My plea for addition of folder/pseudo folders along with Tags

I know its a topic that the horse has been beat into the ground on, remashed into a vague horse like shape and then beaten into mush again. But today while working on our new campaign, I came to a total peak on how badly they are needed. Its a long winded post but hear me out :) --- I've bought probably $100+ worth of marketplace packages, And I have no idea what 95% of them are (or even remember I had them as most was bought for one item with me going 'I can use the others later they are nice') until I went to my library and "your purchases" and scrolled down thru 50+ "fetching more content" loading screens as I went down, down, down the list. None of them come pretagged other than the name of the item itself the artist called it..which is like looking up a word in the dictionary if you don't know how to spell it at all..you need to know a good part of it to get even close to it. So mid game If I want to buy and to use tags on a package spur of the moment I need to tell the players to wait, as I buy it..goto my library, find the new ones..think of unique yet memorable tags, tag them each..and them move on. With folders I could drag them all to a folder, they are now stored there, and sort them later. I could have a folder of "undead" with subfolder of "zombie", "skeletons", "ghosts" and know with a glance where to find them..Not typing blindly into the search box 'undead'..."nope they aren't there" after scrolling past 400 suggestions looking.. "lets try zombie" hmm..maybe. AH, there is the 3 I WANTED as my zombies I tagged, 75% of the way down past the free tokens I don't use. Not to mention web results, I have yet to find a way to re-find them easily without writing down in a handout the keyword I used to find it. I found an AWESOME chest token that fit my game theme style...and never found it again. as I went searching for more than just 'chest' with words that seemed to fit when I located it...now its gone forever in the mystery of whatever creative word I used that day to locate it. --- Characters and NPCs? I've resorted to deleting the majority of my premade NPC's because a list of 60+ in the character screen sucks when its 10 PCs and 50 NPC are mixed matched into one long list, much less if you want to get a handout quickly..now scrooooool down past all the characters, to the 50 handouts you have, and look for the one you had, hoping you remembered what you called it..because its a list of 50 in alphabetical order: Did i call it XP chart? or EXP chart? With Folders I Could sort the characters "PC" "NPC" "Mobs" then handouts by "Character handouts" "GM Handouts" "Look up charts"..etc. Sure this can all be done with tags, but that does nothing to make it a visually informative, and cleaner sidebar when you click over there. ---- To me tags are a great idea, don't remove them. But they only really work for people that have a somewhat preplanned and rigid schema they meticulously maintain and thought out ahead of time to follow to find things easy with them. They work great for an active search of things. But not for a passive search or glancing around tokens folders to go "lets look in the low level mobs folder..kobolds..maybe..YES! kobold war drum player..one of those here would be good!" But in a content active and on demand for the GM system, they fall short for those of us not taking the time to be anal on the spot about tagging items soon as they are added/created/purchased/found. It makes as much sense as an OS installing itself and every file you ever install, for games or download, to the root of the boot drive..and them saying "just use the search box in the top right to find the files you want...folders are overrated." Perhaps its just my mindset and way of looking at an interface. Im one that doesnt like more things in my systray than needed. No tons of icons on my desktop, I sort them into folders by type. My 2TB storage drive is setup to store everything by folders by: applications, games, music, movies, work files..with sub folders of types of applications, type of games, music genre, and so on with more sub folders. Its much more visually pleasing, easy to navigate second nature by keywords present on the folder names themselves, and follows a top down hierarchy of logical path to narrow down to exactly what I want. Add on top of that, some of us are "keyboard lazy" I just don't have the motivation to goto my art library, click a token, type out multiple tag names, save, click the next token type out multiple tag names, save..and repeat 400 times. It literally feels like Im sitting down with a label maker putting stickers one by one on my minitures. All while remembering what past tags Ive used to keep some sort of order and structure to them all, and again, yes, start typing a name it gives suggestions..but what if 3 weeks ago I labeled something "street" now I forgot, and start typing "road" hoping that was it so I can label this the same, now go look at something similar to see what tag I used..and go BACK and put 'street', there goes 3 hours of time just labeling things for over 400 items (and then hope I remember all the tags as no suggestion in art tab)...vs like an OS interface"simply ctrl click a dozen or 2, and drag to a folder you can see the name of".

I think your problem is less with tags and more with the fact that the interface is search-focused rather than browse-focused. I've suggested a tag browser before in another one of these topics, but it bears repeating. In my mind, the characters/handouts/art library interfaces could be vastly improved by the addition of two things: 1) A breadcrumb-style display of currently selected tags 2) A list of tags on any item which has all the currently selected tags Ideally, it would be made optional whether to show all items with all of the selected tags, or only those items whose tags exactly match the selected tags (i.e. those items which don't have any other tags). In the former case, the view would begin like things are now (all items visible), and selecting tags would narrow down the search. In the latter case, only those items without any tags would show up at the start (along with a list of all used tags), and the view would function like a typical filesystem explorer (with the additional advantage that paths can be in any order: you can browse to tokens/undead/skeletons or undead/skeletons/tokens and end up with the same view).

