0

I frequently read this page using Google Reader. it's fantastic, but there are times where the question doesn't necessarily indicate what game it's referring to.

For instance this question: Is it better to try to reveal a Traitor early, or wait until later in the game? - I clicked through to read because I didn't know if it was about "Are you a Traitor" - a game I'm interested in but I don't know enough to know whether the question applies, or to something else. I probably wouldn't have clicked through if I had known it was about "Shadows of Camelot".

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
4

I sympathise, but there are good reasons not to do this. This was discussed at some length in this general meta question, and applies to all SE sites.

Should questions contain general categories in the title?

With respect to Google Reader, you can follow the RSS feeds of specific tags, i.e. see only the games you are interested in, if this is particularly annoying for you.

Other related discussions:

A relevant quote here is this, from Jeff Atwood, one of the founders of StackExchange:

To be clear, I think it is fine to duplicate the tags in the title, but only when they can be worked into the titles organically and conversationally.

A policy to force game names to be present would be artificial, unworkable in practice, and is not something any other site on the SE network feels is necessary or helpful. Tags provide the context, and unfortunately if you can't see the tags, you are losing something of the context.

6
  • So narrowing the focus back to this site.. Is it really a well formulated question if it doesn't include the game name when it's regarding a specific game? I'm not advocating requiring the game name in the title necessarily, just that the guidelines for asking a question include complete sentences that stand on their own without the need to click through and see the tags. While I understand you can subscribe to specific tags, that doesn't really address the "problem" as I see it.
    – Tuxhedoh
    Jan 20, 2012 at 18:40
  • @Tuxhedoh So, kinda like the "concatenating strings" example in the linked thread?
    – Alex P
    Jan 20, 2012 at 19:01
  • The principal tag on the question (the one with the most questions having the tag) is always included in the title during Google searches, as in board games - Here is my question? If you want the name of the game in the title, you can add it organically, as in Here is my question about this particular board game?" There's no way to enforce this, however.
    – Robert Harvey
    Jan 20, 2012 at 19:01
  • In your particular example, you can change the title to "Is it better to reveal a traitor early in Shadows of Camelot?"
    – Robert Harvey
    Jan 20, 2012 at 19:03
  • It seems a compromise solution would be to append the tags onto the end of the question in the RSS feed.
    – Neal Tibrewala
    Jan 23, 2012 at 6:03
  • 1
    I really question the utility of tags like "strategy" or "rules". Who is subscribing to these tags? They seem so broad as to be virtually useless. I would propose removing those tags first. See my elaborated answer at: meta.stackexchange.com/a/120009
    – Jeff Atwood
    Jan 23, 2012 at 12:12
-2

On a somewhat related note, it should be noted that the HTML <title> element already contains the tag with the highest number of questions against that tag.

However, it seems that because very broad tags are actually of benefit on this site, one of the SE features could be having a detrimental effect on the organic searchability of the site (i.e. Google).

I think that it might be worthwhile to ask for a feature request to indicate on a tag wiki that it shouldn't be included in the title, and the tag with the next highest number of questions against it would be included in the <title> element (unless that tag isn't specified, if none are applicable then it switches back to the tag with the highest number of questions).

With this, you would flag tags like and to not be included in the title, and in most cases, the game-specific tag is the next tag in the list to be included in the HTML <title> tag, and it would improve the searchability of the site by Google.

Oh, I already proposed it for all sites on Meta Stack Overflow. =)

2
  • As noted in that discussion, there is significant resistance to any sort of SE change with respect to tags ... and Jeff's answer on Gaming to that request suggests that perhaps we are running into the same problems here that he mentions there. If few people ever follow a tag like rules or strategy, then what do we gain by using the tag? We can already filter by rules* to get questions about rules, and we also run the risk of having another type of tag that is inconsistently applied.
    – Dave DuPlantis
    Jan 21, 2012 at 0:37
  • @dave indeed, I don't think super broad kitchen sink tags like "strategy" and "rules" are useful at all. I recommend fixing that first, per: meta.stackexchange.com/a/120009
    – Jeff Atwood
    Jan 23, 2012 at 12:07

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .