I feel like a 13-year old putting so much of the title in caps, but sometimes needs must. Those of you who have been following/glancing at/subconsciously aware of the stickied thread "What improvements would you like to see for GE&T?" are likely familiar with the 'tag' system we're proposing to introduce. For those of you who aren't, here is a brief summary of the premise and purpose of such a system.
There are a lot of storefronts. A quick search of the subforum reveals that, on average, we get about 2,500 new threads each year — about six a day — and will most likely pass 20,000 threads by the end of 2018. Many of these storefronts are inactive but not closed; if you post in a storefront from 2013, if the owner is active he might still reply. The content on GE&T is a lot deeper than just what appears on pages one to five. There are many, many products out there, and some concepts have only been tried once or twice. This can make storefronts and products hard to find.
Search tags are a way to categorise storefronts by what they sell, to enable potential customers to sift through the thousands of storefronts and other threads to find what they're interested in. By listing a handful (no more than three to five, maybe) of generalised tags, you simplify the search so that it lists only most relevant storefronts.
Why is this an improvement over the current system? Let me offer two examples, the first of which is needlessly wordy. I'm sorry, I just like hot dogs.
There are other arguments for tags, but I'm not going to make them here. I don't really need to, and consensus already seems to be leaning in favour of them. It's not the reason for this thread.
We're looking for your opinions on the current (provisional) list of tags. There are a lot of them, and I think it would be nice to reduce the clutter if at all possible. However, I'm not sure which to cut, if any, and it might be that they're all worth keeping. The list is lengthy and includes some overlapping tags. We also expect that many storefronts will use multiple tags, often because they sell multiple kinds of product.
We want recommendations and thoughts. This is not a vote. Nothing said in this thread should be considered final or binding unless it actually should be. I am a master of disclaimers. It takes the form of a ballot where you state whether we should either Keep or Drop each tag, on its own merits and/or within the context of the list as a whole. A brief explanation of each tag follows. To save time, assume 'for storefronts which' begins every explanation.
If anything of this remains unclear, feel free to ask for clarification! This is new to all of us, and we're here to help you puzzle through it.
Think we missed a must-have? Feel free to suggest it. This is both a survey and a discussion; as nothing here is binding, it's not going to overly throw off our results if we add 'civ.panda' halfway through.
A blank ballot is below. Please fill it out!
There are a lot of storefronts. A quick search of the subforum reveals that, on average, we get about 2,500 new threads each year — about six a day — and will most likely pass 20,000 threads by the end of 2018. Many of these storefronts are inactive but not closed; if you post in a storefront from 2013, if the owner is active he might still reply. The content on GE&T is a lot deeper than just what appears on pages one to five. There are many, many products out there, and some concepts have only been tried once or twice. This can make storefronts and products hard to find.
Search tags are a way to categorise storefronts by what they sell, to enable potential customers to sift through the thousands of storefronts and other threads to find what they're interested in. By listing a handful (no more than three to five, maybe) of generalised tags, you simplify the search so that it lists only most relevant storefronts.
Why is this an improvement over the current system? Let me offer two examples, the first of which is needlessly wordy. I'm sorry, I just like hot dogs.
Suppose I run a hot dog storefront. I sell hot dogs and nothing else. I repeatedly refer to my storefront's hot dogs throughout the text. At no point do I refer to other forms of fast food, and at no point do I refer to them as 'fast food.' After an initial run of success, my storefront sits inactive for a few weeks due to lack of customers. Later, someone else decides he wants to populate his country with foreign fast-food outlets. He browses the first few pages of the subforum and finds a couple of falafel joints. He then goes to the search box and types 'fast food.' He finds a few storefronts (but not mine). He searches again, this time for 'burger.' Again, mine is not among the results. Long story short: I miss out on a potential customer because I didn't make use of keywords.
Example number two also depends on words. Suppose I, being a bit of an eejit, search for the term 'market capitalisation.' I get a handful of results. If I were to search for 'market capitalization' as well I'd get all the people who use that spelling, but I don't think to do it. I miss out on dozens of potential partners. A standardised search term means everything is included.
Example number two also depends on words. Suppose I, being a bit of an eejit, search for the term 'market capitalisation.' I get a handful of results. If I were to search for 'market capitalization' as well I'd get all the people who use that spelling, but I don't think to do it. I miss out on dozens of potential partners. A standardised search term means everything is included.
There are other arguments for tags, but I'm not going to make them here. I don't really need to, and consensus already seems to be leaning in favour of them. It's not the reason for this thread.
We're looking for your opinions on the current (provisional) list of tags. There are a lot of them, and I think it would be nice to reduce the clutter if at all possible. However, I'm not sure which to cut, if any, and it might be that they're all worth keeping. The list is lengthy and includes some overlapping tags. We also expect that many storefronts will use multiple tags, often because they sell multiple kinds of product.
We want recommendations and thoughts. This is not a vote. Nothing said in this thread should be considered final or binding unless it actually should be. I am a master of disclaimers. It takes the form of a ballot where you state whether we should either Keep or Drop each tag, on its own merits and/or within the context of the list as a whole. A brief explanation of each tag follows. To save time, assume 'for storefronts which' begins every explanation.
- mil.arms — … sell small arms, specifically. This was not intended as a catch-all 'arms industry' tag.