That would be fine too :) and your right, you put it better than I could, passively browsable vs active search along with visual clutter of it all is what makes it feel 'messy and under useful' If they had something like you suggested, with the added feature of dropping an object/token/sheet/handout onto one of the breadcrumbs it adds its path as tags (IE dropping a new zombie onto the crumb: token-npc-undead-zombie would add them each as tags) that would be good enough to solve all my old man grumpiness of tagging/finding things :)

I actually read the whole long post, and I agree with your request, suggestion, reasoning on this. If it's a collapsible, browsable tag tree GUI, that would be fine too. Just something visual with drag-and-drop to tuck assets away, Would be a boon to buying more things from the Marketplace, and other forms of GM organization, for me too. There have been threads about this before.

Sorry gold it didn't mean to get so long winded, I tend to talk and just add on as I think of things and I can just keep going on a topic..haha. I dont want anyone getting me wrong, I'm not downing tags at all, I can see the power and flexibility of them over true folders. And truly do appreciate all the effort Riley has put into them as a forethought and the scalability of it. Just I think the old "there is 2 type of people" cliche fits here. There is people that are visually oriented organizers, and those that are keyword/flagged/tag organizers. Like the old dewey decimal system in libraries. Some used it to find books with a direct search and only needed to go right to that spot, some others went to the shelves themselves by category and browsed around the alphabetical listings to find something. Any sort of visual sorting, be it virtual or actual (tag tree vs true folders) would be great for us visual ones. And the drag and drop to a tree to label it would be amazing! Not sure how hard or even if possible to code it would be with what they already have on the backend. But that would be a huge addition to the tag tree Like me, I'm not totally lazy, but like everyone else the game is a hobby of mine I do in my free time to enjoy running it. I spend 4-8 hours a week on the campaign already not counting the 6-8 hours running it on saturday. I really don't ever get around to the "lets spend some time typing out matching multiple tags on the few dozen things I just uploaded/bought/found while making a map". And then you end up like me, with 1000's of tokens unlabeled (because you keep putting it off, because the list keeps growing and growing you need to do), and there is no "ok let me stop for 5-10 minutes and go sort this mess real quick". Dont know how many times I've went "OK OK im going to go tag like there is no tomorrow!" then 20 minutes later "ok enough of all this"..because I got only 20 things tagged with 2-3 tags each. Being able to upload and drag to a tag tree/folder path (whatever you want to call them) would encourage me to actually doing it. As then it feels more like an afterthought to just put it where it goes, vs having to actively stop what Im doing to go tag them all before I forget and they are lost in my massive pit of lonely and forgotten token in my art library. :)

I'm a visual sorter and I feel your pain William. Tags are cool and all, but for a lot of us they don't organize the way we we process data.

If the number of people agreeing will actually make any difference then I agree, folders would be much better. +1

+1

+1...again... If there were a survey for top 3 suggestions, I think folders would be up there.

+1

Tags are more flexible and resource friendly than folders. If you put ten copies of the same orc in ten folders, you have to go and update each orc if you want to make a change to that orc. With tagging, you only have to change/store the same orc once and add ten tags.

if you have 10 copies of the same orc, you need a better filing system!

i.e., the whole point of filing is not to have 10 copies of the same thing.

I think the point Badger was making is that tags make it easy to re-root the tree when you want to organize by something different. For example, if I have orc and human tokens, both with melee fighters and archers, I might want to get at all of my orcs one day and all of my melee fighters the next day. The only way to do that with a pure directory system is to have multiple copies of the tokens (e.g. at /tokens/orc/melee and at /tokens/melee/orc). With tags, I can just set "token", "orc" and "melee" tags, and then search for items with all three tags (in principle, anyway). Where this breaks down is that many of us don't do so well with searching, and prefer an interface which enumerates choices for us. We don't want to have to remember if we called that orc fighter "fighter", "melee", "barbarian", or something else, we want to look in our orc folder, see the options, and pick the one we want. Fortunately, it's possible to implement something that looks a lot like a directory structure on top of tags so both kinds of people can get something that works well with their respective approaches.

People have said in the past they would use folders to organize by encounter or map or area.... and if you have an orc in two different maps with the same stats, you now have two orc entries that must be kept updated and takes up more space of your allotted amount. It will also make api scripts take a little longer to find the right entry.

+1 and also folders for music!

