Avoid tags that mean different things in different games

Question

Well this is actually a continuation of a rant I had back in July, but the content here is a little different and more specific, so please disregard the previous thread :)

Many tags currently have different meaning in different games. I really think we should try and avoid using tags like these.

There are tons of them. For example (and I've only used tags with more than one appearance):

• Profession names, such as shaman or scout or engineer etc. are used in gazillion games and can refer to completely different things in each one.
• Likewise, names of buildings or places such as bunker or mines.
• Other concepts that mean different things in different games like mutation or energy or trading.

So what's my rationale? I'm going to basically copy-paste from my previous post:

Some users assert that tags are helpful for searching, and I believe this is just not their intended purpose: tags are helpful for filtering (and for gathering statistics). There are some discussions about tagging in meta that seem to agree. I really liked one particular sentence:

Tags connect experts with questions they will be able to answer

In Stack Overflow, one can be an expert in Java or experienced with strings. But there's no way to be an expert on "priest" (since they appear in so many games) and I doubt anyone would consider herself an expert on "energy", let alone filter on it.

On the other hand, of course, it could be asked what's the big deal, what harm is there in a few excess tags? Well I confess it isn't a big deal, but it's a fact SO has over time increased its tag-creation threshold. The more tags there are the more noise and needless complexity we add, in my opinion.

Answer 1

There's two different classes of these tags that we deal with. I believe we should pay heed to this, because I don't think it is remotely wise to avoid a tag just because its meaning varies between games. Take nothing of this to address fully game-specific tags where the tag represents something that's undeniably tied to a single game or franchise.

1. Semi-dependents, or good generics. A good example we have is achievements, and one that I'd like to become a similarly useful example would be weapons. You bring up the "Death of Meta tags" article. Semi-dependent tags will have different meanings when associated with different games, but will still have a mostly universal meaning to gamers when it is alone - even if it will never get a question that it is the only tag for. I use [strings] on Stack Overflow as an example all the time because it's the same principle. The implementation differs between languages, but the core essence of what it means will always be understood by the target audience - no one is going to confuse these for quartet musicians. I address a lot of this in a different Meta question. This is a little different, though, so you can disregard that thread and just bother with the following quote. ♪

   The plague of duplicate questions that differ simply by choice of words is testament to this foul shortcoming of text search: you simply cannot find what isn't there. This same shortcoming applies to tags, but the thing here is that tags can represent the specific as well as the general. So you can ask a question about weapons without ever saying "weapons". In a multi-question theoretical example, suppose we got questions about the game Sora, one question about the Pilebunker, one about the Flamethrower, and one about the Bullet. They really don't need to share any words besides the name of the game and maybe "damage" in their question bodies, but the presence of a unifying tag lets me group these together in a way that they should since they're all about the same content: weapons. You can accomplish this categorization without needing to alter the word choice of the individual questions, because tags are independent of the author's expression of the problem.

2. Dependents, or bad generics. bunker is actually a pretty good example. In StarCraft and its successor, a Bunker is a building that Terran Infantry can utilize to stay safe from damage. In Resonance of Fate, a bunker is a wall that will block projectiles from a long range but can be fired through when adjacent to it. Though they share the term because of a matching dictionary definition, this knowledge will not help identify what the term means if you are unfamiliar with the game. This is because these don't exist as independent video game constructs, and fully depend on the context of the game to define it within the scope of what we care about.

A good acid test is to think of the tag and consequently how likely it is that you can pinpoint very closely what it'll be in any given applicable game whether you know it or not with its universal meaning. Or, if you can write a tag wiki description that isn't just "This means things so completely different between so many games", that helps.

• scout would fail because Team Fortress 2, Disgaea, and StarCraft all have very divergent meanings that extend well past the universal meaning, just to name a few.
• minimap would succeed as the difference in implementation between the oh-so-many games with minimaps doesn't change its universal meaning to gamers as a small and dynamic map of the current area.
• We shouldn't even begin to describe how bad energy would fail.
• There are many different implementations of quests in games, but they all surround a core concept that is well understood by gamers as some sort of objective that must be cleared for some manner of reward. Terribly vague when it's alone, but successful semi-dependent tags tend to be like that.

Using this, you can help sift out the junk dependents while keeping the useful semi-dependents. I'm still one of the advocates of actually using tags in searches (as highlighted in the Meta thread I told you disregard), but my advice here is actually geared towards the utility of tagging for categorization and filtering.

Answer 2

I don't see a big problem with those tags, as the only use for them I can think of is searching within a game-tag. So if I'm searching for WoW rogues, I'll use world-of-warcraft and rogue.

I don't much like the fact that the tags have different meanings in different games, but I'm pretty sure noone uses those tags (on their own) for browsing or favorites anyway.

If we argue that the tags are not for assisting searches and that real tags would have to be useful for filtering/favoriting on their own, I think we would have to remove 90% of the non-game tags here. I don't think that makes much sense.

I'm only using the game tags, I could see a use for genre tags if we applied them consistently, but personally I find no use for any other tag. I think they might be more useful when we have a bigger volume of questions, but we really have to get some kind of order in our tags for that.

I think there is really not a substantial difference between game-specific tags like zerg, semi-general tags (same name but different implementations) like rogue and general tags like achievement or [talk:tips] in how they are used. I can't imagine a case where I would filter only on on of those tags, I would only use them to search within a game, not across multiple games.

For that reason I think it is perfectly acceptable that some tags have different meanings in different games. They might not be useful on their own, but nobody will use them like that anyway, and if you use them together with a game tag they are again useful.

But there is some need for cleanup in our tags for sure, but I don't think this is an important criteria for deciding about the usefulness of a tag.