[DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

Summary:

Finally convinced tech to make me tag czar.

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[DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

Jerden 16 Sep 2022 20:43

Mainsite Mirror

I'm proposing many changes to the tag system with the intention of making it more intuitive. This includes renaming of tags that I consider to have unnecessarily confusing names. I expect that these changes would make it easier to tag articles, and easier to use the tag system to find articles people are interested in.

I believe that the following tags could be renamed, and that doing so would improve the wiki:

Animal tags

The exact benefits of having animal tags is unclear, since the same articles could be found by a regular search.

• apian -> bee
• bovine -> cattle
• avian -> bird
• cervine -> deer
• dinosaurian -> dinosaur
• equine -> horse
• leporine -> rabbit (hares are similar enough that it shouldn't cause too much confusion)
• piscine -> fish
• selachian -> shark
• murine and sciurine -> rodent (a few other articles on beavers and hamsters would be included)
• ophidian -> snake
• ranine -> frog
• simian -> ape
• ursine -> bear
• vermian -> worm

A couple I'm less sure on:

• cephalopodic -> cephalopod OR split into octopus and squid tags.
• lepidopteran — SCP is or exhibits traits of lepidopteran or butterfly-, moth-, or skipper-like animals. -> Could rename to butterfly, specify in tag guide that it includes moths and "skippers", or alternatively create separate "butterfly" and "moth" tags if both meet the requirements.

Other Tags

• arboreal -> tree
• bibliothetic -> library
• meteorological -> weather
• ontokinetic -> reality-warping or reality-bending

This one somewhat bothers me for two reasons - it's really obtuse to anyone new to the site, and we don't technically know that it's decreasing total entropy, so it's not actually more scientific.

• ectoentropic -> Could be renamed and redefined to
  • creation — Creates energy or matter through unknown means, violating the principle that entropy must always increase (ectoentropic).

(Old definition deliberately included for tag search purposes - would do the same for ontokinetic)

I think the meta tag would be less confusing if changed to "format-screw", since that's a well accepted term on the site that better communicates what the tag is for.

• meta — SCP affects or is affected by its documentation or requires containment procedures regarding the way it is documented. See Tag FAQ for extended clarifications.

I would recommend replacing sapient with something less dependant on the definition of "sapience", like "intelligent — SCP demonstrates intelligence comparable to or greater than human intelligence."

• sapient — SCP exhibits sapient traits, such as the ability to grasp philosophical concepts.

I think the arguement against this is basically just that we should have a deliberately confusing tag system for aesthetic reasons, which is not something I find very convincing. While the tag system is a minor part of the overall wiki, overuse of jargon will make it harder for new people to know what we're talking about.

I expect people to have a range of opinions on this, feel free to express them - I only ask that you be specific. This isn't intended to be an all or nothing proposal, so if you support some changes and oppose others, let me know - as indicated there are some I'm unsure of myself. Feel free to suggest additional tags for renaming, although I'd like to focus this discussion on renaming, I have another thread for tag pruning and deletion.

While this is technically entirely up to the Tech team (of which I am only one member), we wouldn't want to make substantial changes to the tag system without considering public feedback. If any of the proposed changes face significant opposition, we'll not make the change.

I'll leave this discussion open for two weeks, mostly because I don't want to be tinkering with the tag system until SCIPtember is over.

Last edited on 16 Sep 2022 21:11 by Jerden Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

Jerden 19 Sep 2022 10:44

Update on the discussion so far:

Currently pondering if [animal]-like would be better, I feel like that's something to come back to another time, since the system for animal tags should be consistent. I don't want a mix of scientific terminology and plain English, that seems even more confusing than the current system. I will note that since frog-like or frog are not great tag names for covering toads, I plan on replacing that one with "amphibian" to match the reptilian and avian tags, covering axolotls and salamanders with the same tag seems reasonable to me.

I do still favor arboreal -> tree, bibliothetic -> library and meteorological -> weather. We have tags for "plant", "fire" and "moon", these renamings fit more neatly into that system. I would add to that list the request to rename automaton -> robotic.