Wasn't downing tag Badger, more the lack of any visual sorting or order to using tags. Or the tedium of having to properly tag 1000 things while keeping some sort of list of tags you used previously within view to make it useful to do so. A tag tree, as well as drag and drop onto the tree would be immensely helpful. I stopped tagging as it was faster to look for new tokens in the search than try to remember what I called a particular token I bought "was it Mage?..no, thats others. Caster?..nope, not in there. Wizard!...crap nope...Ill just go find a search result from the web search." I started to realize I wasted more time for no real useful gain spending time opening the art window, making tags for it, saving them, and 2 weeks later blindly trying to remember what I called a "attack magic using goblin", than I would just using a random web result. At least with visual tag trees I can be consistent in what I call things, as I can place it with "like" items and visually see my results as a confirmation of all that effort. If one thing I can give it, is it makes the marketplace artist more money..Ive bought packs spur of the moment while mid game, because I cant for the life of me find that last token I wanted, but thier result showed up (to have it and the other 30 in that pack lost in my library of 1000+ tokens after I one shot use it)...haha And that brings me to the actual tagging part. Sure its great if you have the time and motivation to stop, and hand type out tags on 50 things as you find/add/upload them. Its all tedious and time consuming to many of us I think. And i have yet to figure out how to tag a result I found on the web if I even wanted to. I'm an "after thought" organizer..in gaming, work, and life in general. Sorting things into their right place is what makes the job 'done' at the end not putting things where they go as I use them one by one. I'll gather everything I need, use it how I need to..then once done take a bit to put it where it goes. But with tags once I get a lot of things uploaded, or bought, etc..and finish setting up the campaign for that week. I Go "Crap, im not going back in and typing out 30 different tags on 80 tokens I just bought in packs". Tidying up at the end of the job shouldn't feel like more of a chore, or take longer, than the job itself. Why I suggested the drag and drop tagging. Say I got the tag tree NPC-Goblins-Armored-Rangers I drop a token on that its gets tagged with NPC, Goblins, Armored, Rangers. and now shows up when I expand those down (narrowing down what it shows like a filter). Again I'm not downing tags or the power of them. Just the forethought, planning, time invested, and effort needed to use them efficiently as they are, aren't conductive to being "worth the effort" to many of us. For those that can use them efficiently and keep up with it. I DO envy your attention to organization, and commitment to using them properly as they are to help you. But I just cant keep up with doing it, no matter how much I envy those that keep on top of it.

HoneyBadger said: People have said in the past they would use folders to organize by encounter or map or area.... and if you have an orc in two different maps with the same stats, you now have two orc entries that must be kept updated and takes up more space of your allotted amount. It will also make api scripts take a little longer to find the right entry. There is absolutely no reason that you couldn't put the same journal entry in multiple folders. It is no different than putting more than one tag on a journal entry.

There is absolutely no reason that you couldn't put the same journal entry in multiple folders. It is no different than putting more than one tag on a journal entry. I agree, I like the principle of tags and I do not think they should go away. A visual representation of the tags a set of folders would also be very helpful. Things just feel too cluttered. I would like it to act like gmail tags. "Archiving" gets it out of you main list, but you could still access them based on their tags.

One idea is to create handout "folders" if you really, really want folders. For example, make a handout called "Goblins." In the the description, type all the Goblins you've created with brackets around them, e.g.: [Goblin Sneak] [Goblin Mage] [Gobloid the Goblin] Handout can link to archived journal entries, so if you then archive all those goblins, you can still open the handout and click to open any of them. For subfolders, just add a new handout, say "Beasts" and add a [Beasts] entry near the top, maybe with some different spacing to show that it's a new folder, then add your beasts to the new handout in the same way. I do this for "theater of the mind" encounters, such as a hub town, and make a single handout for the town then add links to handout for notable locations and people. I archive all the extras, then when the players go to the town, I can quickly reference that town's assets based on where they go and what they're doing (I also label things on the GM layer). It's not quite as easy but accomplishes the same thing. The only way I can see to really improve tags for my use would be to have a way to identify things that don't have tags so when I buy a bunch of art assets I can easily see what I still need to categorize. I'd also like to see a way to search for things by whole word only, so when I look for "door" it doesn't show me landscapes tagged with "outdoor." I wouldn't complain if they made a tag folder system but I still consider tags absolutely superior to folders in virtually every way.

Jacquesne J. said: I wouldn't complain if they made a tag folder system but I still consider tags absolutely superior to folders in virtually every way. The one inferiority of tags is that people aren't used to them, which is why the "please add folders" threads keep popping up. That said, our tag system could certainly be improved.

