
container
dcc
dc locomotive
dd51
de10
de11
de15
decoder
derailment
df200
dmu
documentary
dosan line
e2
e3
e5
e653
e7
ef13
fiscal 2013
fuji tv
fukutoshin
green car
haijima
hayabusa
hitachi
hokuriku
ho scale
iida line
install
isumi
jnr
jrcentral
jreast
jrfreight
jrhokkaido
jrkyushu
jrshikoku
jrwest
kabuto koe
kanazawa
kansai
kansai line
kansai main line
kanto
karibajct
kasado
kasukabe
kato
keikyu
kiha 20
kiha 30
kiha 45
kiha 52
kinokawa
kishi
kokuden
kuhayuni 56
kuniyoshi
kyushu
laser cut
livery
map
mintetsu
mixed freight
mooka
musashigaoka
museum
n700
nagano
nankai
neko publishing
new rolling stock
nhk
nimo5
nittsu
nostalgia
nozomi
okaden
okayama
open day
open house
osaka
paper craft
paper kit
parcels train
plastic
plastic kit
pm 2.5
poster
private railways
pusher
railkingjp
rail magazine
real scope
repair
rice fields
rolling stock
romen densha
sanriku
scrapping
seibu
semaphores
semboku
shibuya
shiden
shinano
shinkansen
shonan densha
snow pal
statistics
steam
store
streetcar
summer
through service
tobu
toei
tohoku
tohoku shinkansen
tokaido
tokyo metro
tomix
topped and tailed
toxic air
toyoko
toyota long pass
tram
traverser
tv commercial
tv program
umekoji
w7
yodo line
yosan line
zenmen tenbou
zoukeimura

Edited July 28, 2013 by miyakoji

[KenS]

This seems like a good idea.  I presume capitalization doesn't matter, so "JRWest", "JRwest" and "jrwest" are all the same tag, true?

 

Why don't we just propose/discuss useful tags, and miyakoji can list the ones everyone likes in the first email.  If we get enough to be useful it can be stickyed.

 

I'll suggest all of the JR Group companies in their short English form without a space:

 

JRHokkaido

JREast

JRCentral

JRWest

JRShikoku

JRKyushu

JRFreight

[miyakoji]

I think you're right about the capitalization, I tried adding the tag "TagCaps" to a new thread and it turned it into "tagcaps" or at least that's how it displayed it. I'd be happy to keep the top post updated with tags in use.

[Martijn Meerts]

It's quite a lot of work keeping a predefined list of tags, considering we also have off-topic forums etc. So if someone starts talking about their ant-farm hobby, we'll not have any tags for that :)

 

Unless I'm very much mistaken though, I do believe there's an option to use pre-defined tags for specific parts of the forum, so we could theoretically add pre-defined tags to some sections. Still might end up being problematic though, considering someone might want to tag a thread about a specific train with the train type, but that'd mean we'd have to have a predefined tag list including all train types.

 

I'm actually not certain if a hybrid is possible, where we have certain predefined tags, like the railway companies and the big cities/stations for example, and still have the option of adding additional, non-existing tags ..

[Densha]

Why not make set standards for those then? If it's concerning a station you could scrap any additional word as "station" or "(-)eki" so there's only the station name left (but maybe look at rules for romanization), and for train series it could be "0000 series" or "Kiha 40" or "EF 65" for example. That's when only using spaces but you could also make a rule that locomotives would be written as "EF65" as the Japanese railways do. Anyway, this might be the easiest way of making definitions for tags, I haven't used the tags myself yet because there's no definition.

[Martijn Meerts]

You can't make rules for the tags with the current system, so I'd have to make my own. Right now you either specify a set of predefined tags, or you don't.. There's no way of automatically converting 'EF 65' or 'EF-65' to 'EF65' for example.

[Densha]

I don't mean that, I just meant we should sticky a topic and put the definitions in there. Yeah, it's sorta manual, but if we don't make too difficult with simple rules it wouldn't be too difficult to use them I think. Even if there's still a smaller percentage of tags not using the rules then at least the topics that have the correct tags can be found faster. It's sounding already tedious but I don't think it is.

[cteno4]

also can only the thread starter set tags?

 

jeff

[Martijn Meerts]

I don't mean that, I just meant we should sticky a topic and put the definitions in there. Yeah, it's sorta manual, but if we don't make too difficult with simple rules it wouldn't be too difficult to use them I think. Even if there's still a smaller percentage of tags not using the rules then at least the topics that have the correct tags can be found faster. It's sounding already tedious but I don't think it is.

 

That'd probably be too much manual work meaning tags won't be added, or people continue to use whatever tags they want. I think the best solution would be that all tags entered will be saved in a database, and when typing new tags, that database will be checked to see if what you're typing already exists, so you get an autocomplete type of feature. So, if someone adds 'jr-west' as a tag, the next person that types 'jr' will get a list of all tags starting with 'jr', and can then select a tag from that list, or continue typing if the tag he wants is not in the list.

 

The only problem is, as far as I know, the tagging system doesn't allow for something like that, so I'd have to see if I can adjust it somehow without using some hacky kinda way of doing it, so any future software updates won't overwrite the changes. It might be worth looking into at some point.

 

 

also can only the thread starter set tags?

 

jeff

 

Yeah, tags are only allowed on the first post in a thread. There's no way of adding tags other than editing the post, for which you obviously need to be the thread starter, or have super awesome admin powers like I do ;)

 

It would actually be nice to allow others to add tags, especially considering there's tons of un-tagged older content which would benefit from getting some tags.

[cteno4]

great little mental picture flashed in front of me -- we need a little costume for you martijn, SuperAdmin!

