Labels Changed

I try to tag all the posts I make on this site as appropriately as I can with labels. Hopefully that'll help make things easier to find. But at the same time I don't want too many labels either and instead have a relatively short list.

When I started the blog new labels pretty much came whenever I posted something that didn't fit in the existing labels. I tried to use labels I thought were going to be used a fair bit, but that didn't always happen. Additionally the blog was very much focused on pre-release, trying to find out what kind of game The Old Republic was going to be. With the game now being released that's all far less interesting (as we know what kind of game it is).

With a bunch of labels with very few posts and a bunch of labels that weren't as relevant anymore I decided it was time to try and do a little label cleanup (also because I finally found out how to change and remove labels with Blogger).

Read on after the break to see what changes I made and why and for a list of all current labels and what I mean by them.

Changes

I've made the following changes to the labels:

• Merged classes and game systems into a new label called gameplay. Classes used to be interesting information as we were all trying to guess what classes would be included in the game, but now it's just a part of gameplay. The old game systems label was used for information under that name on the official site, but I thought that "gameplay" was a more elegant name and helps me get away a bit from how BioWare decided to organize their site (so that when it inevitably changes that I'm not bound to that).
• Cloud Gaming has been merged into Other Games. I'm not sure why I created a separate label for cloud gaming at the time, except that I knew that it was going to be big. It really fits better with other games though.
• Piracy and Tragedy merged into a new label called Various. Neither had many posts, but didn't fit anywhere else either. And I thought it would be good to have one label that I could post pretty much anything in (that didn't fit anywhere else).
• Merged insider, rumor and magazine into a new label called pre-release. I really didn't know what to do with these and neither had that many posts (most was 18 for insider), so I created a label for anything before release that didn't fit anywhere else. insider was used for the BioWare Insider Friday updates, which BioWare might post more of, at which point I might have to reconsider that label. Change I'm least sure of, but at least it cleans up a bit.
• Renames comic to media: comic, music to media: music, images to media: image and video to media: video. This change is basically to sort all media types next to each other on the alphabetically sorted list of labels (in the eight column on the blog).
• Merged screenshots and wallpapers into media: image. Originally I thought that there would be a lot of (concept-art) images and screenshots released, and there were. But I also don't find either too interesting so I often forgot to label them or point them out. And wallpapers where irregularly labeled as well. So I just merged the lot of them into a single label as the distinction isn't that important anyway.
• Merged npcs, planets, story and timeline into a new label named lore. These were four relatively small labels all, in the end, serving the same purpose: giving more details on the lore of the game. Also note that I added the media: video label to all post that were labeled with timeline. In the end with the Timeline posts, as with all the media posts, if the distinction is important then you can find that still on the official site.
• Removed the rant label. I'm not sure if this really served any purpose. I used it for posts whose sole purpose was me ranting about something, but also for posts that had what I felt was a significant section of me ranting about something. And of neither did I have that many to begin with. The full posts I now gave the article label and I just removed it from the others.
Replaced article label for BioWare articles with blog label. Originally the article label was meant for any article BioWare posted, but most of them ended up being BioWare blog articles, for which I already had a dedicated label. With only three BioWare articles I started to use it for my own articles as well (like the preview I posted for the IA gameplay). So I decided to reserve the label just for articles I post and use blog for those that BioWare posts. Replaced the preview label with the article label. When I posted my beta preview article I created a new label because I really didn't want to sort out the labels at that point. Now that I've decided on how to use the article label that's really the most suited and the old label doesn't serve any purpose anymore, particularly since there aren't likely to be any new posts with that label.

Alright, so those are the changes. It might be helpful to take a look at what each of the labels as we have them now mean.

Major Labels

There are basically two kinds of labels: major labels and minor labels. The major labels all start with a capital letter (in fact they all use title case with every word capitalized). The minor labels are all completely lowercase. The major labels all specify a main category for posts; each post should have at least (and rarely more than) one major label. Right now the blog has the following major labels:

• Ayane - These are all posts about me. These include things like me going on holiday (to let you know that the site is going to be updated less if at all for a while), major things happening in my life (if I feel the need to share them on the blog), wishing happy Holidays and such, etc.
• BioWare - Posts with this label are about BioWare as a studio and the people within it. These posts are not specific to the games that BioWare creates. It might include things like opening a new studio, employees changing studio, employer awards, interviews about BioWare itself, etc.
• HeroEngine - These are posts about the HeroEngine, which is the engine that The Old Republic uses, that aren't specific to The Old Republic. I doubt that there will be many more posts with this label now that The Old Republic is released and I debated merging this into Other Games, except that this sort of relates to The Old Republic too. So I decided to leave it as is for now.
• Other Games - While this is primarily a Star Wars: The Old Republic blog I, at times, like to talk about other games as well. Other MMOs, other roleplaying games, or just games that catch my interest. Of course if I wrote about everything that caught my interest then the number of posts would be multiplied ten-fold (and I couldn't call it a TOR blog anymore), so these kinds of posts don't happen that often.
• Site - Posts with this label are generally about this blog, about the website. They include posts like this very one, talking about changes to the site, but might also include posts about hosting problems and such.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic - Almost every post on this blog has this label. In fact all the other labels put together don't come close to the number of posts with this one. That's logical since pretty much every post is about The Old Republic. The label mainly exists for those who truly aren't interested in any of the other posts; anything with this label is guaranteed to be about Star Wars: The Old Republic in some form or another.
• Various - This label is for any post that doesn't fit into any of the other categories and isn't likely to be frequent enough to warrant a new label for it.

Minor Labels

Since most of the posts have the Star Wars: The Old Republic label that label isn't very useful for telling what the post is about. As such there are a number of minor labels meant to further sub-divide this. With one exception all minor labels are only applied to post with the Star Wars: The Old Republic major label. These are currently the minor labels:

• article - This is the one exception I mentioned. This label is applied to any posts that are articles I write. This will be both for The Old Republic articles (such as the previews) and for anything else (such as the A Look At The Competition post, which falls under Other Games). It basically exists so that I can keep easy track of any articles I write.
• blog - Posts with this label refer to BioWare's blog and contain articles posted on said blog.
• dev quotes - These are posts with developer quotes from the official forums.
• gameplay - These are posts with official gameplay articles (which now includes the classes).
• humor - These are posts with TOR-related (and generally Star Wars-ralted) humor. Includes things like April Fools Jokes and funny Star Wars YouTube videos.
• links - These posts are links to articles on other news sites and blog, including videos not made by BioWare. Includes things like interviews, (p)reviews, etc.
• lore - These posts contain official lore like characters, planets, timelines, official stories, etc.
• media: comic - These posts all refer to the official TOR comics (like Blood of the Empire and such).
• media: image - These posts contain official TOR screen shots, concept art, wallpapers, etc.
• media: music - These posts contain officially released TOR music.
• media: video - These posts contain official videos. Note that means videos released by BioWare and not videos recorded by third parties (which would be under the links label above).
• news - These posts contain general 'news', basically short official messages and announcements about the game that don't fit anywhere else.
• patch - All posts with this label contain patch notes.
• pre-release - Posts with this label contain pre-release information (that didn't fit anywhere else).

And there we go.

Labels are still likely to change and expand, but that's generally gradually is I make new posts and might feel a new label is needed. Other, small, changes have been made in the past as well and will likely happen again in the future, but this is the first time that I made some massive changes to the labels and thus thought best to create a bot for it to explain. Hopefully it's all understandable.