Attention all authors! Many years ago I conducted a review of the use of categories and tags on the TLS front page and came up with some new guidelines, which... haven't been followed at all, for the most part. That might be because I never collected them in one place and made them prominent enough for all of our authors to see. So that's what I'm doing now.
Categories
Each article should be filed in exactly one category which describes what type of article it is. Think of your article as a printed document and the categories system as being a filing cabinet - you can't put your document in more than one drawer of the cabinet.
Our categories are split into two groups (formerly three): Lifestream Projects and News. Each group has many sub-categories, giving us the following structure:
Lifestream projects
News
News is for things that happen outside TLS (like game releases, trailers, etc.) while Lifestream projects is for anything we make ourselves.
Note that you don't need to categorise an article as both "News" and "Square Enix" (for example) because the News category page automatically shows everything in its sub-categories.
Spotlight is a new sub-category of news. It's designed for things which aren't our projects but also aren't from "official" sources, e.g. fan works.
Square Enix is a sub-category reserved for news about the corporation itself, e.g. "Yoichi Wada to step down from Square Enix".
If you think your article belongs in two categories, put it in the one that it fits best, and if you really can't decide, ask me for advice after you have published.
Tags
You can have multiple tags on each article. Tags are supposed to represent games and other media which are covered on TLS and nothing else. This is something a lot of people seem to struggle with.
"Final Fantasy V" is a valid tag, "part 9" is not. Similarly, "Doctor Who" is not, as it's not something that TLS covers.
The whole purpose of using tags is to let visitors find articles that interest them quickly and easily. That is not the case if we have separate tags for "Final Fantasy V", "Final Fantasy 5", "FFV" and "FF5". Therefore, each game (or film, etc.) has exactly ONE correct tag, as follows:
If your article is predominantly about Final Fantasy V but has passing references to Final Fantasy IV, you do not need to tag the latter game, but you can, at your discretion. Think to yourself, "if I was looking for all articles about Final Fantasy IV, would I be interested in reading this?". If so, tag it. If not, don't bother.
Note that "Final Fantasy" refers to the first game in the series and not the series itself.
I spent a lot of time deleting over 100 incorrect tags today. I'll put them behind a spoiler tag below. A lot of them are variants of the same game title, as I mentioned, but there are also a lot of tags which are actually existing categories, plus typos, TLS members and completely irrelevant things. Can you imagine anyone coming here and looking for posts about "Gleen" (which I assume is a typo of "Glenn")?
Edit: after some discussion on Skype, we decided that the "Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn" tag would be folded into "Final Fantasy XIV" for simplicity. There were only three articles with the former tag and not the latter so it's not a big change.
Final words
These rules are not difficult to follow, but as I said, contact me if you're having difficulties. Publish your article first, though - getting it out there quickly is almost always more important than categorising and tagging it correctly, which can always be done afterwards.
Categories
Each article should be filed in exactly one category which describes what type of article it is. Think of your article as a printed document and the categories system as being a filing cabinet - you can't put your document in more than one drawer of the cabinet.
Our categories are split into two groups (formerly three): Lifestream Projects and News. Each group has many sub-categories, giving us the following structure:
Lifestream projects
- Analysis
- Audiobooks
- Commentaries
- Community events
- Editorials
- Game summaries
- Interviews
- Let’s Play
- Podcasts
- Reviews
- Scripts
- Site news
- Translations
- Unused Text
- Weekly roundups
News
- Compilation
- Final Fantasy series
- Final Fantasy VII
- Final Fantasy VII Remake
- Other games
- Spotlight
- Square Enix
News is for things that happen outside TLS (like game releases, trailers, etc.) while Lifestream projects is for anything we make ourselves.
Note that you don't need to categorise an article as both "News" and "Square Enix" (for example) because the News category page automatically shows everything in its sub-categories.
Spotlight is a new sub-category of news. It's designed for things which aren't our projects but also aren't from "official" sources, e.g. fan works.
Square Enix is a sub-category reserved for news about the corporation itself, e.g. "Yoichi Wada to step down from Square Enix".