 

SuperAdmin to the rescue!

 

its a bird, no its a shinkansen, no its SuperAdmin!

 

theres no need to fear, SuperAdmin is here!

 

Faster than a speeding Nozomi, its SuperAdmin!

 

then you get a comic book deal, movies, etc and you are rich!

 

yeah only getting some things tagged does muck things up. ive found the search results to be puzzling in how things seem to be rated. it seems hard to get things by weight of use of the term as opposed to latest post.

 

jeff

[Densha]

Searching anyway is confusing. I couldn't find out how to search on titles and if you do a general search you won't find what you want at all because it doesn't seem to care about topic titles. It such a hassle having to go to advanced mode. If sometime the tags would also be fixed it would probably be very easy navigating through the contents.

[cteno4]

yes but tagging is also difficult to do well. it has to be done consistently and with a logic that most can grok. it would be a huge amount of work for someone to go back tagging old threads. im not sure if it would help anyway with the curious way the results are displayed with no sort by number of hits evident. not sure what weight the software gives a tag over search term in the text. the help system says you can sort by relevance, but thats not in the current results header, martijn perhaps something that can get turned on?

 

forums and email lists do get nasty to search through for older stuff especially unless its very unique and you know what you are looking for or its a thread with heavy use of a term or its tagged.

 

jeff

[Densha]

Even though I wrote it in one paragraph I meant that it sort of separately. I'm sure if it's done correctly tagging will be helpful but a good search function for relevant topics is priority, for me at least. With the previous software I could more often find the content I was looking for by searching for it.

It certainly isn't something that I need immediately and it can wait, eventually you can find most contents either way.

[KenS]

I just used:

 

tokyu

setagaya

article

 

for a post about a magazine article on the Tokyu Corporation's Setagaya line. Although I didn't think to add it, a "tram" tag might be a good idea also.

 

Unfortunately their current rolling stock is the 300 Series, and we already have a "300 series" tag for Shinkansen. Perhaps we should call these "tokyu 300 series"?

 

Any other tram-specific tags we should be using?

 

[miyakoji]

what I wrote above was just based on what I was able to find in use.  I think those 3 tags are good.  when I posted RailKingJP's video of the Okayama hotel that has a view of the Okaden, I just included tags that I thought were relevant and unique: okayama, shiden, tram, okaden, romen densha.  Hopefully if others are posting about trams, one of those will be included.  I don't know if there's a limit to the total number of tags, there probably is but maybe it's high.  I'll do a test thread later to try a lot of tags.  So, the best practice is probably just to include as many as you can provided they're unique and relevant to the thread.

Edited July 28, 2013 by miyakoji

[miyakoji]

Ah, it says maximum of 10 under the box where you type them in.

[KenS]

So, the best practice is probably just to include as many as you can provided they're unique and relevant to the thread.

 

That makes sense, but I try to follow what's on this thread so we'll have some kind of commonality. I'm never going to keep straight what tags others have used for something without some kind of index.

[miyakoji]

I'm never going to keep straight what tags others have used for something without some kind of index.

 

Well I'm not sure I'll be able to either.  I was maintaining the list just by what I'd seen used.  I don't think I'll really be able to keep that up.  I'll ask Martijn if he's got any other ideas.  Maybe we'll have to come up with some guidelines for tagging, like omitting common words, i.e. just write the name of a line or station without labeling it Line or Station.  Still we'll probably have to accept good enough rather than perfect on this matter.

[Densha]

Yeah, guidelines would be better than trying to make a list.

Some suggestions:

For companies use both the official full name and (if existent) abbreviation (we may have to make a list of companies though because many are called in different ways).

For train series I'd say do the abbreviation of the company plus series name and for shinkansen add shinkansen to make clear that it's a shinkansen: "JRE E231 series", "JRK 885 series", "E1 series Shinkansen", "N700 series Shinkansen", "JNR 103 series", "Keikyu 1000 series", etc.

For train lines and stations I would just add "line" and "station" because it would get very confusing otherwise.

[miyakoji]

You've got some interesting examples there.  I'd use them like this:

 

E231 - there is nothing else with this name as far as I know, so indicating JR East, or that E231 is a series of rolling stock, isn't really necessary.  Labeling a thread JRE or jreast (a tag that's already in use) could be for more general JR East threads, or separate from the E231 tag, so that more topics get linked together.

JRK 885 series - I'd probably use this one as you did, although jrkyushu is a tag already in use

E1 - nothing else is E1, so 'series' and 'shinkansen' isn't needed, and I think we're already using this one

N700 - same as E1

103 series - maybe in this case we should use 'series' as 103 could be other things.  But do we want to include JNR?  the 103s went on to be used with each JR company where they were already in operation (everywhere but Hokkaido, maybe?).

 

So, going back to what I wrote in comment #20, we should probably just include as many as possible, just so they're unique and relevant to the topic.

[miyakoji]

I've just updated the list based on new tags I saw on the first pages of Prototype News and Prototype Videos.  I think I added 54 tags.  I don't think I can maintain that list effectively

[Densha]

Yeah but I mean that adding the abbreviation of the company helps greatly with recognizing the train series.

My main point is what do you do when there's two 700 series? There's a Shinkansen 700 series but also a Keikyu 700 series and I guess more. I suggest adding the company name so that we won't get more confusing tags. The only problem may be JNR trains in use with several JR's, you may want to add a simple "103 series" to a post about the "JRW 103 series". If we'd discuss the 103 in operation by JNR in a certain post I would add "JNR 103 series" or maybe just "JNR"+"103 series".

But again note that many train series exist at multiple companies and being completely different trains so we really need to set a guideline for that. Just imagine all the "2000 series".