Suggestions for topic tags in the forum

[ethancrawford]

Hi all,

You may have noticed that we recently enabled tags here on in_thread.
This is one thing we are exploring as part of our interest in improving the forum. (This came about in recent discussions around making in_thread more approachable for beginners and first-timers to Sonic Pi. See here):

A need for a Starter section

Hi there, As sonic pi first goal was children, it seems this forum needs a “starter zone” to avoid to afraid new users as mentioned by @Eli My first Sonic PI song, well .... tryout after reading the tutorial - #22 by Eli The same feeling when I posted : Some rules : use of the internal samples only commented code short piece of code use only the sonic pi syntax copy / paste code into their sonic pi must work the plus would be a audio player to listen to the result (yes this forum needs an …

Making it easy to filter topics based on more specific themes than the overall categories may be quite useful. For example: we could indicate the technical complexity of a topic, mark a question or issue as being related to a particular Operating System, classify a musical creation as being in a particular musical style, group personal introduction posts into similar geographical regions… the list goes on.

For the moment, it appears that management of tags is limited to in_thread admins and moderators, but in the interest of trying to minimise any inconvenience this may cause, I’m opening up this discussion to ask for feedback and suggestions about useful tags that we can create as a first trial run.

[ethancrawford]

Here are some initial ideas for tags that I thought might be useful - please do comment on/critique them, and add your own suggestions (and explanations too if it is useful).

advanced
beginner (or basic?)
generative
includes-unofficial-code (for indicating code examples which use unsupported (eg plain Ruby) code?
custom-functions-and-libraries

how-to
sound-design
external-hardware
external-software
alternative-editors
visuals

western-music-theory
non-western-music-theory

question
feedback-requested

macOS
windows
linux
raspberry-pi

midi
osc

[Prof1220]

Hu all,
I think that adding tag s is a very nice idea!
I suggest the tag: education
For discussions about how teachers use sonic.pi at school.

Another suggestion. What about the tag: language (or something similar), for discussions about a single command in Sonic.pi, such as : ‘"sync’’ or “in_thread do”? (maybe it is overlapping to the tag “how to”, and then not very useful?).

All the best.
Leo.

[ethancrawford]

I like the idea of ‘language’
My ‘how-to’ suggestion might not conflict with it - you can post a discussion about how to do something that doesn’t require Sonic Pi code
(There will no doubt be times where it’s unclear what tag suits a topic, but at the end of the day, they don’t have to be perfect - they are just a small tool that might help people a little bit to search for information, and if they do make it a bit easier, then great ).

Re ‘education’, there is a topic category for ‘educators’ - what do people think about the idea of renaming that category to ‘education’? Or are educators and education distinct enough to remain separate? Thoughts?

[nlb]

Hi @ethancrawford

Thanks for this tags list. It seems good enough. As far as the language is concerned, i think it will be useful. English Français Spanish Dutch Japanese. By the way who can create new tag ? only moderators and admins ?
Cheers

[CarleaJeanLtd]

@ethancrawford I work in UX/UI Design and have created a prototype that I would love to share with @samaaron and the team! Lets set up a meeting! Sending Love!!

carleajean@gmail.com

[samaaron]

Hi @CarleaJeanLtd - are you talking about topic tags (the context of this post) or something else?

Either way, would you have any issue sharing your thoughts here with the community on the forums?

[ethancrawford]

@nlb: (and others who wish to know): Sam has mentioned that in_thread users must be what are classed as ‘regular’ users to create a tag (by which I also assume the same applies for deleting/editing tags etc).
For the definition of regular users, you can refer to this guide by the creators of the discourse platform (that in_thread is built on):

Understanding Discourse Trust Levels

[CarleaJeanLtd]

Both! lol & of course! Im more of a shower than a teller, so let me put something together and ill get it to the forum, would love feedback!

[ethancrawford]

Great, looking forward to it

[mlange]

I would like to suggest a tag to label posts that deal with making data audible. A fresh example of what I mean is presented in this thread:

Sonic Pi's evolution in 40 minutes - Ever listened to a Git history?

Thinking about which kind of data might be suitable to render in an audible way, I came up with the idea that “audioalize” (like visualize) the Git histrories of software projects. The script below does exactly that. For example, you can listen to the history of Sonic Pi, rendered into a 40 minutes piano piece. For those not familiar with using Git, I recorded the first few minutes (starting at approx. commit 1000): Each commit produces one note. Timing is proportional to commit time and date…

Is there any english word for that, e.g. audioalization as the counterpart of visualization?

EDIT: based on the below reply by @ethancrawford, I would suggest the tag data-sonification.

[ethancrawford]

I believe the term is ‘sonification’

[mlange]

Ah, thanks a lot! I was not aware of that word. There is also a respective Wikipedia entry: Sonification - Wikipedia

[anonymous4991]

1. it would be nice to have a category ux/ui - who wants to talk about design, graphical interface, about sonic-pi would be a great place to exchange ideas
2. it would be nice to have a category test/bugs - who wants to talk about flaws or mistakes or bug