Mainsite Mirror
I figure this is worth discussing more broadly, but to be clear this is a very niche conversation about tagging.
Secondary Classes
Currently, the rule is that SCPs can only have one object class, with only a few exceptions from series 1. Now, when this rule was introduced I think it was because people were annoyed by stuff like Safe/Euclid/Keter, so according to the tag rules any new article that use more than one object class should instead only be tagged with esoteric-class.
This does not seem to be a rule people are particularly good at following, a quick search finds SCPs tagged with euclid + archon and euclid + esoteric-class, if they were tagged correctly both examples would be retagged esoteric-class (please leave them wrong for now for illustrative purposes). This actually came up in a recent discussion about approving the cernunnos tag - while there were 25 articles with the tag, several of them used it as a secondary class, so the tag was denied. This is a bit tedious to keep track of as there are many different "illegal" combinations of tags, but if I set up some listpages on a workbench it wouldn't be too difficult to correct them all.
However, I think secondary object classes are common enough that the tagging system should accommodate them, so I propose that we allow more than one object class tag to be applied to the same article, basically making it so that both the examples shown above are correctly tagged. The new process for SCPs with multiple object classes would be to apply the primary tag (usually safe/euclid/keter), then if the secondary class has its own tag, apply both tags, if the secondary class does not, apply esoteric-class. While this does mean previously correctly tagged articles will need retagging, I don't think this will cause many problems for tagging going forward - in my experience object classes are the easiest aspect of SCP tagging, and I think this change is more intuitive than the previous rule for people who don't do a lot of tagging. It is possible that we should say there's an upper limit on the number of object classes one article should have, and that any more than 2 or 3 gets esoteric-class, but I don't know if this is really worth specifying. In general, I think the tag system should be descriptive, not prescriptive.
This will make approval for new object classes slightly easier as you will be able to count uses as a secondary class (notably, Cernunnos would now meet the requirements to be approved). I don't personally have any strong feelings on that, dispite currently being the person who implements new tags (great time to listen to a podcast), it happens so rarely that it really isn't an issue.
PsychicProgrammer has informed me that object classes get searched for a lot so evidently there is interest in them, they're a key part of the SCP format and many of the esoteric ones represent interesting niches, so I think if we're going to tag for them we may as be comprehensive about it.
Changes over Time
Currently for SCPs with object classes that change over time, e.g. Object Class: Euclid Keter or across multiple iterations of the same article, the rule is that only the final object class should be considered for tagging purposes. I think this is sensible and should stay the same.
Tags ACS Risk and Disruption Classes
Final thing that's somewhat relevant - while not Object Classes, ACS Risk and Disruption Classes are used at least 25 times each, and it has been suggested that we create a tag for each of them (well, actually the suggestion was for one of them, Amida, but we decided it would be weird to only approve one). This would actually be pretty simple to implement as there's a spreadsheet that automatically tracks them all, it would just take a while to do (although not as long as you'd think, I can semi-automate the process by running a script each time I open a page). If we're allowing tagging for secondary classes then we may as well also discuss this.
ACS is optional and not part of the standard SCP format, but it's more widely used than most esoteric classes. I'm not sure on how much utility there would be in this as unlike object classes it's a sliding scale not discrete categories. I can see people searching for the highest Risk and Disruption Classes in search of the most dangerous anomalies, I'm not sure what else people would use these tags for.
This probably won't warrant a staff vote as it's within the purview of the Tech Team and MAST to define tagging rules, but discussion will be open for at least a week before we decide anything.