- mil.ground — … provide ground equipment for militaries, including land vehicles, artillery and so on and so forth.
- mil.air — … provide military aircraft and systems, including the weapons used.
- mil.naval — … provide military ships and other craft and naval systems, including the weapons used. In addition to naval shipwrights, expect vendors of torpedoes and the like to wind up here.
- mil.med — … provide medical equipment and material geared toward a military clientele.
- mil.WMD — … sell weapons of mass destruction, since Kyrusia's not available for hire.
- mil.merc — … provide mercenary services; not merely the traditional 'army for hire' of the PMC but potentially also drone contractors and other concepts. Private (civilian) security might also fall here, to keep it simple.
- mil.conglom — … do a little bit of everything in the military realm. This tag helps to avoid the clutter from adding 3+ military tags... though you might still want those other tags, too.
- civ.space — … offer space-related services, such as satellites, launch systems and
- civ.med — … offer healthcare services and products, including pharmaceuticals and medical equipment.
- civ.energy — … provide energy, particularly as operators/builders/installers of power plants (e.g. nuclear, coal), wind turbines, solar panels and so on. This could also easily include the ubiquitous oil industry.
- civ.green — … offer 'green technology,' environmentally-friendly and -focussed products, such as solar panels, carbon-neutral building design and whatever else might be appropriate.
- civ.resource — … extract, process and/or sell natural resources such as stone, minerals, timber, fish and others. The oil industry would be right at home here.
- civ.tech — … offer 'technology'-related goods and services. This is likely to be a very flexible tag, no matter how rigorously we define it, but presume for now that it includes computer systems
- civ.transport — … manufacture and/or sell trains, planes and automobiles, trucks, ferries and so on, or offer transport services. This might include railways, bus networks, harbours and airports. I don't really know. Send help.
- civ.airline — … belong/pertain to airlines. Ronseal.
- civ.conglom — … offer a range of products/services not covered by their other tags. This might be a catch-all addition to the three tags you already have so that you don't hit eight.
- civ.finance — … offer banking, insurance or other financial services.
- civ.accredit — … offer accrediting services. This would include in-character storefront-rating storefronts, ecofriendliness assessors and anything else that offers official accreditation.
- civ.vice — … sell or offer 'vices,' to include drugs, prostitution, cigarettes, alcohol and gambling (within site rules).
- civ.retail — … are in the retail industry, which includes department stores, supermarkets, jewellers, florists and just about any shop where you can walk in, buy a thing and carry it out.
- civ.food — … sell food and drink, more or less, to include restaurants, fast food outlets, supermarkets, wholesalers, food producers and many more. If your storefront involves food (or drink), this tag might be appropriate.
- civ.entertain — … provide entertainment for the masses. This might include sellers of video game software and hardware, cinemas and film studios, broadcasters, magazines etc. Consider 'entertainment industry,' as a term.
- MTech — … employ a primarily/exclusively Modern Tech setting. This describes the overwhelming majority of storefronts and is probably not tremendously necessary.
- PMTech — … cater to the Post-Modern Tech community. Definitions can and will vary.
- FTech — … cater to the Future Tech community. Spaceships and laser beams are expected, as are planetary terraformers, wormhole-operators and armour-plated Tyrannosauri.
- FanTech — … cater to the Fantasy Tech community. Magic may or may not be involved.
- PTech — … cater to the Past Tech community, and may be set in just about any year pre-1970 and all the way through classical antiquity. It's probably best to be explicit here.
- slave.trade — … are involved in the slave trade, whether as vendors or buyers or something else.
- GET.govt — … belong to government institutions, presumably excluding state-owned enterprises (lest certain economic systems classify everything as govt).
- trade.org — is not so much for storefronts as for trade-promoting (or -controlling) organisations, institutions and agreements; IMFs, FTAs, monetary unions and whatever else comes to mind.
- GET.misc — … provide goods or services not covered by the above tags, I guess.
- GET.accredited — … have received official accreditation from an accrediting storefront, per civ.accredit above.
If anything of this remains unclear, feel free to ask for clarification! This is new to all of us, and we're here to help you puzzle through it.
Think we missed a must-have? Feel free to suggest it. This is both a survey and a discussion; as nothing here is binding, it's not going to overly throw off our results if we add 'civ.panda' halfway through.
A blank ballot is below. Please fill it out!
- Code: Select all
[pre]mil.arms [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
mil.ground [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
mil.air [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
mil.naval [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
mil.med [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
mil.conglom [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
mil.WMD [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
mil.merc [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
civ.space [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
civ.med [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
civ.energy [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
civ.green [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
civ.resource [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
civ.tech [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
civ.transport [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
civ.airline [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
civ.conglom [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
civ.finance [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
civ.accredit [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
civ.vice [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
civ.retail [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
civ.food [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
civ.entertain [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
MTech [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
PMTech [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
FTech [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
FanTech [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
PTech [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
slave.trade [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
trade.org [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
GET.govt [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
GET.misc [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP
GET.accredited [ ] KEEP [ ] DROP[/pre]
[You are also very much encouraged to provide thoughts on any/all of these tags, or to propose more if you think they're merited. Thank you!]
Edit log: fixed some dodgy maths.