The biggest problem with tags is that it is the equivalent of telling them what a house looks like and what city it is in but not giving them the address. You know it is there somewhere, you know what it looks like, you just cannot remember what the address is. With folders you also know which part of town the house is in and so you can more readily drive around to find it. Tags presume people remember things perfectly and thus can get from point A to point B instantly. Folders are a visual navigation method for people who don't remember the name. Tags will always be a difficult option for people who cannot remember the name (which is many of us). Additionally, tags take a lot more time to organize than folders. A folder I can just drag and drop to where I want it. Tags I have to assign at least 3 or 4 names, think of the names, think of names that I hope I will remember in 6 months, and then take even more time to enter them.

Jacquesne J. said: One idea is to create handout "folders" if you really, really want folders. For example, make a handout called "Goblins." In the the description, type all the Goblins you've created with brackets around them, e.g.: [Goblin Sneak] [Goblin Mage] [Gobloid the Goblin] Handout can link to archived journal entries, so if you then archive all those goblins, you can still open the handout and click to open any of them. For subfolders, just add a new handout, say "Beasts" and add a [Beasts] entry near the top, maybe with some different spacing to show that it's a new folder, then add your beasts to the new handout in the same way. I do this for "theater of the mind" encounters, such as a hub town, and make a single handout for the town then add links to handout for notable locations and people. I archive all the extras, then when the players go to the town, I can quickly reference that town's assets based on where they go and what they're doing (I also label things on the GM layer). True, that is a great alternative in the mean time, but cant see myself doing that. And creates the problem now I have visually 500 handouts in my journals page. It's is no faster (and even slower) than typing out tags on the items themselves. As I stated (in my opinion) setting up the game itself shouldn't take longer than the time it would take to set up in real tabletop, even worse if I spend 50%+ of my setup time making handouts, typing out handout links inside other handouts, adding images to the handouts, etc. If 50%+ of my setup time for each week is doing organization by hand just so I can find things, vs being productive on adding to the campaign itself in a way that makes it more enjoyable for the players..its ratios are wrong :) Now if it was my paying job to do so, Id do it with vigor and commitment. Hand Tagging, sorting, keeping track of tags, making sure like items are tagged unique yet also sharing common tags..etc. But I work 40+ hours a week, plus 2 kids and wife plus the 8 hours on saturday we actually play. I just don't have the time (or motivation) to sit down and mind numbingly type out 1000's of tags, and then adding a few dozen more each week. Let me restate I'm not against tags as a way to track items, its very very powerful. But its current way of being used is more cumbersome than the old days of pen and paper organization for a DM. To me if its easier to whip out an old notepad and pencil to keep notes on tokens in than use the software, something needs a tweak :) Or if miniature organization is easier to do on a 'storage page' than using the actual storage lookup. I've resorted to uploading any "for next week" tokens to a blank storage page I have so I can go cut-paste them vs typing out tags on them all each week.

We have a visual navigation for tags... it's the little tag icon next to the search bar. Click it and start adding tags to the search bar.

That doesn't work for images badger, only journals. This is the images search: And even then if you tagged everything remembering the 2-3 previous tags you used on similar things, and called something "Wizards" and in 3 weeks remember incorrectly you tagged them all "MagicUsers". without pausing the game, and going to your library, scrooooling around to find one..your dead in the water on finding it. Im not trying to get tags removed. Just asking for a way that makes it more easily accessible, quick to implement on a large scale, and more forgiving for the average roll20 user. I do programming for work, and LIVE on my PC the rest of the day while at home(I'm a HUGE 'if I can do it on my computer I will' type)..and I don't like using it the way its setup to access and label things now. I understand it, and get how it can be used with extreme versatility if setup correctly but I just cant bring myself to do it as its very un-user friendly. I can only imagine how frustrating it is for the average PC user/tabletop-er to try to use to manage a large campaign. Think of it this way: To the average person online, telling them to use similar and overlapping tags, yet keep them unique so items are searchable they can grasp and use I imagine, but then tell them that info is only stored into a 'tag database' written to your campaign that you can only see in your art window a handful of tags and tokens at a time incase you need to find tags you used to add/lookup one Is the same as telling them "Its simple, to find a database entry all you need to do is a SQL query on the keywords you wrote to the database before in the table, if you don't remember the keywords open the database in mysql and look to find it, then search that word and it will return all found results...its simple!". (sure its an extreme example, but to Joe WebUser, both those sound intimidating to do and keep managed). So while its extremely powerful, its extremely unintuitive and cumbersome as its setup now also.

Even in the case of Journals the sheer number of journals makes scrolling a problem. Folders would clean this up visually. And William is correct, even with a list of every tag in your journal you still have to try to remember which tag you put the journal under. So instead of trying to remember the tag you are reduced to hunting through all of your tags until you find the right one. This would become even more of problem with thousands of images. To put this another way, I don't want to go back to DOS, I like Windows.

