Better Grouping, Better Searching

[Jack_Indivisible]

Breeders (and traders, to an extent) all have a problem with the current format of dragon cave. That problem is that there is way too much info to keep track of in someones head, and no satisfactory way to keep track of it in the cave. Don't get me wrong, the groups definitely help, but it's simply not enough, and not integrated well enough into the cave.

 

There are several problems I have with the current setup. First of all, group aren't searchable, and search isn't implemented at all for things like breeding. Being able to search by group, and search on breeding pages, would make everyone's life a lot easier. Second of all, the entire interaction with adding and removing from groups is pretty clunky. I'd like to see drag and drop functionality added, and drag-and-drop is a solved problem in web design. Third, I'd like to see something finer grained than the current groups we have right now. Having either nested folders or tabs would be really nice, and would help remove group clutter that can build up if you try to make a group for every generation of every breeding project like I do. For an example of what this could really do, you could keep track of how many kids your bsa dragons have had, and keep yourself from always breeding your oldest pair whenever you find yourself in an emergency for some new blood and never having anybody to breed with their kids, or their grandkids.

 

 Being able to tag dragons isn't so nice if you have really regular groups like I do, but It would be a lot of help to traders and collectors, who have a bunch of mixed holidays, holidaykin, metals, metalkins, and all sorts of lineages. Being able to tag and search all your stairsteps, or checkers, or goldfails would be a massive qol improvement in keeping track of exactly what kind of lineages you have, and opportunities you have for breeding projects that you don't want to spend space on your group page for.

 

Neither of those suggestions are hard to implement, either. Folder structures aren't so much a solved problem as the basis of almost every file system since the dawn of computing, while tags are fundamental to databases, and have a very solved problem, especially on the web.

 

 

[angelicdragonpuppy]

I would really like checkers and searchable breeding lists, just like fertility currently works where you can filter by name or type (and in time, maybe tags!). I realize it can be lag intensive, though, so keep the normal breeding at default and let people enable “smart” breeding in account settings if they want it.

 

This is also another bit of organizational housekeeping, but I would like to be able to REMOVE or REARRANGE previous mates on the breeding list. I have pairs that I  accidentally bred to the wrong things (like a 2g instead of a CB), or maybe a matching line that later got replaced by a nicer variant of the line. It would be so helpful if I could kick these dragons back to their normal place on my scroll instead of the upper mate selection. More than once when doing a large breeding of nice lineages I’ve wrongly picked an old unwanted mate unwittingly assuming it was a good pairing because hey, it’s up there, and then while I realize my mistake I’ve forgotten all about it the next time I go to breed them. >__<

[HeatherMarie]

Personally I think the groups would satisfy pretty much all my organizational needs if they were just a little more fleshed-out. There have been *many* suggestions/posts since Groups were introduced asking for filters, and honestly that's something that many people were surprised *wasn't* a function when Groups were introduced. The entire point of Groups, imo, is to have better/easier access to your dragons. Right? But when you can't use Groups at *all* on the 'breeding' page, which is arguably the most data-intensive page people will use on any sort of regular basis, it can get very frustrating. Having the exact same filter that Fertility uses would be awesome on the breeding page, while being able to actually filter by *group* would be even better. 

 

I really don't need nested groups or tons of tags or any of that stuff, I'd just like the already-implemented *groups* to function better. There are so many things that Groups *could* be used for, but right now can't. So much potential there, and yet right now they really don't do anything at all beyond showing us our dragons in a certain way. It would be so wonderful to use Groups to filter breeding, but it would also be great to have other expanded group functions... Like maybe automatically adding all 'such-and-such' dragons in the future (ie, right now when we make a group we can 'add same breed' to add all our current dragons of that same breed, but it would be great to check something so that every dragon you get *after* making the group, that is the same breed or same lineage or whatever, will just be automatically added to the group).

[Jack_Indivisible]

2 hours ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

I realize it can be lag intensive,

I was wondering what you meant by that, then remembered some people have 2000+ dragons  That is a difficult problem.

