Post organisation. Tags, keywords, and searchability.

How to find the mods and posts you are looking for

As suggested I'm re-posting this as a standalone. (and cleaned up)

The forum is getting messy and it's getting worse. The search function is useless unless you stumble upon a perfect keyword.
Organisation is required. (maybe I'm just biased, being german and all)


Multiple subforums were suggested but spreading things around is not always the best way to keep the creative potential together
Some people have been using obvious tags like "mod" in the post title but there are multiple systems already and worst of all:
   they are not very helpful because of how the forum's search function works.
It is a spawned google search and if you type in "[mod]", it will actually be searching for "mod".
Searching for "mod"... without the brackets... in a modding forum... is absolutely not productive.

One fine day we'll probably get something as cool as The Galactic Library because the Stardock folks really care about their modders. (yes, they are that smart!)
But in the meantime it would be nice if the forum stayed navigable regardless and a user looking for mods could actually find any without having to jump through hoops.

My suggestion:  Keep. It. Simple.
Use tags but useful ones that will work with the search function.
Use keywords defined as keywords so searchers can find what they are looking for no matter how short or verbose your description is or if they
   randomly tried "armor" instead of the "armour" that you use in your mod.

Since tags must be "unique words", the obvious choices like "mod" are out. Going with KISS, we add an E for Elemental stuff.
Searching for "emod" is unlikely to produce a lot of garbage results simply because it's not a real word.

Post tags      (more to be added when someone comes up with something useful)

• [eMOD] Modname v1.01
  A mod released to the public in whatever shape you feel fit for release.
  If current version and date of release are not in the main subject, the subtitle would be a good spot for those.
  Adding a second tag for [eWIP] would be pointless because practically every mod is and stays work in progress forever.
  eMOD and eWIP should therefore be mutually exclusive.

• [eWIP] Modname v0.1
  Work in progress but not deemed ready for a public release, yet. There may be a way to download a beta version or help with the development... or not.

• [eSCR] Dummy
  While it's unknown if we'll ever be able to edit scripts in any shape or form or how "standalone" those would be, I'll put a placeholder here.

• [eLIB] Map tiles for the giant redwood, the larch, the fir, the mighty scots pine
  Libraries can cover pretty much anything but are (usually) completely pointless for the end user to even look at.
  This is technical stuff from modders for modders. They could be created models or icons for use as map tiles, altered textures, scripts, items...
  Anything that is designed to be included in other mods and/or scripts.

• [eINFO] How to use custom music for the cavalry charge of singing horses
  Often enough it happened to me that I remembered that someone posted some important info about how to hammer
  a particular round peg through that square hole in the game engine.
  Alas, those gems are terribly hard to find when you don't know the exact wording. Being able to filter all such posts would be more productive.

• [eTUT] Creating weapons with active effects
  In principle the same as eINFO but more verbose - a tutorial rather than a critical bit of information.

Post keywords      (please post/add more as required because knowing what you could be looking for is half the search result)

While post tags are nice and give you a general idea on what kind of post you're looking at, they alone are rarely sufficient to find something.
So posts should have "standardised" keywords... to a degree.

Since the search term rule still applies, something like "weapons" would be dumb.
Make it "kwweapons" for keyword:weapons. This will be found because it will be only in those posts where it really really applies.

Examples:      because it helps immensely to use a standardised (if somewhat boring) spelling

• kwweapons
• kwarmor
• kwimprovements
• kwspells
• kwchampions
• kwabilities

I suggest the last line of the post for a location of all applicable keywords. The post's subtitle should ideally contain an actual brief description. That's what it's designed for. =P

So if you give this Google search an order to find

+emod +kwweapons

it is very likely that it will come up with a released Elemental mod that has to do with weapons. And that's a start.

Merely searching for "+mod +weapons" gets you 250 results across all Stardock games. (I tried)      Not. Helpful.

Consequent use of such a system lets us use even more "generalised" features. Like prepared search links by mod category in a "mod list" sticky post.
Even if a mod is not manually entered in such a thread, a "backup" search link like Click Me for all eMODs would still find it.
And since keywords can be included as well, a "sorted" mod list is possible. It would just be displayed by Google instead of a manually maintained thread...
(I used no keywords so the search would return something other than this post = )

Testing: kwxweapons kwxarmor