If you think your article belongs in two categories, put it in the one that it fits best, and if you really can't decide, ask me for advice after you have published.
Tags
You can have multiple tags on each article. Tags are supposed to represent games and other media which are covered on TLS and nothing else. This is something a lot of people seem to struggle with.
"Final Fantasy V" is a valid tag, "part 9" is not. Similarly, "Doctor Who" is not, as it's not something that TLS covers.The whole purpose of using tags is to let visitors find articles that interest them quickly and easily. That is not the case if we have separate tags for "Final Fantasy V", "Final Fantasy 5", "FFV" and "FF5". Therefore, each game (or film, etc.) has exactly ONE correct tag, as follows:
- For main series Final Fantasy games, use the full form: "Final Fantasy V"
- For spin-off games, use the short form: "Crisis Core", "Lightning Returns"
- Do not add unnecessary things like "HD" or "remake". (This applies even to the FFVII Remake – since we have a category for that already, we don't need a separate tag).
If your article is predominantly about Final Fantasy V but has passing references to Final Fantasy IV, you do not need to tag the latter game, but you can, at your discretion. Think to yourself, "if I was looking for all articles about Final Fantasy IV, would I be interested in reading this?". If so, tag it. If not, don't bother.
Note that "Final Fantasy" refers to the first game in the series and not the series itself.
I spent a lot of time deleting over 100 incorrect tags today. I'll put them behind a spoiler tag below. A lot of them are variants of the same game title, as I mentioned, but there are also a lot of tags which are actually existing categories, plus typos, TLS members and completely irrelevant things. Can you imagine anyone coming here and looking for posts about "Gleen" (which I assume is a typo of "Glenn")?
PC Release, Audi Update, 50% Discount, Steam, Vanille, spira, shera, background, BrutalAl, E3, SE, Final Fantasy VII G-Bike, FFVIII, FFIX, 25th Memorial Ultimania, Memorial Ultimania, translations, tidus, Squall of Seed, Shademp, Dilly Dally, Shilly Shally, Final Fantasy 7, Zack, The Lifestream, Twitch, FFXIII, LR, Lightning, Tetsuya Nomura, Unsung Story, Yasumi Matsuno, Hitoshi Sakimoto, Matsuno, Sakimoto, Yoshida, FFTactics, FFVII, Kitase, Yoshinori Kitase, FFX, FFX-2, ARR, Gold Saucer, Remake, Shinra, Shin-Ra, FFXII, piano, FFXV, final fantasy x hd remaster, hd remaster, soundtrack, nobuo uematsu, masashi hamauzu, junya nakano, review, OtWtaS, Compilation of FFVII, French, Cécile Sénaux, Frédéric Mory, Lumen, translation, interview, Ryushikaze, TresDies, Carlie, Gleen, Fangu, Gabe, VIII, IX, X, X-2, XII, XIII-2, HD Remake, Game of the Year, PC, 10, versions, version, japanese, english, Web Series, Lifestream, Podcast, Radio Play, Disney, DC, Legend of Korra, Doctor Who, Pacific Rim, XBox One, Wii U, XBOne, XBox 180, Fan's Eye View, Case of Nanaki, unused text, part 9, unused, hidden, secret, maps, fields, Eidos, Slyrim, Final Fantasu VIII, AKihiko Yoshida, Final Fantasy Music, Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD, vincent valentine, mobile, phone, game, lost episode, Square-Enix, Cloud, Aerith, Tifa, LTD, Final Fantasy I, FFXIV, A Realm Reborn, Naoki Yoshida, ultimania, Yosuke Matsuda, FFXIV:ARR, FFVI, Interbooks, Sony
Edit: after some discussion on Skype, we decided that the "Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn" tag would be folded into "Final Fantasy XIV" for simplicity. There were only three articles with the former tag and not the latter so it's not a big change.
Final words
These rules are not difficult to follow, but as I said, contact me if you're having difficulties. Publish your article first, though - getting it out there quickly is almost always more important than categorising and tagging it correctly, which can always be done afterwards.
Last edited by a moderator: