I’m trying to figure out what tags to map to the various RPG Bloggers’ Planet’s categories. I used a little Perl script to extract and count the categories people used for their blog posts. As you can see, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of common tags in the last 100 entries:
RPG Bloggers’ Planet’s categories
1 , 1 10th Doctor 1 3e 1 40k 1 AP 1 About e 1 Adventure Hook 1 Adventure-Prep 1 Arcana 1 Ask the GMs 1 At-The-Table 1 Beginners 1 Behind-The-Screen 1 Board 1 Board Games 1 Bureau 13 1 Call of Cthulhu 1 Campaign Creation 1 Campaign Management 1 Campaign Notes 1 Campaign-Admin 1 Campaign-Setting 1 Character creation 1 Class Discussions 1 Collateral 1 Critical hit 1 Cthulhu 1 D&D 4e 1 D&D Blog 1 D&D/Pathfinder 1 DM 1 DM Advice 1 DM Resources 1 DM tools 1 DM-Advice 1 Design 1 Design Diary 1 DnD 1 Dr Who 1 Dragon Magazine 1 Dungeon Master Resource 1 Dungeon Mastering Techniques 1 Electronic Games 1 Elements of Design 1 Encounters 1 Equipment 1 Essen 1 Events 1 Fantasy 1 Fantasy Craft 1 Fast Food and Snack Foods 1 Featured 1 Funny Games 1 Game News 1 Game design 1 Game mechanic 1 Game-Mastery 1 Gamer Life 1 Gameroom 1 Games 1 Games & Hobbies 1 Games Workshop 1 Gaming 1 Geek Life 1 Geek Stuff 1 General Musings 1 Google Wave 1 H. P. Lovecraft 1 Hex map 1 Hippy Game 1 Hobbies 1 Hobby 1 Homebrew 1 Houserules 1 Humour 1 Ideas & Inspiration 1 InSpectres 1 Incidents Involving Me 1 Inspiration 1 Johnn 1 K9 1 Legal Villainy 1 Lich 1 Lisbon 1 Lords of Tyr Podcast 1 Lovecraft 1 Map 1 Maps 1 Meta 1 Mike 1 Miniatures 1 Monster 1 Monsters 1 Necromancer 1 News / Reviews / Culture 1 Non-RPG 1 ODnD 1 Opinion 1 Other 1 Other Games 1 PC 1 PCs 1 Paizo 1 Philosophy 1 Planescape: Torment 1 Planning & Preparation 1 Plausibility 1 Players 1 Playtesting 1 Politics 1 Portugal 1 Prep 1 RPG tools 1 RPGBlog 1 Read through 1 Robin Hood 1 Robin Laws 1 Role-Playing 1 Role-playing game 1 Roleplaying 1 Roleplaying Games 1 Rom 1 SJA 1 Scenario-Creation 1 Science Fiction & Fantasy 1 Settings 1 Skill Challenge 1 Skill Challenges 1 Space Marine 1 Spain 1 Spirits Of Eden 1 Sports 1 Star Trek 1 Swords and Wizardry general 1 TV 1 Tabletop Games 1 Teerna 1 Television 1 Thundarr 1 TnT 1 Travel and Tourism 1 Treasure 1 Tumblelog 1 Ultimate Sandbox 1 Uncategorized 1 Undead 1 Urban 1 Video 1 Villains 1 Warhammer 40k 1 Warhammer Fantasy 1 Weekend Rants 1 Wizards of the Coast 1 World Design 1 accents 1 actual play 1 adventure ideas 1 advice 1 alpha omega 1 army 1 astrology 1 bemci 1 bestiary 1 blogging 1 book 1 buffy 1 call of cthulhu 1 campaign log 1 campaigns 1 character 1 clothing 1 d and d 1 d20 1 dating 1 dating profile help 1 discussion 1 dnd classic 1 dvd 1 eberron 1 elemental 1 fluff/inspiration 1 foxy friday 1 freshen up 1 frontpage 1 game 1 game analysis 1 gamer life 1 geek dating 1 geek matchmaking 1 geekdom 1 google wave 1 houserules 1 land of 2 rivers 1 links 1 magic items 1 megan fox 1 miniatures 1 miscellaneous 1 modern, 1 monsters 1 moria 1 old school 1 phylactery 1 play 1 playtest 1 podcasting 1 potluck 1 preview 1 random 1 random tables 1 rant 1 red flags 1 religion 1 review 1 rituals 1 role-playing, 1 rpg, 1 rpgs 1 sci-fi genre 1 setting design 1 skill checks 1 soapbox 1 swords and wizardry 1 tabletop 1 tunnels and trolls 1 vampire 1 vampirella week 1 virgin DM 1 warhammer 1 writing 1 zombie apocalypse 1 zombie attack 1 zombies 2 4E 2 Adventures 2 Card Games 2 Classic Board Games 2 Comics 2 Culture 2 Emerald City Game Feast 2 Essay 2 Game Mastering 2 Gamemastering 2 Geek Love 2 Humor 2 Menagerie 2 Mutant Future 2 NPCs 2 News 2 News, Reviews & Culture 2 Nick 2 Other Systems 2 Pathfinder 2 Play 2 Player Resources 2 Review 2 Stuff 2 babe 2 board game 2 campaign 2 dnd 2 games 2 halloween 2 item 2 online dating 2 plugging 2 rpg 2 tv 3 Advice/Tools 3 Campaigns 3 Dungeon's Master 3 Fluff/Inspiration 3 Legacy DnD 3 Modern Board Games 3 Podcasts 3 RPG Hub 3 horror 4 Advice 4 Dungeons and Dragons 4 Game Design 4 RPGs 5 Dungeons & Dragons 6 D&D 8 4e 10 RPG
