Misc: How to choose useful page tags

A really powerful feature of this wiki is the ability to find pages that cover a certain subject by using the wiki's tag cloud. Because any wiki member can add tags to a page, the tag cloud is a folksonomy instead of a carefully-designed taxonomy that uses a controlled vocabulary.

Therefore, the challenge to every member of this wiki is to keep the tag cloud as focused as possible by carefully thinking about the tags that you assign to pages. There are several simple guidelines that can help you to choose useful and consistent page tags:

  • Take a look at the entire tag cloud for the wiki when choosing the tags to add to a page, and try to choose your tags from those already used in the tag cloud. This is very easy to do, because the side menu on every page in the wiki (even on the Create a new page form) has a List entire tag cloud link beneath the Top 50 Tag Cloud section. Right-click that link and open the page in a new browser tab or window, then click the likely suspects to see a list of all pages currently associated with that tag.
  • With the exception of the Korg M3 and Korg Oasys, do not use tags to denote a specific workstation model or version of the KARMA Software. This information is already captured in the title of every page so there's no point in cluttering up the tag cloud with this same information. For example, if you click the sequencers-internal tag, the resulting list of pages is alphabetized to group all the KORG M3: articles before all the KORG OASYS: articles, etc. Note: The reason for using korg-m3 and korg-oasys tags is because there is so much overlap in how those two keyboards work, especially with respect to KARMA-related tasks. So an OASYS user might write a really good article that M3 users could easily adapt for use on the M3. By tagging that article with both korg-oasys and korg-m3, you can help some M3 users find that article more easily.
  • Do not use tags for karma-this or karma-that, because the huge majority of articles in this wiki are somehow related to KARMA.
  • If you cannot find existing tags that seem to apply to the page you're creating/revising, keep the following guidelines in mind when defining new tags:
    • Use all lowercase letters for your tag name.
    • Start with the most important "word", because when people are scanning a large tag cloud, they will generally notice only the first "word" in tag name. For example, use drum-patterns and drum-programs instead of patterns-drums and programs-drums, because someone trying to figure out how to do something related to drums will be scanning the tag cloud for the "drum" keyword.
    • Each tag must be a single string with no spaces. If there are multiple "words" in the tag, separate them with a hyphen character (-). For example, drum-patterns, page-creation, sequencers-internal, and so on.
    • Avoid using tags that are too generic to be useful. For example sequencers alone would be too generic, because there can be a huge difference between how-to pages that describe using the internal sequencer on a workstation to achieve some goal versus using an external sequencer to achieve that same goal. So sequencers-internal and sequencers-external are better choices.
    • Avoid using tag variants for every possible workstation or version of the KARMA Software, because the page title itself on the list of pages that share a given tag should convey that information. For example, use drum-patterns instead of korg-m3-drum-patterns or drum-patterns-korg-m3.
    • Avoid using singular nouns. For example, use drum-patterns instead of drum-pattern and sequencers-internal instead of sequencer-internal.
    • Avoid beginning the tag with a verbs. Instead use a noun phrase that stresses the type of thing being acted on. For example, use page-creation instead of creating-pages. Another example would be to use sequencers-internal instead of sequencing-internal.
  • Finally, be aware of the following special-purpose tags:
    • page-creation indicates pages that contain information helpful for any member who is creating or revising pages in the wiki.
    • fix-me indicates a page that might need some further work. Look in the page's discussion thread for comments that might indicate what needs to be fixed.
    • delete-me indicates a page that might need to be deleted from the wiki. Look in the page's discussion thread for comments that explain why it should be deleted. (Note that only admins and moderators can actually delete a page from the wiki.)