Maybe I'm just being one of the 'loud' ones. As in there is only a few dozen of us wanting some sort of visual tag trees or places to access and apply tags with a click, and we are just really noisy. Is there a way one of the devs' could do an index on the cumulative art libraries? And count what percentage of uploaded items have more than one tag? (as uploading it give its a single tag of its filename..and I cant imagine anyone actually using tags only putting 1 tag per on all their things). Maybe that would help figure out if most people don't, or if the majority is using tags and I'm just being fussy and resistant to work with what is there. :)

Current way of doing 'stuff' with tokens is completely u.n.u.s.a.b.l.e - sorry, but this is just sad truth. I understand that software developers tend to 'know better' what users want - I am one myself - but after years of experience, I can say that users definitely know what they don't want . After a few wasted hours on uneven fight with user interface I had gave up yesterday and just decided to use <a href="http://www.mapeditor.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.mapeditor.org/</a> as primary map designing tool. Now will have to find alternative managers for characters, tokens, music ... don't want to end up finding alternative for roll20 as whole thing.

Gauss said: The biggest problem with tags is that it is the equivalent of telling them what a house looks like and what city it is in but not giving them the address. You know it is there somewhere, you know what it looks like, you just cannot remember what the address is. With folders you also know which part of town the house is in and so you can more readily drive around to find it. Tags presume people remember things perfectly and thus can get from point A to point B instantly. Folders are a visual navigation method for people who don't remember the name. Tags will always be a difficult option for people who cannot remember the name (which is many of us). Additionally, tags take a lot more time to organize than folders. A folder I can just drag and drop to where I want it. Tags I have to assign at least 3 or 4 names, think of the names, think of names that I hope I will remember in 6 months, and then take even more time to enter them. These problems are not a tags vs. folders issue, but a presentation issue. Imagine if you were given a command-line and told to find the folder your file was in; you'd have the exact same issue of remembering where you put it, but it's folders this time! Choosing a name is something you would have to do with both tags and folders. For existing names vs. existing folders, it's a presentation issue again. If you were forced to type in the full folder path to place a file in a folder, it wouldn't be any better than typing in each of the tags you want. You don't need folders , specifically, you need a better way to organize your information, such as having a list of tags you've already used when adding tags, and a breadcrumb trail of tags you can follow to reach a destination file when searching.

William R. said: Maybe I'm just being one of the 'loud' ones. As in there is only a few dozen of us wanting some sort of visual tag trees or places to access and apply tags with a click, and we are just really noisy. Is there a way one of the devs' could do an index on the cumulative art libraries? And count what percentage of uploaded items have more than one tag? (as uploading it give its a single tag of its filename..and I cant imagine anyone actually using tags only putting 1 tag per on all their things). Maybe that would help figure out if most people don't, or if the majority is using tags and I'm just being fussy and resistant to work with what is there. :) I haven't been chiming in much because, frankly, you're making all the good points for me! (I've even been doing the same trick of plopping images for next week into an empty map.) Visual folders or a *much* more versatile tag system, and my vote is visual folders.

Brian , have you ever driven to a home without knowing the name of the street it is on or it's address? That is the difference between Tags and Folders. Tags are a street address. Folders are a visual destination. Different people have different ways of processing information. For some tags are better than folders, for others folders are better than tags. Your example of command line folders is not the same as visual representations of folders or groups. That is what people are talking about. Command line folders are more similar to tags than to visual folders. Choosing a name is not really that big a deal because again, it is a visual representation. The folder is 'here' in the list of folders with 'this' turn. I often navigate folders without even looking at the names because I know where they are in relation to each other. It is the same as my first point, you know the way to the home without knowing the street names.

Folders are a way of creating groups which you subdivide with successive refinement. It is the route to a destination from a minimal known point to a desired destination that you arrive at by making a choice from a small set of options. A path from known to desired. Tags are attributes about an entity. They are features held in common between multiple entities. For a given entity, they describe facets. For a group, they define relationships. They are an unordered sea. A link from concept to collection. With sufficient discrete math operations (which are currently lacking in Roll20's tags--we only have union) like union and intersection and difference, they can approximate the path from known to desired, but they cannot give you the ordering that a folder path can give you. You could add weighting to tags to make some more important and listed first. You can add sub-tags to further refine a tag, or tag clouds to show you what's used more or other clever and trendy things to allow them to be closer approximations of that path from known to desired, but you will only end up with an inferior approximation of that hierarchy. People always argue that tags are better, and there are some things that they are better at. Those just aren't things that interest those of us that think in terms of hierarchies. For us, folders are the ideal representation and abstraction of the relationships we naturally think in. It's fine that it doesn't seem useful to everyone and certainly no one is suggesting that tags be removed, degraded, or not improved. It is a different way of doing things which we are more interested in. As I've said on folder posts in the past, if you're a big proponent of tags and you want to contribute to the folder discussion, don't tell me I'm wrong or "just put a tag on it". Write a wiki page showing how to solve my categorization woes with tags.