I’m a bit at a loss, here. I’m no longer convinced this is a good system of categorizing blog posts! I guess most people will use tags to differentiate particular posts *from the rest of their own posts*. That’s why I never use tags such as “D&D” or “3e” – because that’s the default I’m assuming, I guess. But that’s no longer true when looking at my blog posts in comparison with everbody else. Many of them ought to be tagged “D&D” and “3e”.
Clearly, I underestimated the problem of translating tags into categories!
+-------------------+--------------------------------+ | Proposed Category | Tags | +-------------------+--------------------------------+ | 4e | 4e, D&D 4e | | 3e | 3e, D&D/Pathfinder | | Old School | old school, becmi (even though | | | the tag used was “bemci”), | | | swords and wizardry, Swords | | | and Wizardry general (?), | | | Mutant Future, _TnT, Thundarr, | | | tunnels and trolls, _ODnD | | Advice | any tag containing “Advice”, | | | Ask the GMs, advice, Game | | | Mastering, Gamemastering, | | | Campaign Management | | Review | any tag containing “Review”, | +-------------------+--------------------------------+
Yikes!
Any other ideas out there?
#Software #RPG #Blogs #Planet
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I think trying to convert tags into categories is a mistake. There are too many varied blogs out there, and everyone has tags they like to use. A tag cloud approach, with sized tags based on frequency might work, but rarely used tags probably vanish, and you end up with hundreds of tags. RPG.net’s tag cloud is a good example of tags run amok. http://forum.rpg.net/tags.php
– mthomas768 2009-10-31 00:18 UTC
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I’ve always used tags as a way to call out keywords that summarize the article. Categories represent broad themes that my posts would fall under.
– Kameron 2009-10-31 00:19 UTC
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Hehe, I think you’re exactly right, Mark. Looking at the weird mix of tags, each one appearing just once – this is no fun. Specially since the most popular tag is also the most useless one: 16 tags are RPG, RPGs, or rpg! It might work if there are either a thousand tagged objects like there are on Flickr, or if users can edit the tag map, declaring *one tag to be an alias for another tag*. I think NearbyGamers does this *really* well.
In the mean time I have to concur: Using tags to derive categories will not work unless we produce some sort of guide post or group pressure that guides authors in the right direction.
I remember being unwilling to tag my posts as Legacy D&D on the RPG Bloggers Network – I must therefore assume that other people will be just as unwilling to change their ways. 😄 And as Kameron illustrates, everybody uses tags in different ways. They are only powerful when they come in large numbers, or within a single site.
Nevertheless I know some people are interested in D&D 4E posts only, and others are interested in Old School posts only. I guess the solution is to pick different feeds for the various categories and have the people interested in a particular category pick the feeds they want to have. And then we just assume that authors will more or less stick to the category they’ve been filed under.
Sounds like a can of worms. ;)
– Alex Schroeder 2009-10-31 12:43 UTC