I'm Deadly Bread, and I'm the section head for tagging on MAST. Below I'll be describing what you need to get started with tagging live pages on the EN SCP Wiki site.
For an abbreviated process flowchart, see Tagging Guide.
Getting Started
For any tagging session, two pages are essential:
On the bottom right of the New Pages Feed (desktop only) you will see a list of untagged pages. This is determined as pages which lack a page type tag (e.g. scp, tale, hub, author, in-deletion, etc.) Because we track untagged pages this way, whenever you see a page incompletely tagged with a page type, you should clear it.
The other page is the list of tags. There are a few relevant categories within this page:
- Attribute Tags
- These apply to SCP articles only. We'll discuss them more thoroughly below.
- GoIs, Canons, Contests, Characters, etc.
- These are secondary tags which provide context about its posting and content.
- Major Page Tags
- These are the main tags which are applied to pages, including the page type.
- Staff Process Tags
- These apply to specific staff workflows. Unless you're on the relevant team don't worry about it: we will discuss images below.
Tagging Pages
So let's select an untagged page from the New Pages Feed and walk through the process of tagging it.
First, what kind of page is it? Most kinds don't require any kind of extensive tagging:
- author - author pages
- artwork - art pages
- hub - hubs (if the hub is for a particular canon or group of interest, it should have that group's tag)
- essay - site essays
- tale - tales
- goi-format - Group of Interest pages
And a set of uncommon page types. The following are for standalone pages with their own rating module, and should never be applied to scp articles.
- supplement - secondary pages which require a parent page to understand
- experiment - experiment logs such as Experiment Log 914
- exploration - exploration logs such as SCP-093 'Blue' Test
- incident - incident logs such as Incident Log 555-1
- interview - interview logs such as Interview 277-A
- fragment - pages without its own rating module which is parented to another page and exists within the fragment: category
Secondary Tags
Now that we know the page type, check if any of the following apply:
- audio - page has embedded audio
- video - page has embedded video
- co-authored - page was written by more than one author. check author post / attribution metadata to verify
- collaboration - page is open for edits, such as the SCP-914 logs
- 001-proposal - page is a SCP-001 proposal
- creepypasta - (for tales) page is a creepypasta not directly related to the SCP Foundation
- joke - (primarily for scps) page is a joke article, and is not serious in-universe
- adult - page has adult content
- Is this article part of a contest? If so it should get the contest tag.
Images
An important secondary tag is _image, which indicates that there exists an unlicensed image on the page. It may be useful to think of articles as existing in one of three states:
- (no tag) - the page has no images
- _image - the page has images, some of which are not verified as CC-compliant
- _cc - a member of Licensing staff has verified all the images
While tagging, our job is to match the tags to the page's actual state.
- An article with _cc already should be left as-is.
- An article with an image but no image tags should have _image applied.
- An article with no images should have the _image tag removed.
Only Licensing staff are permitted to add or remove the _cc tag.
Finally, does the page have the new License Box? If so, add the _licensebox tag.
Characters and Groups of Interest
For scp, tale, goi-format and supplement pages, look through the article for groups of interest, characters, and locations which appear prominently in the article. If it is set in a canon or series, apply that tag as well.
If you're not tagging a scp, tale, goi-format, or supplement page, you are done tagging.
GoI Formats
GoI formats are slightly more involved than tales. For a UIU format you would apply "goi-format unusual-incidents-unit _unusual-incidents-unit".
Note that the hidden tag (with the underscore) designates what kind of GoI format the page is, and as such there should only be one per page. More than one GoI tag may exist for prominent appearances within the piece.
SCP Articles
Now for the fun part, skips! This will be the majority of your work as a tagger, so let's jump in:
Object Classes
The easiest part of tagging is the object class. An article should have exactly one of:
- safe
- euclid
- keter
- thaumiel
- neutralized
- explained (if an -EX)
- esoteric-class - if it's nonstandard or anything other than the above (including being absent)
Do not dual tag articles. Older pages (e.g. Clef's Proposal) have been grandfathered in, but new pages should be given exactly one of the above tags.
Attributes
The most challenging and time-consuming of SCP tagging is due to the existence of attribute tags, which as mentioned at the start describe the anomalous object. It is important to remember that tags are applied if they are a thing, not if it's merely related.
For instance, an article about dinnerware would not get food merely because it is related to eating, the anomaly would need to be a pineapple or stick of gum.
Because of this, most of the attribute tag information is going to come from the description. Look for sentences declaring what the skip *is*, and then go through the rest of the piece looking for hints about unspecified or implied properties, or "updates" to the file.
If there are multiple versions or offsets, the final or "true" version should be used. The same applies for object class.
Attribute Tag Tips
While attribute tags are generally a matter of looking through the tag list and finding descriptors that match the anomaly, there are some common things that are worth remembering.
First, read through Tech Hub Tag to see common requirements and tag FAQs.
Some other points to remember:
- If the anomaly is humanoid, consider whether it's sapient or a cadaver.
- If the anomaly is sapient, consider whetheralive applies.
- autonomous (think robot) and alive (think animal or plant) are generally exclusive.
- Be judicious with meta, it shouldn't be applied to any pataphysics or fourth wall piece (where you should alsocheck if narrative applies), the article itself needs to be modified directly either as a result of the anomaly or as a result of its containment.
- Anomalies which are themselves ideas or primarily manifest through ideatic generally have concept.
- Generally media hazards are memetic or cognitohazard, the observational tag is for anomalies like SCP-173, where they are affected by whether they are being perceived or not.
- If it is a cognitohazard, consider whether it's visual, auditory, tactile, etc.
- If the anomaly is or crosses dimensions, universes, etc., apply extradimensional.
- If the anomaly is not on Earth, apply extraterrestrial. See if satellite, moon, or sun apply.
- If an article mentions a specific K-class scenario, add k-class-scenario.
- If a page is a GoI format for a group of interest without a tag, it gets _other.
General Tips
I keep a separate editor open to add tags as I read the article. When first opening a page, I add contest tags if any, add _image if I see an image, and then add scp and the object class.
"Phenomena" or event anomalies can be tricky to tag, since the tagging system mostly assumes objects or entities or some sort. Look to see if concept, physics, ectoentropic, transfiguration, telekinetic, teleportation, or swarm are helpful in understanding what tags could apply.
If you see a person has applied invalid tags or incompletely tagged, see PM Templates.
Getting Started
Coordinate in the tagging channel in the MAST discord, and add your tagged articles on the workbench.