Gauss said: Brian , have you ever driven to a home without knowing the name of the street it is on or it's address? Have you ever driven to an address without directions or a map? That's easy to do when you're familiar with the location, less so if you've never been there. My point is that how the user processes the information is entirely relegated to how the information is presented. Tags are a superior means of representing the information, but personal computers have conditioned end-users to expect folder structure combined with drag-and-drop manipulation, and that is what they are used to interacting with. However, tags can be presented in the same way . The end-user doesn't need to care. Are these folders, or tags? tokens | +- npcs | | | +- alicorn | | | | | +- celly.png | +- earth | | | | | +- red.png | +- pegasus | | | | | +- storm.png | +- unicorn | | | +- amethyst.png +- pcs | +- alicorn | | | +- luna.png +- earth | | | +- berry.png +- pegasus | | | +- derpy.png +- unicorn | +- fleur.png Certainly looks like folders. But look, nothing has really changed: tokens | +- alicorn | | | +- npcs | | | | | +- celly.png | +- pcs | | | | | +- luna.png | +- celly.png | +- luna.png +- earth | | | +- npcs | | | | | +- red.png | +- pcs | | | | | +- berry.png | +- berry.png | +- red.png +- npcs | | | +- alicorn | | | | | +- celly.png | +- earth | | | | | +- red.png | +- pegasus | | | | | +- storm.png | +- unicorn | | | | | +- amethyst.png | +- amethyst.png | +- celly.png | +- red.png | +- storm.png +- pcs | | | +- alicorn | | | | | +- luna.png | +- earth | | | | | +- berry.png | +- pegasus | | | | | +- derpy.png | +- unicorn | | | | | +- fleur.png | +- berry.png | +- derpy.png | +- fleur.png | +- luna.png +- pegasus | | | +- npcs | | | | | +- storm.png | +- pcs | | | | | +- derpy.png | +- derpy.png | +- storm.png +- unicorn | | | +- npcs | | | | | +- amethyst.png | +- pcs | | | | | +- fleur.png | +- amethyst.png | +- fleur.png +- amethyst.png +- berry.png +- celly.png +- derpy.png +- fleur.png +- luna.png +- red.png +- storm.png That's just an alternate representation of some tags: amethyst.png [token] [npcs] [unicorn] berry.png [token] [pcs] [earth] celly.png [token] [npcs] [alicorn] derpy.png [token] [pcs] [pegasus] fleur.png [token] [pcs] [unicorn] luna.png [token] [pcs] [alicorn] red.png [token] [npcs] [earth] storm.png [token] [npcs] [pegasus] If I've got image thumbnails in a folder, I can remember that fleur.png is a token/pcs/unicorn/. But if I all I remember is that the image in the unicorn/ folder, how do I find it? I've got to start searching each of my folders. If I've got image thumbnails with tags, maybe I forget that fleur.png is a [token], and a [pcs], but I remember it's a [unicorn]. With that, I can narrow my search. I can even see that some of the [unicorn] images are tagged with [pcs] or [npcs], and use that to help me narrow my search further. You can learn folders, and you can learn tags. You can also forget both. Tags let you perform an efficient search anyway.

I agree that during use you COULD set up tags to look like folders (as you did). This is why William is requesting pseudo-folders. However, it still takes much much longer to set up than with folders. Tags require you to enter each level on every single asset and you are usually not doing them as a massed group so being able to do them as a massed group doesn't help. Folders only require you to name the individual folders, assets can then be dumped and moved around rather quickly. Folders are simply easier to understand and use for certain people while tags appeal to the 'efficiency' type of people. A Hybrid system would hopefully fix both groups needs. Edit: Doh, didnt remove my "Mod Team" marker...this is posted as a user.

OK, what is difference between: "amethyst.png [token] [npcs] [unicorn]" and "amethyst.png [unicorn] [token] [npcs]"? Token-wise: there is no difference at all. Folder structure gives you path from generic concept to specific concept and is visually self-explanatory. Why you guys are so insisting on not recognising this simple fact?

I agree, there is a difference in the mental processes involved between remembering names and remembering locations. While yes, folders have a path similar to that of tags the visual appearance and organization accesses different mental processes. For some people remembering words is better while other people visual cues are easier. Now, the counter to this concept is that you can tags like folders using trees and I agree, you can do that. However, it is still a long tortured process ( for some ) to do that compared to the simpler process ( for some ) of dragging and dropping into the appropriate category (folder). There are significant differences in the user side of this even if there are only minor differences on the computer side.

