Best practices: tagging and titling

There's an enormous number of labels for this blog, which is pretty straightforward to deal with - just add or delete them as I go. More problematically, I have no idea how to title things, which is already becoming obnoxious because I'm busily retitling blog posts (and breaking links) as I go. It stands to reason that I should set some official blog policy down on this stuff, if only to save myself some work.

So, for the record, here goes nothing.

Titles of posts

As much as possible, titles should be short.

• Initial "the" should be avoided unless what follows is an acronym. ("The UCNA" is okay.)
• As much as is possible, names should be colloquial and correspond to the ones that are already being used in the blog. "Great Russia" was titled this way because that's what I call them, even though they change their name with distressing frequency.
• "Introducing" should never be necessary in a post title, and should be edited out of it.
• "Reintroducing" is okay, though, especially if you're dealing with a real name.
• Where things are thematically linked, their names should reflect that. All noble families should follow the "House of ________" format, for instance.

This should suffice for the moment.

Tagging posts

Nations should be tagged with the following tags:

• Each century that the nation existed in, at least in the incarnation that's being blogged about.
• Whatever region (or regions) the nation is in, as well as any remarkable super-state blocs (i.e. "Holy Roman Empire," "the CRC," etc.)
• If the post is about an era in the history of a nation, rather than simply a nation, it should also be tagged "historiography" to indicate that. (France after the Wars of Religion isn't so much a nation as a period of a nation, but it's such a big one that it absolutely calls for the title.)
• This means that, prior to the Taiping Revolt, all of China's states will be given the "historiography" tag.
• There's no need to tag it as a nation unless there's an actual regime change. Plebeian Cabralia, for instance, is actually more an unpacking of *Brazil's early history than it is a specific government. Chinese (or French) dynasties, by contrast, absolutely merit the "nations" tag.
• Nations shouldn't have their own names as a tag unless it represents a very specific iteration of the same, and usually not even then. (Thus far in the history of Andalusada, I've only done it with dual monarchies.)

Persons should be tagged accordingly:

• First off, as "people," unless there's reasonable doubt whether they existed (i.e. Saint Sakura.)
• Second off, if it's a biography, it should be tagged "biographies." (Not all things tagged "people" are biographies. Lists of people merit the "people" tag.)
• Each century that they were important in, rather than when they were simply alive. (Günther was born in 1484, but he's tagged 1500 because that's when he started doing things.)

Wars should be tagged "wars," obviously. Further than that:

• Every major participating nation should be listed in the tags.
• "Historiography" if the war has cultural resonance above and beyond the actual combat. (The American Civil War would merit this; the War of 1812, not so much.)

As other categories need classifying, practices for this will be worked into the list.

Oh, and one last thing: posts that are about the blog itself, rather than the writing, will never be tagged. They should be saved in the sidebar, marked "Scrapblogging 101," for my convenience.

Tag definitions

As a rule of thumb, tags should be self-referential unless it would take a lot of explaining.

• America: Continental North America.
• Andalusada: Any posts that break the fourth wall about Andalusada itself. The Very Poor Introduction series, for instance, merits this tag.
• Cabralia: Continental South America.
• Historiography: Most of the Andalusada Scrapbook is, by definition, history. Stuff tagged "historiography" means that it's history about history.
• Mad libs: Something I've learned while writing Andalusada is that there's an enormous number of names that need to be created and kept track of, and usually I have no idea what those names are. Whenever a post seems particularly plagued with this, it's going to be tagged "mad libs" as a reminder to come back to it and fill in all the blanks.
• Parerga: Anything that's about details of the world of Andalusada, rather than the history itself, that isn't related to religion, food, languages, or guns.
• Real names: Beyond a certain point, I want to try to keep Andalusada divergent rather than convergent. There are, however, certain circumstances in which historic people IRL will show up in Andalusada (specifically when it'd be significantly harder to work around them than to just leave them in), and certain circumstances in which I'll resurrect a name from IRL anyways (mostly to keep Andalusada canny while highlighting the difference between, say, Karl Marx ITTL vs. IRL.) Any cases of this will be tagged with "real names" to keep it clear.
• Stub: Any incomplete work that's nonetheless freestanding and coherent on its own is a stub. It can (and should) be expanded on, but it can wait for a bit.
• Work in progress: Any incomplete post that isn't freestanding and coherent on its own, by contrast, is a work in progress.