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How should we tag the following types of structures?

Obviously they are very different in purpose and structure, but many travellers may not be focussed on these details and may use one term where another is more technically accurate. For a while we have had and the somewhat related tags and . Recently tags for , , , and were also added.

It's likely not be practical to have separate tags for all of them, since travellers would likely be interested in visiting any castle-like or fort-like structure, not any of these in particular.

I asked a question on English-SE some time ago about this, and most of the answers are not of great use for our site's needs. We had a small-ish discussion on meta as well, and a prolonged chat discussion a long time ago. But the issue was never resolved satisfactorily.

Vote up or down the suggestions below and add comments as necessary.

Other options? Add your own using similar format to the answers provided.

1
  • Most of the proposals here only mention the "what" and the "how". What they should do is focus on the "why". Instead of saying "put A and B together and call it Z" they should argue why it makes sense from the point of view of a travel Q&A site. In fact each proposal should include both the pros and the cons. Not so much just for this tag issue, but to set some standard practice to adhere to as well.
    – hippietrail
    Commented Oct 24, 2012 at 10:42

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
4

Tag based on structure's purpose:

Use to cover castles and chateaux, and create for citadels, fortresses, forts, city walls and similar defensive structures with military significance. An important distinction between the two is that should be for structures which were a residence of an important person, while is for structures strictly with military purpose.

Proposed changes:

  • create which covers defensive structures like fortresses, citadels, city walls, defensive towers, stockades, compounds, bunkers and other structures with strictly military purpose.
  • use for castles and any similar residential structures with fortifications.
  • create for chateaux, palaces, manor houses and similar which typically don't have fortifications.
10
  • So we have a tripartite separate of: +fortified -residential / +fortified +residential / -fortified +residential right? That would leave all structures of type -fortified -residential to still go under the architecture tag - or should those all be subcategorized too?
    – hippietrail
    Commented Oct 23, 2012 at 7:55
  • @hippietrail: correct, those difficult to categorize could find a better home under architecture or landmarks.
    – mindcorrosive
    Commented Oct 23, 2012 at 8:12
  • I think to justify this separation we have to imagine what kind of traveller will want to visit residences but not castles, or castles but not forts. People studying various fields? Sure. Regular travellers? Educate me.
    – hippietrail
    Commented Oct 24, 2012 at 5:37
  • @hippietrail: blame SE for lack of tag organization and English for lack of a collective term :-) In all seriousness, I think with sufficient number of tag synonyms and descriptive tag wikis this would work adequately, and this alternative is a reasonable compromise between usability, correctness and organization.
    – mindcorrosive
    Commented Oct 24, 2012 at 6:46
  • I think SE leaves organization of tags up to the individual sites, but their choice of the term "synonym" seems to cause people to think like dictionaries rather than like travellers when it comes to grouping tags. I don't think correctness and organization should be factors at all. Tags are only there for being useful for travellers to find the kinds of topics, questions, and answers that they have in mind.
    – hippietrail
    Commented Oct 24, 2012 at 7:36
  • +1 This sounds the most sensible to me. I'd keep castles and fortresses separate, and certainly wouldn't lump everything under architecture. (I'd probably make fortresses the main tag instead of fortifications though.)
    – Jonik
    Commented Oct 24, 2012 at 8:15
  • I like, but not the residences part. And would also like Jonik, prefer fortresses over fortifications.
    – Mark Mayo Mod
    Commented Oct 24, 2012 at 10:51
  • 1
    @Mark: residences could go in either landmarks or architecture. I'm not entirely persuaded by fortresses being the main tag, I was thinking to include stuff like the Great Wall of China as well, for which fortifications work better. But I don't feel that strongly about it.
    – mindcorrosive
    Commented Oct 24, 2012 at 11:19
  • Where would the "Tower of London" belong? And would all users intuit the same choice of tag? What about "Fort Knox"?
    – hippietrail
    Commented Oct 25, 2012 at 3:00
  • Tower of London, after a glimpse at its wiki article: castles and maybe landmarks. Fort Knox covers 441 sq km and has lots of stuff in it (active military base, museums, bullion depository), so depends on the specific question.
    – Jonik
    Commented Oct 27, 2012 at 7:38
0

Tag based on structure's appearance

Just forget about the whole mess and use for everything with walls and for everything without, despite its factual incorrectness. This is a very practical approach from both user and administration perspective.

Proposed changes:

  • Use for structures with walls, such as citadels and castles, regardless of its purpose.
  • Use for similar structures without walls, such as manors and palaces.
-1

Tag based on travel-relatedness:

We're not an architecture classification site, so how important is it to anybody to group such questions by what seems to be a very subtle set of criteria to keep some questions together and others separate?

Proposed changes:

  • Merge all of the currently existing tags into the tag. For world famous buildings such questions can also use the tag or introduce their own tag as has been done already for .
-2

Separate tag for everything

Use the Wiki pages as guidance which terms are combined together. In this way, fortresses and forts would be covered by , and the rest gets their own tag. The name of the structure would often include the correct term, for example Neuschwanstein Castle or Lille Citadelle, which makes categorization easy.

Proposed changes:

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