The pain points we have, and how to fix them, aka, making tags better for folder people.

Riley, I was watching the Q&A last night, and when tags vs folders came up, you asked for a better explanation of what the pain points are for tags vs folders. So I thought I would try to provide it. Pain point 1. remembering what you tagged things as. Sometimes remembering what you tagged something as is hard. In the characters & handouts section this isn't an issue. You have a handy button to bring up a list of all the tags on your characters and handouts. Great! Why don't we have that in our art library or the art seach widget? Booo. Folder man sad. Pain point 2. managing the tags for the 100 items you just uploaded/bought. If I upload a bunch of images, or buy a large token or tile pack, when I go in to the library manager, I can only see a few things at once, it takes a lot of scrolling to get to the end of a 200 tile map pack, and I can select all 200, but last time I tried to tag that many?? Nope, 30 item limit for mass taggging. This might have changed, I don't know. Maybe I bought a large token pack, or even 2 or 3 at the same time. I now need to select groups to tag as human, orc, etc. Lot of scrolling in the current library window. Gets kinda old/annoying. After I do that, I need to do it all over for the types of weapons they have, maybe the type of armor, mounted or on foot etc. My scrolling through the library manager has increased 10 fold. I probably stopped caring before I finished. The only alternative is to add tags on a token by token basis. I definitely stop caring before I finish that for 3 token packs. I probably go take a nap to recover my sanity, and don't do anymore until I remember that I didn't finish it during one of my prep sessions. Pain point 3. No way to exclude tags from a search, or specify whether a search is "AND" or "OR". If I have folders by encounter, or by city, or whatever system I set them up by, when I go into a folder I know I have the limited subset of things I want, and not similar items from another part of the world. Lets just say I search for human tokens, but I only want human tokens with a few different weapon types. Using only the human tag will give me too many results with different weapons, while using the weapon tag will give me tokens of the wrong race. I need to do several searches to get all the tokens I want, because if I add more than 1 weapon tag to the search, it only shows tokens with both tags. Sometimes I don't have a specific weapon I want them to use, but specific weapons I don't want them to use. Currently I have to bring up all the different weapon types and scroll through a seemingly endless list of tokens, ignoring the weapons I don't want to use because there are fewer types of them than there are types I want. I have always been folder based(since the days of DOS, on my dads 286), But I understand the THEORETICAL advantages of tags. That said, the current tools for managing tags and assets dont allow you to take advantage of them in some situations that are pretty common for people creating campaigns. I think a lot of the issues can be fixed with some UI changes(mostly to the art library management), but some will require a little more coding on the fuctional side(and/or searches). I know you are sick of people asking for folders. Adding real folders probably doesnt make sense, but Psudofolders using tags could certainly be implemented as an option, although fixing some of the pain points would probably reduce the number of calls for them. I Hope this helps you understand why people keep asking for them. And most of all I hope this helps you fix the pain points us folder people have with this new tag based world..... Thank you for your time and consideration of this issue.

Terrific post! +1 all the way around.

+1 for advanced searching with tags. NOT and OR would be exceptionally useful to many people.

Thank you Riley, for making such an awesome program. And for listening to your users.

I also saw most of the Q&A, and wanted to write about this. I'm only a few sessions into a campaign, and I can already see that my handouts section is going to take quite a lot of management to keep down as we move forward. Preferably I'd like to keep everything in there over the course of the campaign, but I'm already finding myself removing things just to make it easier to find what I need during play. Tags are great, but being able to cordon things off into folders for locations and/or sessions would potentially make the list a lot easier to handle. Personally however, I would add that if there was a flat 'archive' of characters and handouts, and only the ones owned by active players as well as ones that are 'starred' would show up, that would allow me to keep everything and as I'm preparing bring the stuff I need for the next session to the front. Seems like a thorny issue; don't mistake it for us not loving Roll20 :)

Put me in the "please make folders" crowd. I also understand the power of tagging, but realistically tagging requires careful design and planning to make sense of that. It has significant up front cost and planning to really pull off well. GMing is already exceptionally time consuming (but fun!), but I am also sure like me, some people don't have the time to sit down and plan out tags very well, designing a system that works for them and is easy to use and recall. Folders are simply visually easier for most people to consume and recognize, it's built into how we have interacted with computers for such a long time. So I agree with all of the points above and even suggest making "Pseudo folders" that realistically rely on tagging "under the covers". Again, thank you to all of the Roll20 team. This technology has really allowed me to reconnect with something I enjoy immensely, so I am thankful of the technology and happy to support the awesome development team!

Yeah +1 for this. I know tagging Vs Folders is a controversial issue, and I've read that Riley is pro-tagging in much of his design process, so we need to respect that, because i sure as hell couldn't code folders. I like the idea of Psudeo Folders. You wouldn't have to change how the library works. Just add a folder with a little arrow pin that rotates and it searches for the tag it's named for when you click it down. I do think doing something graphically is just simpler for on the fly management. When i'm building a map, i'm using 3 or 4 tile packs, and i'm not thinking "The thing i need is tagged like this". I'm thinking "I need something round and cool here", Human brains are incredible at recognizing patterns. I may look at completely seperate items in diffrent packs and decide they need to be together. I may want to create a place for PC's and Pets so they are always there, but i can hide them when i don't want to look at them. Same thing with Mobs. All 3 of the mentioned pain points are there. I hesitate to buy anything that won't let me download it, because i'm afraid i'll forget what the tag is, and it disappears into a library with thousands of web items in it, taking with it my beer money. A robust set of tools or ways of managing the library would do wonders for me. Another potential pain point is managing the library when you start hitting your capacity. Now I have to figure out what to remove .... if i got stuff packed away logically, but if i have to search for a tag that i used 3 years ago to make space for newer stuff. Tagging works well if you do the up front work correctly, but if you don't do that, then you just have random debris clogging up your system that we might never find. Imagine having a library with 10,000 assets in it. No way your gonna remember how stuff was tagged (did i name it 'planets' or 'worlds'?). Once again, not a complaint, just a request. Roll 20 Rocks, and I'll be a customer as long as you'll take my money. :)

I use tagging extensively for my campaign handouts and journals/character sheets. I however, do NOT use it for sorting my image library. The interface for that is just too cumbersome, regardless if it uses tags or folders. Being able to specify and/or/not in the tag search would be awesome.

I would add the annoyance that case matters for tags, so `npc` and `NPC` are not the same.

I would love folders. If you don't want to use folders, than just use tags. I want to use folders though, as do so many others.

Jarret B. said: I would love folders. If you don't want to use folders, than just use tags. I want to use folders though, as do so many others. I think that a visual tagging system (a tree-view or similar) would give us the best of both worlds. It could look and function like folders while keeping all the power of a tag system.

So, I've been reading this thread, and I think most of all a UI change would massively improve the tagging system. I myself am a folder man, but I gave it a shot to mock up what I think would improve the system a lot for me: Link Let me first sketch a context: When I think of a tag one day, I'll have forgotten about it the other. I may have an art asset tagged dwarf , rogue and bandit , but rest assured, in the heat of the campaign, I'll be looking for thief . If that doesn't work, I'll probably just start looking for dwarf. This however, leads me to scroll through the list of 17 dwarves, 3 dwarf locations and some other junk vaguely related to dwarves before I find the one I need. This leads me to point 1: 1. Size Matters I do think a big part of this problem is that the icons displayed in the Art Library are far too large. They take up so many space there's literally only 3 of them on screen at a time. I really do not need to see them in such minute detail, and really, it just causes slow-down in the loading time and consequently, the game. You really are working with limited space in that column and should try and pump as much out of it as possible. Think about maybe making the author names appear on hover-over, have the Library icons take some place on top of the image (giving it the double function of being an additional watermark),... Little tricks like that might help with opening up more room. 2. ABCs The Character tab, as mentioned above, has the tag list. This makes things a whole lot easier, however, it probably should have an alphabetical order. This would make organizing a LOT more doable. I can, for example, instantly see if I accidentally made a second, misspelled tag. 3. Search Bar When one scrolls down the list of massive icons, the search bar should come along. If I want to look for a different tag, scrolling up is a real pain. It would be nice to have a more uniform style like the one in the Character tab. You can also not just simplify, but even fine-tune the searching in specific areas by having Tokens, Maps and Portraits next to each other, instead of only 1/3 or ALL of them.

I like the mock up. I think 1 is a good point, 2 is something that Riley said in an interview somewhere should be system wide, but he has been implementing it when/where he finds it isn't set that way, so hopefully that will be fixed soon. 3 is probably the killer upgrade for the art search.

OMG folders please! +1

I just want to make sure that the 'leave it as tags and not folders' voice is being heard. I like tags, but I agree the interface could use some tweaks. +1 to tags.

+1

My vote is for a dual tag+folder system. I think a tagging mechanic with an optional folder look (folders auto-tag things) would work for both groups of users.

Gauss said: My vote is for a dual tag+folder system. I think a tagging mechanic with an optional folder look (folders auto-tag things) would work for both groups of users. That would be something that would suite me almost perfectly, especially if you could click on the pseudo folder and it autoactivates the search feature to display everything with that tag.

I think psudo folders could work with layered tags. Like npc.location1 or npc.location2 or vehicles.starships.starship1 or vehicles.tanks.tank1 just a thought I don't know if that would work.

First: Excellent post. Agree on all UI suggestions. Some thoughts: * There is no appreciable difference between folder and tags, except that an item may only be in ONE folder, but could have multiple tags. * Most of the advantages of tags are lost without a more robust search. * Folder users (I too have been using since 286) can 100% get folder effect by only applying one tag at a time to something, and changing that tag to "move" between folders. Tags are a super-set functionality wise, so by only using some of their functionality, you get folders. No big.

I have since my last post looked at the journal and noticed the tag button, with the list of tags there most of my complaints are gone. Now only if there was a similar system for the library.

Michael M. said: * Folder users (I too have been using since 286) can 100% get folder effect by only applying one tag at a time to something, and changing that tag to "move" between folders. Tags are a super-set functionality wise, so by only using some of their functionality, you get folders. No big. If & only if there is a List of Tags, then yes. Without a List appearing at the time you go to type the tag, you may put a Token in your "Dwarf" tag one week, then search or put a different token under "Dwarves" the next week. You may put a background image under "Backgrounds" one time, and "Backdrops" the next, then "Maps" another time, confusing easily.

Riley D. said: I have read this and it is good information. I will bookmark it and reference it again when we are planning the next update to see what we can make happen. Thank you for taking the time to write it. I agree with the OP, but want to add something to his points. He's right in that the lack of AND/OR/NOT removes a tremendous amount of benefit from using labels... but there is one he missed. I use Gmail, & love mah labels there, but I don't have to go to "all mail" & randomly search for is:unread OR:is:red sort-by:date-ascending AND NOT:trash AND NOT:spam or something. I can just click the inbox label automatically applied to every message until it's changed to spam/archive/deleted/etc. there should be certain universal labels like "character sheets" and such for character sheets & other labels just about everyone will need.