Guide to Tagging Reports v. October 2018 - Including Instructions for Back-Tagging
Hey guys, welcome and thanks for helping out! This post will explain how to tag reports, in particular for this back-tagging of old reports undertaking. To start, you should read this thread, as it explains what the tagging system is and what it is composed of. Once you do that, read the rest of this post.
It was rather labor-intensive, copying and pasting tag formats and changing them for every report. Fortunately, I have developed a tool that creates the tags for you. To use it, click this link to open it in a separate tab:
http://9931080.byethost5.com/tagger.html. Then click into a trip report and start reading it. I tend to skim because there are so many, but whatever you need to get an accurate sense of what the report contains. There are 4 categories of tags: substance(s) used, experience level, routes of administration, and experience types. As you go through the report, check off everything that applies, and select all the drugs mentioned. Here are some thoughts/notes for each category:
Drugs: The way you select a drug is to first choose the category from the drop-down (ie, tryptamine, dissociative, cathinone, opiate, etc etc), and then the specific drug dropdown will populate with all the individual drugs in that category. Select the one you want, and then click the "Select" button. It will add the drug to the list off to the right. You can click the red X button next to any drug to remove it if you make a mistake. Any number of drugs can be added this way. A single drug will add multiple substancecode tags, for the specific drug and its category or categories, and pharmaceuticals will also add a category for pharms. The pharms are probably the trickiest, in that if in the report the poster mentions a specific brand name, you should choose the "by brand name" category, and tags for the chemical as well as the brand will be added. If a brand name is not mentioned, you should use the "by chemical name" category and select the drug. Ie, if they say "Lortab", you'd select the Lortab from the "by brand name" category and it will add tags for lortab and hydrocodone, but if they just say hydrocodone, you'd select hydrocodone from the "by chemical name" category. There is an extensive list of ethnobotanicals, too (plants). There are 2 categories, one for proper scientific name and one for colloquial name... both are identical in terms of what tags they produce, I just created 2 lists to make it easier to find what you're looking for.
Experience Level: We have tags for first time, and 2nd time... after that, there is Inexperienced, Experienced, Very experienced, and retrospective. These are somewhat subjective (except for the first two) but just do your best on how it feels (and if someone self-identifies one, stick with that). The retrospective tag can be used in combination with the others... if it's a looking-back report rather than a description of one trip, it's a retrospective.
Routes of Administration: This is self-explanatory, just check all the ROAs mentioned across all substances mentioned in the report. For example, if they mentioned that they took LSD, plugged MDMA, and smoked marijuana, you'd select "sublingual" (for LSD, unless they mentioned they swallowed the tab without holding it in their mouth first, then oral instead), "rectal" and "smoked".
Experience Types: This is the most subjective. Read through all the different types. Many can be combined. For example, sometimes a trip can be positive and glowing but still with periods of difficulty, so all 3 of those can be checked. As far as whether a trip is positive, negative or neutral (one of these 3 should always be chosen), I tend to go with how the user seems to feel about it by the end. So if a report started really negative but turned positive, I'll mark it as positive. Some of the experience types deserve a brief explanation as to what they mean:
- glowing - for experiences where the user is really enthusiastic about it ("omg it was the best night ever" / "i LOVED this experience" / etc) - a stand out positive experience
- spiritual - If the user felt the experience was particularly spiritual for them
- life-changing - if the user reported the experience as having significantly altered their life as a result of the experience - this could be in a positive or negative way
- health issues - If the user reported any actual health issues (not perceived "omg I feel like I'm dying on the come-up" type stuff)
- bodyload - If the user reported above normal bodyload/the bodyload was an issue with the trip. If the bodyload dissipated after the come-up, don't check this option as that's fairly normal. We want this tag to be for people to be able to find reports where bodyload was a substantially noteworthy issue
- train wreck/disaster - Like Erowid's of the same name, this is for trips that fall to absolute pieces, ie, ambulance ride to the hospital, stripping naked, masturbating in front of people and running screaming down the street, serious harm occurring, etc
- addiction - If he report details addiction as a result of the drug(s) in the report (not for a mention of "careful this stuff seems addictive", but for full-blown addiction)
- overdose - If they mention an overdose
When you're done with a report, click "Generate Tags", edit the original post of the thread, and copy and paste the tags generated into the bottom of the post. And you're done! To start a new report, click the "New Report" button on the tagger. If you find that any drugs are missing (I spent a lot of time coming up with an exhaustive list but I'm absolutely sure I missed some), let me know and I'll add it. Any other ideas you have to improve it, I'm all ears.
One other thing, as you're tagging reports, change the titles to conform to guidelines if they don't conform (at various periods of time not much attention was pad to this by me/the mods). It should be:
Chemical(s) (sometimes people including dosage or ROA here too, that's fine) - Experience Level - Creative Title
Some examples of good thread titles are:
LSD - Second Time - Amazing bliss
MDMA (120mg) + Nitrous - Experienced - Awe-Inspiring
And sometimes people don't create a title and just put the substances in there... that's fine, there doesn't need to be a title. The most commonly missing info is experience level so sometimes you have to add it after you read the report.
Once you've done some reports I can check out what you did and see if I have any feedback.
Back-Tagging
Each of you has a sub-forum created that is labeled with your name. WR, you've got all the 2010 reports in yours, and D's, you have all the 2011 reports. The subforums are listed above the TR archive. What I've been doing is just going from top to bottom, renaming reports when necessary and tagging each one. Then when the whole page is done, I move all the threads on that page back in the TR forum proper so that I am always working on the first page... that makes it a lot easier to know where you left off. if you encounter threads that contain reports too short to be of any good (utterly lacking detail) or are actually questions or something, move them into the TR Wastebin subforum that TLB created. Also any moderator recruitment threads, etc, or any already UAd or closed threads, we don't need to keep those. When you eventually get done with a whole year, let me know and we'll get some more for you.
One other thing, sometimes you'll come across reports that have been tagged, but only with the substance, or sometimes just the substance and experience level. When you encounter these, please just treat them like they're not tagged and tag them... that was from an earlier version of tagging that was incomplete and we want all reports to use the modern format.
Thanks again for the help and let me know if you have any questions. It's a massive undertaking but it'll make this forum a vastly more usable and useful resource for people once I get the custom search engine header done that uses the tags. Once the back-tagging is caught up, it's very easy to just keep up with tagging new reports.