I am in favor of ontokinetic -> reality-bending, that seems to be the preferred term on the site.

I would prefer to redefine ectoentropic for clarity, I was considering renaming to entropy-defying but unlike reality-bending this is not a widely used or easily recognisable term on the site.
The current definition is:

SCP violates the first and/or second law of thermodynamics by generating matter and/or energy in a fashion that directly violates entropy. Applies to anything that produces energy or matter in an unexplained way.

I would change this to the much simpler and arguably more accurate:

SCP produces energy or matter in an unexplained way, violating the principle that entropy (the disorder of a system) must always increase.

(We could say "thermodynamic principle", note that the creation of energy or matter is thermodynamically prohibited, or say "apparently violating" since it's technically impossible to say that entropy is definitely not increasing, however those all feel like an unnecessary level of detail for a tag definition.)

I mentioned renaming "meta" since I've heard that's a common cause of confusion, but if format-screw isn't an accurate description of how the tag is used, it should stay the same.

Last edited on 30 Sep 2022 06:32 by Jerden Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

Jerden 23 Sep 2022 15:56

In a similar vein to ontokinetic, I would probably keep the tag sapient but redefine from:

SCP exhibits sapient traits, such as the ability to grasp philosophical concepts.

to something a little more intuitive/accurate, like:

SCP exhibits sapience, the capacity for reason, abstract thought and complex emotional responses. Used to indicate intelligence equal to or exceeding human intelligence.

This is in part because we were discussing deleting sentient for being mostly redundant with animal and philosophically difficult to determine, I think we're better off having one clearly defined intelligence tag than two vaguer ones.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

Jerden 01 Oct 2022 12:30

These are the changes I have implemented, minus the renaming of ectoentropic and meteorological.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

OriTiefling 17 Sep 2022 03:07

Honestly I never liked our tag naming scheme, so I fully support changing it to be more user-friendly.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

OptimisticLucio 17 Sep 2022 07:09

In support, echoing what fabled said. I don’t have too many strong opinions on the tags you’re unsure about, so no comment there.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

SketchyTh0ughts 17 Sep 2022 07:51

I think creation is a bit vague. But otherwise I fully support all changes here.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

Ethagon 17 Sep 2022 10:21

I agree with most of these.

• I'd personally be fine with naming cephalopodic to squid and lepidopteran to butterfly, even if the definitions aren't completely right then. That depends if understandability or correctness is more important
• For the same reason I still think renaming cetacean into whalelike is a good idea.
• I prefer reality-bending to reality-warping as the rename.
• I honestly think sapient is less ambiguous and more clearly defined than intelligent, so I'd rather keep that name as is.

Also noting here that together with implementing both tag reworks that the Tagging Guides need to be updated.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

Uncle Nicolini 17 Sep 2022 13:51

i agree with all of these except meta and meteorological, and i also find creation to be a bit vague like sketchy above.

meta articles arent always format screws (scp-2747), and format screws arent always meta (scp-7726).
as for meteorological, its a common enough real-world word that i dont think people struggle with, especially considering that they see it on the news every day.
i will admit i dont really know what to do with ontokinetic, but i really dont think 'creation' is the best fit for it.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

psychicprogrammer 17 Sep 2022 13:52

I do also think we should rename thermodynamic to thermal, given we already have separate tags for violating the first and second laws of thermodynamics.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

Jerden 17 Sep 2022 19:18

Am in favor, but that would be a tag merge since there's already a thermal tag.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

EstrellaYoshte 19 Sep 2022 13:02

thermal tag can be renamed to temperature or something, i guess

Re: [DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

Jerden 23 Sep 2022 08:20

I honestly don't think there are many uses of thermodynamic that couldn't be folded into either thermal or ectoentropic.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

LORDXVNV 17 Sep 2022 14:55

Can we consider keeping them as adjectives? i.e. snakelike instead of ophidian or snake. bearlike instead of bear. sharklike instead of shark. Gets around the weird issue of "do toads fall under frog" and "do moths fall under butterfly" and "do pandas fall under bears".