Emilian S. said: OK, what is difference between: "amethyst.png [token] [npcs] [unicorn]" and "amethyst.png [unicorn] [token] [npcs]"? Token-wise: there is no difference at all. Folder structure gives you path from generic concept to specific concept and is visually self-explanatory. Why you guys are so insisting on not recognising this simple fact? Creating a path from the generic to the specific requires building the folder structure correctly to do so, and you can design your tags to function in the exact same way. (Similarly, you can both create a scattered and minimally useful folder structure, and you can tag objects poorly.) The visualization is completely unconnected from the way the data is stored. Arguing for a more user-friendly user interface has nothing to do with arguing folders versus tags.

What if under the searchbox was a list of all the tags present in the collection you're searching and you could click on the tags to dim them and remove items from displaying in the collection. If you dimmed 'orc', items only tagged 'orc' will go away. 'Melee', things tagged with just 'orc' and/or 'melee' go away. That would certainly help with remembering your tags, because you have a list right there. Change your mind? Click a tag and un-dim it and get those items back.

Brian said: Emilian S. said: [..] Creating a path from the generic to the specific requires building the folder structure correctly to do so [..] Yes, but you need to do that only once. With tagging on the other hand, you have to be careful everytime when you are adding new asset to your collection. Without visual representation of the pattern you have decided to use, it is very easy to make mistake, forget certain element (tag, proper sequence etc.) which effectively leads to unusable mess. Besides that, I think nobody argues folders vs tags (except maybe folder-deniers :) ). We should combine both.

Yes, i wasn't arguing for folders as true folders so much, why I was saying 'folders/psudo folders' As I don't know what/if there is a term for a visual tag hierarchy/tree/view. I wouldn't expect or even want them to remove tags as the way of marking tokens, many people like them, and they are way more powerful than just filenames in folders for lot of items. Just the way to find them, add them, and quick reference past ones to add new items to one is frustrating at the best of times currently :) Also wasn't trying to cause a 'coke vs pepsi' type argument. :) Just some sort of better, user friendly, visually understandable and usable quick reference to see your current tags to find items quickly instead of one tag at a time like handouts is now, that works well for handouts when you looking for a specific guy, but not so much if your a "let me browse for inspiration and see what mobs/items/room decorations I can add to this map". And maybe a way to quick apply previous tags interface.

William R. said: True, that is a great alternative in the mean time, but cant see myself doing that. And creates the problem now I have visually 500 handouts in my journals page. It's is no faster (and even slower) than typing out tags on the items themselves. As I stated (in my opinion) setting up the game itself shouldn't take longer than the time it would take to set up in real tabletop, even worse if I spend 50%+ of my setup time making handouts, typing out handout links inside other handouts, adding images to the handouts, etc. If 50%+ of my setup time for each week is doing organization by hand just so I can find things, vs being productive on adding to the campaign itself in a way that makes it more enjoyable for the players..its ratios are wrong :) Now if it was my paying job to do so, Id do it with vigor and commitment. Hand Tagging, sorting, keeping track of tags, making sure like items are tagged unique yet also sharing common tags..etc. But I work 40+ hours a week, plus 2 kids and wife plus the 8 hours on saturday we actually play. I just don't have the time (or motivation) to sit down and mind numbingly type out 1000's of tags, and then adding a few dozen more each week. Let me restate I'm not against tags as a way to track items, its very very powerful. But its current way of being used is more cumbersome than the old days of pen and paper organization for a DM. To me if its easier to whip out an old notepad and pencil to keep notes on tokens in than use the software, something needs a tweak :) Or if miniature organization is easier to do on a 'storage page' than using the actual storage lookup. I've resorted to uploading any "for next week" tokens to a blank storage page I have so I can go cut-paste them vs typing out tags on them all each week. You wouldn't have 500 handouts on your journal page. You'd only have your "top" folders. Like I said, you can archive everything else and still access it from the links. So you'd have handouts like this: PCs NPCs Towns Encounters [etc] Archive Then when you click PCs you'd have a handout with links to PC character sheets and if you clicked NPCs you'd have a handout with links to the following: [CR1] [CR2] [CR3] or [Goblins] [Orcs] [Zombies] All those links are archived and don't show up, and then they can link to another handout with more options, etc. Like I said, it's not a perfect solution, but allows you to create a folder structure. I've found it's a quick process but I mainly use it for area and encounter notes, such as towns or special effects on a map (I name the "top" folder the same as the map I'm on, add a brief description of special stuff on the map, then links to the details). If the topic has a specific location I just write a GM note on the map nearby with the name of the handout. An ideal solution (in my opinion) would be an auto-tagging system that lets you drag and drop things into tag "folders" which recursively adds tags. You could create your folder structure, and the folders would be a new type of object. If you drop a tag into another tag, it creates a subdirectory of that tag (essentially tagging the tag with higher level tags). All objects without tags would be in the "root" of the folder structure, then when you drag something into the "NPC-&gt;CR1-&gt;Goblin" folder it automatically tags it with those folders. Since the folders already exist in a structure you won't lose it but you also gain the benefit of tags...search for CR1 and it will still show you that goblin, since it's a tag. Since items are tagged they only exist once, when you drag an item to a new folder it could give you the option to move (change the tags) or copy (add additional tags). For the guys that feel like folders are the best way to organize, and want nothing to do with tags, the fact that it's tagging in the background would be almost entirely transparent. For those of us (like me) that feel folders are only useful for permanent structures, such as program directories, but not for finding assets we still have all the benefits of tags, plus a few more...now we can quickly identify which items need to be tagged and have the option of browsing the folder structure if we aren't sure what type of thing we're looking for. It would also prevent me from needing to use my handout system for theater of the mind areas (like towns) since folders work better there in my opinion. The "town" is preset and as the DM I need to know what assets are available during play so I need a list...I'm not necessarily going to remember that the town of Bfegypt has a tavern called "The Watering Hole" which has a bartender named "Bob the Barbarian." When I want to make an encounter, either published or by hand, it's really handy to use the tags as filters, so I can search for CR1 and Goblin to quickly find all my options for CR1 goblins (speaking of which, the ability to use AND in the search would be greatly appreciated, so I could search for multiple criteria at the same time, such as all CR1 and CR2 goblins and wolves). But for a town you pretty much need a key of some sort. One other way I've seen this done...tags create folders automatically based on exclusion. In other words, if you had five things tagged with NPC, and you opened the "NPC" folder, it would show everything underneath that had the NPC tag. Then, anything with the NPC tag and another tag has another folder created for it. So if you had this tagging set up: Goblin Sneak [NPC] [CR1] [Goblin] [Humanoid] Wolf [NPC] [CR1] [Beast] [Wolf] Dire Wolf [NPC] [CR5] [Beast] [Wolf] Young Red Dragon [NPC] [CR11] [Dragon][True Dragon] You'd have a folder structure like this: [NPC] --[CR1] --[CR5] --[CR11] --[Goblin] --[Beast] --[Dragon] --[True Dragon] --[Wolf] --[Humanoid] And you'd have all the individual objects with the [NPC] tag listed below (not alphabetical order because I'm lazy). If you open the CR1 folder, you'd get this: [Goblin] [Humanoid] [Beast] [Wolf] Goblin Sneak Wolf It's not quite as organized as file folders but lets you browse assets without altering the fundamental tag system. Either way I hope the system gets improved, one way or another!

Jacquesne J. said: One other way I've seen this done...tags create folders automatically based on exclusion. In other words, if you had five things tagged with NPC, and you opened the "NPC" folder, it would show everything underneath that had the NPC tag. Then, anything with the NPC tag and another tag has another folder created for it. So if you had this tagging set up: Goblin Sneak [NPC] [CR1] [Goblin] [Humanoid] Wolf [NPC] [CR1] [Beast] [Wolf] Dire Wolf [NPC] [CR5] [Beast] [Wolf] Young Red Dragon [NPC] [CR11] [Dragon][True Dragon] You'd have a folder structure like this: [NPC] --[CR1] --[CR5] --[CR11] --[Goblin] --[Beast] --[Dragon] --[True Dragon] --[Wolf] --[Humanoid] And you'd have all the individual objects with the [NPC] tag listed below (not alphabetical order because I'm lazy). If you open the CR1 folder, you'd get this: [Goblin] [Humanoid] [Beast] [Wolf] Goblin Sneak Wolf It's not quite as organized as file folders but lets you browse assets without altering the fundamental tag system. Either way I hope the system gets improved, one way or another! Exactly! :) Thats the style I was referring to, just lacking the ability to put a name to it, or the forethought to give an example that fits perfectly like that. That way it stay flexible for those that like doing word association for tag use, but browsable in a 'window shopping for things to use' style for the rest of us. Plus its easy to browse tags to go "ok this new token can go in here with these". For example the Wolf, say you had a CR1 CR5 and CR11 one. Those of us that are visual sorters can look and go "yep, got one wolf in each of them" but also when going to [Wolf] can quickly see and remember we got 3 CR rating for them browsing and go "ah yea Ill throw a cr5 in the end for them as a challenge". Best way I can explain the difference is with Legos: Some people like organizing them hidden into drawers with 'tag' labels so they can directly access them by remembering what they need, and find its tag on the drawer while looking for a specific piece, open it and take one out. Others like to have them separated also, but visually out in the open so we can just glance over them all and see them and go "oh a red angled piece! that would look good right here!"