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From WWR

I would like to discuss how song tags are used and if we need some general guidelines for creating new tags.

Song tags are used to populate shows. They are also wiki categories.

In my opinion tags are not useful if:

• There aren’t enough members of a tag
• There are too many members of a tag (this is less of a problem since tags can be combined for shows)
• The tag is so specific that it will probably not be applicable to more than a few songs

These are my suggested guidelines for creating a new tag:

• Shows can also search song names, so there is no need for a new theme tag if the word or equivalent is in the name.
• Would you reqest a show on the subject?
• Is it too specific?
• Is there an existing tag that means the same thing (or close enough)?

Other thoughts:

• The wiki search can find lyrics so that is an option if you later want to find a specific song.
• Do we need a tag/category for songwriters? I definitely think that should go on the song page (with lyrics or trivia), but there are a lot of artist categories with only one entry.

Kelli (talk/contribs) 09:47, June 13, 2008 (AKDT)

Hi Kelli. I just created a tag a day or so ago called "Frank Zappa" as the artist was clearly trying to recreate that Zappa "sound." Unless someone else used that tag, there would only be one member. That said, we may want to put a "life limit" on a tag; e.g., if a tag only has 1 tag and has been in existence for 1 year, then it should be a candidate for deletion. I also agree with you comment regarding tags with too many members. Singer-songwriter was a great example of a tag that became useless because of the vast number of members. I'm a big blues fan, and doing a search by blues alone can be problematic. (That's why I started specifying electric and acoustic tags with the the blues tag.) Honestly, if I hear an artist I like, I write their name down, so I can remember the next time I want to make a request. Kimchifox (talk/contribs) 14:32, June 13, 2008 (AKDT)

Yeah, "Sounds like" tags are definitely ones that will not have many members. Maybe that will change as tagging picks up. I've thought about the "time limit" thing too and like that idea. It seems like we first have to get the tag list to be a manageable size and somewhat organized so taggers can actually find a tag. Kelli (talk/contribs) 14:42, June 13, 2008 (AKDT)

Maybe it's just me, but I find the "Sounds like" search on CDBaby extremely useful to find new artists that I might like. Kimchifox (talk/contribs) 09:17, August 13, 2008 (AKDT)

Not just you. I've found many of my CDs using that feature. I would personally like to see "sounds like" comments go in the listener comments section. If we find we have a lot that match one artist, a tag can then be created. Just a thought. Kelli (talk/contribs) 09:23, August 13, 2008 (AKDT)

Moved from Category_talk:Ballad...

I have to say I've been having similar thoughts on categories with more than one definition. I was just thinking about the Category:Driving. Seems to be a literal and implied defintion...tunes dealing with the mechanical aspects of driving, tunes which have drive, and tunes that are good to listen to while you're driving. And there could possibly be more definitions. I'm thinking this isn't unusual and there are many categories which have more than one definition.

Just from looking at wikipedia's list of Famous ballads, I can see that the ballads are broke into two categories: Traditional ballads which lead into the Modern famous ballads. I was relating ballads to stories. In other words, I always considered songs to be ballads...if the artist sings me a chapter out of life...(verses as paragraphs...and refrains as breaks between those paragraphs). But after looking at this list, I see many tunes that I probably wouldn't have tagged as ballads if given the opportunity. Seems as if a ballad can be attached to many music genres, each genre requiring it's own prerequisites to determine whether the song will be listed as a ballad. By having the genres folk and jazz as the only two, there would be many left out. Yes, I do understand that WWR plays more jazz and folk than many other communities. In other words, I'm just looking for directional confirmations...what was once black and white in my mind, has just turned battleship grey (Or is that gray? ... always leaned towards the e!

...I'm listening to the more learned when it comes to depth of database and how detailed the info should be. Do we know how deep? I guess what I'm trying to say is...Are we focusing on leaning down the database, or are we fattening it up? Leaning in some areas, and fattening up others? Is there a diagram...I'm southern...I need pictures! Atuuschaaw (talk/contribs) 00:34, June 16, 2008 (AKDT)

LOL! I agree, I could use a diagram too. Denali (talk/contribs) 22:20, June 22, 2008 (AKDT)

There's no diagram that I know of. The overriding principle is to tag songs in order to make shows. To me that means tags that are used on one or two songs are not useful. Like Eisenhower or William James. (Kelli has mentioned that we can use the wiki search engine to look for such words in lyrics or titles to find these songs. Maybe we could extend that to having a "search word" section on song pages. How that would work is that we'd type the "search word" in the body of the page, rather than a tag. One problem with this may be that the wiki search engine doesn't search for words under four letters (I think it's four.) and some particular words. An example is Songs:Industrial Park (14997). I looked for the lyrics last night, but didn't find them. So we could type some search words on that page, rather than tags with one or two members. I digress and I've not finished my first cup of coffee, so I hope that makes sense.)

Kelli's done a tremendous job organizing tag categories and descriptions. I'm interested to hear her thoughts on the matter. sparx (talk/contribs) 05:13, June 16, 2008 (AKDT)

Category:Driving is a theme. You can check by looking at history of a song page. (Much of the song page history has been deleted.) So it was probably created when the lyrics of some song mentioned driving. (I think themes are a huge issue.) I strongly feel that every tag should have a description/definition. Tags are not useful if not used consistently. I try to add definitions when I can easily find one and it does not seem controversial. However, any potentially confusing ones should probably be discussed and a consensus reached. I wonder if this would be a good requirement for any new tags. (I’m not speaking of listener tags of course.)

