To aid in tagging work and identifying the best tags, we have made a tag grading system. Tags can be classified as Stub, C-Class, B-Class, A-Class, and, on very rare occasions, Featured. See the criteria for each grade below.
[Coming soon!] We will provide convenient lists of tags currently in each grade. And probably add an easy, consistent way to view grade on the tag themselves.
Note: only tagging moderators may change the grade of a tag or append notes in the Tag Meta string. If you believe a tag should have a different grade, please say on the tag’s Talk page [coming soon] or the Tags Discussion/Talk Thread. We may change this once the system is more established.
All tags start out with a default grade of stub. Usually, the mods will notice quickly if a tag is more than a stub, but you can ping us if you think we’ve missed something.
As of 2020/7/22: A tag’s grade will be viewable in a sentence or paragraph within its text body that has the following format:
Tag Status: <Grade>[; <notes>]
Examples
Tag Status: B-Class
Tag Status: Stub
Tag Status: Flagged; duplicate with Fallacies
Tag Status: C-Class; great posts but description doesn’t list related tags
Only those given tag moderator privileges should change these strings at this time. If you have been given authorization to change them, please note that while the optional notes in the Tag Meta string should be kept short, it is allowed to be longer so long as no linebreaks are used. This is crucial for making the notes “machine-readable”.
The tag grade string should be placed beneath the opening sentence or paragraph of the tag description. All users may move the tag grade/tag meta string to maintain its proper place.
| Class | Criteria |
★ Featured | A few tags will merit Featured classification. These are A-Class tags that score extremely well on almost all criteria and can be held up as exemplars of outstanding tags. |
A-Class | This tag is a terrific resource. The concept is well-defined and well-explained in high-quality, enjoyable writing. Ambiguity in the concept is addressed. Almost all relevant posts have been tagged and relevance-voted upon appropriately to create a good ordering. The tag contains multiple top-tier posts. The description links to related concepts and is contextualized clearly within LessWrong's overall concept ontology. Examples are provided where necessary. Introductory and highly-significant posts are identified in the description. External resources are linked to as well, where these would be of interest to the user. The description is engaging, possibly with quotes or a dash of humor. A user unfamiliar with the concept can use the tag to quickly understand the concept and find the most important content. A user familiar with the concept will be able to find the latest most significant contributions. |
B-Class | The tag has a very solid description/explanation and many high-quality posts are contained therein, perhaps approximately all relevant ones from LessWrong. This is a great resource for someone interested in the topic, either for finding the all-time best content or the latest best content. Example: Postmortems & Retrospectives (as of 2020/7/22) Actions: Explain how this tag relates to neighboring tags, expand the tag description to identify key posts related to the tag (introductory and/or landmark) as well as external resources. |
C-Class | The tag has a basic adequate description for defining/explaining the concept and 5-10 posts of decent quality have been tagged. [Tags on definitely important concepts for which there simply aren't many posts might be given C-, or even B-Class status, despite not having many posts tagged.] A user can get a basic idea of a concept from this tag and find some related resources; however, the explanation is lacking and key material is not necessarily identified, tagged posts may not be especially good. Further, the description may be a little flat. Example: Conservation of Expected Evidence (as of 2020/7/22) Actions: tag more high-quality posts relevant to the concept, write a more engaging or helpful description, provide a See Also section that references related tags. Identify key posts and introductory material |
Stub | This post lacks a description, has only a sentence-long description, or the tag has few posts tagged. Tags with this classification are limited resources for a concept, either being unclear in their definition, lacking many good posts, or having an unclear relationship to neighboring tags.
A tag may also be designated a stub if has grown to contain too many posts without adequately clear connection to the concept. This is a way in which higher grade tags may revert to stubs.
However, it is often good to create stub tags for important concepts even before they are fully developed. Example: Alief (as of 2020/7/22) Actions: write better description, rename for more clarity, merge with existing/split, add more posts. |
Flagged | This classification is to identify tags that have a serious issue such as being a duplicate or covering a possibly unsuitable topic, e.g., the 2020 Election. |