I'd rather keep meteorological for the same reasons as nico. "Creates-energy" would be a lot more descriptive than just "creation" though there might be other considerations.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

Jerden 17 Sep 2022 19:27

I'm not totally against the -like tags, I will point out that many tags are not adjective - it's furniture rather than furniturelike. I was hoping to keep them short and simple, but I admit that it would solve some of the issues with hares and toads. I would do it as frog-like, bear-like though, that's an acceptable alternate form and I think it would read more clearly especially in longer combinations like butterfly-like.

My objection to "creates-energy" is that it can also create mass, and I know that's technically the same thing in an E=mc² perspective but is not particularly intuitive. I am pondering keeping it as ectoentropic and just reworking the definition to be a little clearer, unlike ontokinetic -> reality-bending there is not a simpler term than means exactly the same thing.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

Ethagon 18 Sep 2022 11:01

"-like" sounds good to me as a shema.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

EstrellaYoshte 17 Sep 2022 15:21

Hard disagree on renaming cetacean, cephalopodic, meteorological and ontokinetic.

Disagreeing with lepidopteran on the grounds that splitting them up to separate tags will individually weaken all of them and create unnecessary divisions that doesn't do anything for end users.

ectoentropic could be renamed, but not to creation.

Kind of disagree on changing meta to format-screw, because they're not necessarily equivalent under current definitions.

On that note, we should keep our adjectives and nouns tags straight. We're not keeping to any one format right now.

Last edited on 19 Sep 2022 09:31 by EstrellaYoshte Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

Jerden 17 Sep 2022 19:33

I feel like trying to make them all adjectives is a bit pointless, SCP attributes are mostly adjectives but with a large number of nouns (even when there is an adjectival equivalent, e.g. paradox not paradoxical). I am not actually a fan of insisting they all be adjectives, it conveys no additional information most of the time and just makes the tags longer.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

EstrellaYoshte 19 Sep 2022 09:41

I didn't say we should make them all adjectives, I said we're not keeping our format straight right now - all of our attribute tags are either nouns or adjectives, with no clear distinction on naming guideline.

I'd understand a bit more if nouns are for "category" (the kind of thing it is) and adjectives for "characteristics" (qualities it possesses or relates to), but that's more an implied gesture in our naming scheme.

On a related note, I also dislike changing the animal tags to a "-like" format, because it actually narrows down our semantic use cases. If there was a, say, regular boring human whose ability is to make frogs do the macarena, tagging ranine is one thing, but frog-like is rather misleading, even if technically correct.

Last edited on 19 Sep 2022 09:57 by EstrellaYoshte Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

Jerden 19 Sep 2022 11:06

I see what you mean. I agree it would be nice to have a consistent way of doing things across all animal tags.

I plan on taking the feedback from this thread and having another one to discuss the system to use for animal tags, whether that's the current one, a plain-English noun based one (which would include renaming reptilian to reptile for consistency), or plain-English adjectives (which would involve using -like). I say "plain English" in the sense that "arachnid" is widely understood, "ranine" is not.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

Alexander the Jar 17 Sep 2022 20:12

ok so I don't intend for this to come across as rude or dismissive, but I'm gonna list the changes I agree with:

• meteorological -> weather
• bibliothetic -> library
• sapient (maybe just rename it to sentient? I think that the two tags should be merged into one "intelligent" tag or something)
• ectoentropic -> creation (creation is kind of vague, but I can't think of anything better)
• dinosaurian -> dinosaur
• murine and sciurine -> rodent
• cephalopodic -> cephalopod
• lepidopteran (ehhh, I guess butterfly is fine)
• maybe ranine and vermian

I disagree with basically everything else lol
Sorry I don't mean for this to come across negatively, I just think that most of the animal ones are fine as they are and I really feel that changing meta and ontokinetic is a bad idea

Last edited on 17 Sep 2022 20:48 by Alexander the Jar Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Tag Renaming

aismallard 20 Sep 2022 20:53

Note that we already have a sentient tag (though it's slated for potential removal in the other thread).

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