As for the “depth of the database” issue, I’d love for Jim to chime in. I have thoughts but a lot depends on how things currently work, what changes Jim envisions, what changes can be implemented relatively easily, etc. And is the database the wiki or Jim’s WWR database? I believe tags in their current state are not very useful and need to be streamlined.

Sparx said it well. About searching:

• The search is sadly limiting. This is the main reason I asked about search extensions. Hopefully Mediawiki will make improvements soon.
• I read that the limit of 4 characters for the search is a setting. (Jim?)
• The “Search WWR via Google” can be used to search for shorter words and also phrases. It does not search a specific namespaces, though I found that adding the word “Songs” helps a little.
• I’ve also thought about the search words on a song page. Maybe create a “The artist does not provide lyrics - Please use this section for search words” template.

I think the Wiki has some unexplored potential. Is there any way shows can look for lyrics? Listeners can leave comments on songs they want to find later with a search (I really love this song because it talks about…). Credits (songwriter, copyright date, players and their instruments, etc.) can be put on song pages to find in searches without the need for a bunch of tags/categories.

Kelli (talk/contribs) 14:20, June 16, 2008 (AKDT)

I agree that consolidating similar tags will help make the tags more usable. And I thank you for all you've done to organize the tags and the discussions about tags! Let me know where I can help with that.

I think I've read that, too, about the search string length being something that can be set at by the wiki gods.

Is it too early in the game (we've a long ways to go with lyrics) to try out a template for "search words"? sparx (talk/contribs) 20:50, June 18, 2008 (AKDT)

I think it would be fine to go ahead and do that, though I'd like Jim's opinion on if this would satisfy his search engine issues. (I don't see how a specific category is better than text in the song page.) It would be helpful to me since I always look for lyrics and can't find many of them.

How to help – I can’t say I’m real organized about it. I started by going through the one time use tags. I deleted based on if there were no other songs with the word in the title, the word or equivalent was in the title, the word was in the lyrics, it was way too specific, or it was just wrong. I’ve gone through some two and three time use tags but haven’t done them all. See User:Kelli/sandbox for how I get that info. I’m leaving artist tags (cover and sound like) alone for now, though I think these are worth a discussion. Are we still planning to eliminate covers?

A lot of what I’m doing now is looking for similar tags and starting a discussion to see if they can be grouped together. I don’t necessarily think they are all the same thing (like Category_talk:Sad, but find it helpful to put all the similar tags in one place for discussion. Unfortunately, participation is slow so it may take a while. I also created {{tagtalk}} to put on all those discussion pages. I didn't want to clutter the discussion page but wanted a way to keep track of things.

The bots and I grouped most everything into a tag type. There is likely some incorrect categorization, so that is something to watch for. I prefer to use these types when sorting through the tags. Kelli (talk/contribs) 07:19, June 19, 2008 (AKDT)

Update: I created {{lyrics na}} to use on songs when I can't find the lyrics (feel free to make improvements). I've been putting search words (seldom used tags that I delete) in that section. I do add trivia and lyrics when I find them. I move songwriters to the trivia or lyrics section instead of a tag (unless the songwriter has enough music to use in shows, like Dylan). Kelli (talk/contribs) 09:01, July 15, 2008 (AKDT)

Moved from Category_talk:Sugar

Quick thoughts not meant to be anything but things to think about and discuss (i.e. I wouldn't scream if they were merged but I'm not 100% convinced they should ... maybe only 80% convinced )

• I think there is a "Sweet" tag. For a sweet song. Like in 14 year old boy bringing his first girlfriend flowers he picked from the field. Sweet. So "Sweets" would probably be confusing.
• There can be confusion between SHOWS and the CATEGORY PAGES. Here is an example for Sugar:

Sugar - the show (includes songs with SUGAR in their title   /   Sugar the category

I wish I could change the category pages to also look at song titles but that's not possible currently. So, keep in mind that when you remove/merge a fairly descriptive tag like "Chocolate" you are also excluding those few songs from a show about Chocolate that might have a bunch more chocolate titled songs.

• Keep in mind that Google loves WWR. So, when a category page exists like "Chocolate", and someone in the wider world is searching for music about Chocolate, we have a good chance of them finding our independent music. (Chocolate and sugar aren't good examples right now as I tried and they are so huge on Google that we don't show up in first 100 - but I can easily tweak some stuff to improve chances.) Anyway, the point is, having even a few songs about a single subject may possibly lead people to the site to discover the independent songs they otherwise would never have known about. One of our top hits from the general public used to be on "songs about ______" searches and I'd like to keep that possibility over a broad range of searches.

Shoot. After typing that, I'm now only like 60% convinced. But will look forward to discussion. I vacillate between wanting to clean up and merge categories and then seeing some fairly distinct items like this and wanting to let them live. I could definitely see merging Sweets into Candy though. Jim (talk/contribs) 18:38, June 17, 2008 (AKDT)

How's about we write popular search strings in our show and category descriptions? Like "Songs about candy. Also, songs about sweets and songs about chocolate." Kinda awkward grammer, but the search engines like it. Maybe comment out the search strings so that the search engine bots find the data but it doesn't show on the page? sparx (talk/contribs) 20:50, June 18, 2008 (AKDT)

I love this idea. Kelli (talk/contribs) 07:23, June 19, 2008 (AKDT)