Difference Between Tag Scope and Search Filter

[MaxSupernova]

Hi folks. I wrote up my observations on Tag Scope and Search Filters here:

http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=48878

and I didn't get any commentary.

After playing around some more with tags and getting deeper into data entry and using the Almanac, I'd like to ask for some opinions/official comment on "What's up with Tag Scope and Search Filters?"

They seem to be just slightly different versions of each other that have only a few differing features. There doesn't seem to me to be sufficient difference in function to justify two separate features.

What exactly is the specific purpose of each that the other couldn't do with a minor tweak? I feel like I'm missing something big here...

[Gord]

Perhaps I'm wrong but I imagine the lack of comments may have come from the fact that the whole tag/scope thing seems complex and people haven't dug into it a lot. I know, I've just started dabbling a little and find it somewhat confusing.

[enrious]

I actually started playing around with tags last night (for real this time, I swear!) and found it useful to summarize the key points.

I'm still trying to think about how I'm going to use them for anything but a simple tag search (such as, all merchants of a certain type in a given city, when the realm will likely contain multiple cities and thus, multiple merchants of that type).

I too suspect I'm missing something, but why make a Scope anything but a regular filter (tag/text) that spans tabs.

Likewise, is there a way for me to apply a filter to apply *only* to a container and all of its sub-containers?

[KefkaZ]

At this point I haven't really found a solid use for most tags, other than the basic (race, alignment, gender, etc.) I'd love to be able to associate a given tag with an annotation. So every time I tag a topic "cold" under the environment, an annotation that I've written explaining how often I have to have PC's roll a Fortitude save is automatically put in for me.

I think the tag feature would be much more useful if I was building a world from scratch instead of just utilizing it for an adventure path at this point.

[enrious]

Possibly. I'm taking a break from my fantasy realm, but for supers so far I have the character's origin type (like mutant or trained), era associate with (like WW2 or today), gender, point category (think Challenge Rating), race (human, martian, etc.), and the one that's come in big for me - people with something in common (like bat-family, spidey and friends, world-class martial-artists).

So let's say I want to find an NPC to throw at a player with a martial arts motif, I'd filter with the appropriate point category and something in common: world-class martial artist.

I could see someone making a fairly interactive detective game having tags associate with descriptive figures like height range, hair color, eye color, gender, handeness, etc. and letting a player search for a suspect using those tags.

[MaxSupernova]

I think tag scoping and searching (text and tag) are powerful features that I'd use immediately if they were a little more well developed.

To my (inexperienced) eye, it looks like one person developed tag scoping, one person did search filters, and then they realized that the feature sets are some weird venn diagram of each other and just kept both even though the icon indicators work differently and the interfaces are strange.

I'd hope that there would be a more cohesive design document that would lay out the purpose and scope of each feature and some interface standards so that this sort of thing would be avoided.

Yes, I'm being kind of abrasive on this. Sorry LW.

[Farling]

Tags allow you to search for specifically tagged topics.

Text search allows you to search for any topics with text in (so could find topics you're not interested in).

It depends how precise you want to be with your searching.

[rob]

Scoping and basic filters are CRITICALLY DIFFERENT. Let's say you have a big realm with all sorts of material in it (e.g. Forgotten Realms, Golarion, etc.). How are you going to sift through all that data easily? If you're running Rise of the Runelords in Golarion, you probably don't care about anything outside of Varisia (the land where it all takes place). But Varisia is really big itself and has a wealth of material published for it. So you really want to just focus on all the Rise of the Runelords material, ignoring the rest of it all for the most part.

You can setup a filter to limit yourself to just the Rise of the Runelords material. But now let's say you want to search for something within just the RotRL material. You have to carefully construct your filter to search for all the necessary criteria. That gets fiddly and will be too complicated for less technical users. So those users end up settling for the new filter WITHOUT constraining the search to RotRL as well, and now they have to sift through all sorts of stuff that they know isn't pertinent.

Enter the distinction between a scoping filter and a general filter. The idea is that you define a scoping filter for RotRL, enable it, and just leave it in place. Now all your data is filtered to just RotRL. You then decide you want to search for something within RotRL and enter THOSE criteria in the general filter. It's very easy to do that and has a low technical complexity so just about anyone can manage it. The net result is that you are now looking at ONLY the subset of material that is BOTH within RotRL AND meets your second criteria.

Once you're done with your filter, you can disable it and go right back to having everything filtered to just the RotRL material. Without this distinction, you would have to go back and edit the filter to show you the RotRL material again, but you don't have to touch that with this approach.

Another powerful benefit of this model is that the scoping filter can apply to any number of tabs. This is in combination with whatever special filtering you want to perform individually in those tabs. Very convenient once you have lots of data to sift through and are doing that sifting across many tabs. Trust me, you'll find yourself using a healthy number of tabs once your realm gets bigger.

At this point, I haven't even touched on auto-assigning tags, which is yet another invaluable feature that ties in closely with scoping tags. I'm detailing that in the "best practices" guide that I'm writing, so I'll just cover it there instead of delving into it here.

Hopefully, you now understand why this separation is a GOOD thing. Now I need to get back to work on the product...

[rob]

I have a request, since this is becoming a recurring experience for me on the forums that is very frustrating. A common assumption among users here on these forums seems to be that we just slapped this stuff together without any thought, both architecturally and within the interface. That couldn't be farther from reality. There's a REASON we did just about everything within Realm Works. Please give us the benefit of the doubt and ask us what those reasons are - AND ALLOW US TO ANSWER - before passing judgement.

This thread started that way and then devolved into the assumptions. Please realize that I can't spend all my time monitoring the forums. I'd love to, but I'm ALSO working 80 hours per week on development, writing the "best practices" document, managing the business, solving technical issues that the team runs into, etc. All the time on the forums is in addition to that. So please give me a chance to answer before rushing to judgement.

Thanks!

[EightBitz]

Originally Posted by rob

I have a request, since this is becoming a recurring experience for me on the forums that is very frustrating. A common assumption among users here on these forums seems to be that we just slapped this stuff together without any thought, both architecturally and within the interface. That couldn't be farther from reality. There's a REASON we did just about everything within Realm Works. Please give us the benefit of the doubt and ask us what those reasons are - AND ALLOW US TO ANSWER - before passing judgement.

This thread started that way and then devolved into the assumptions. Please realize that I can't spend all my time monitoring the forums. I'd love to, but I'm ALSO working 80 hours per week on development, writing the "best practices" document, managing the business, solving technical issues that the team runs into, etc. All the time on the forums is in addition to that. So please give me a chance to answer before rushing to judgement.

Thanks!

I'm laughing, Rob, because I understand. When I see some of those assumptions, I think to myself, "Do you know how much time they put into this?"

I was all too vocal about how painful the wait was, but seeing the product now, I appreciate everything you've done.