2 hours ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

but I would like to be able to REMOVE or REARRANGE previous mates on the breeding list.

YES

1 hour ago, HeatherMarie said:

I really don't need nested groups or tons of tags or any of that stuff, I'd just like the already-implemented *groups* to function better.

True, but while we're sugesting, we might as well suggest the moon.

1 hour ago, HeatherMarie said:

that is the same breed or same lineage or whatever, will just be automatically added to the group

That's actually a lot more complicated than anything else, and basically requires TJ to come up with either some kind of smart tag system or a powerful tree description language, probably farther than anything he's done in the cave before

[Fuzzbucket]

I have 7000+. Lag is already a small problem when breeding.... And the idea of tagging them all makes my blood run cold.

 

The only thing I'd REALLY like to see would be the ability to filter breeding to show a particular group.

[Ruby Eyes]

Eh, tagging is just another word for grouping. In both cases, you assign a label "a" to a creature of yours, and possibly also a label "b" or "c". Just TJ happens to call these labels "groups".

 

I'm missing filtering by groups (or filtering at all) when breeding, filtering by groups for fertilizing, filtering creatures that are in group "a" AND group "b", and yes, I'd also love sorting my scroll by certain groups (as suggested in another thread, by TJ himself even if I recall correctly).

 

I don't care so much about drag 'n drop (I'm not the most skilled person with the mouse).

 

I'd like to be able to remove previous mates from the mates list.

I'd like to be able to remove certain dragons alltogether from the available mates list.

 

I'd like to have an easier way to mass-remove dragons from a group (just like I can add them, e.g. "all of this breed" or "all from this lineage") when I'm done with part of a group but don't want to outright delete it. Or just add an "x" button next to each creature in a group instead of making me open that popup, scroll through my groups and de-select that checkmark for EVERY SINGLE CREATURE I want to remove. Again, I'm not the most skilled person with the mouse, so I end up selecting and de-selecting the wrong group way too often this way.

Edited September 19, 2018 by Ruby Eyes

[Aalbiel]

Search within groups would indeed be a very nice feature to have.

 

As well as "cross-grouping". Aka once you're on the page for Group A, you can filter for dragons that are also in Group B.

[GhostMouse]

Yes to basically everything suggested. Cross-referencing between groups, being able to filter by group in searches like on the breeding page, removing old mates from the top of the breeding list, removing dragons from the breeding list entirely, having "all of this breed/lineage/etc" apply to future dragons, and yes yes yes to tags! I want to see every group a dragon is in when I'm on their page (just visible to the scroll owner, not to everyone) and to see those tags when breeding.

But I've said or agreed with most of these suggestions in various threads scattered around this forum.

[angelicdragonpuppy]

@Ruby Eyes to me groups feel very bulky and generalized while tags are discrete and specific. Let’s say I’m having trouble finding a last 3g Sunsong x Gold checker I swore I had, or a 4g dragon from all four Snow Angel variants. A group might get me to “checkers” or “Spriter’s Alts,” but it’s not going to get me to the specific ones I want the way tags would.

 

On a related note, if tags happen I’d really like them to pop up when you hover over a dragon during breeding or sorting. Again, this is a level of fine detail you couldn’t have with groups. I arrange dragons in a specific order on my scroll (CB —> SAs —> Prizekins —> Checkers —> Other pretty lines —> Messies) and often arrange within those groups as well (ie all the Sunsong x Gold checkers together). But when I’m sorting a fresh new batch of twenty adult dragons among a dozen breeds, it can be hard to remember where each subgroup starts and ends, and I’m forced to clunkily open up a seperate lineage page to tell what exactly the neighbors are like. This, again, isn’t something groups would help with.

 

And @Fuzzbucket yes, adding tags would take a while, but if you’re like the majority of lineage breeder who keep seperate databases anyway (on mobile, can’t tell if you have one linked in your sig XD), you know the effort pays off. And it’s not like you MUST tag everything, or that tags and better group management can’t go hand in hand.  

 

[Ruby Eyes]

12 minutes ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

 to me groups feel very bulky and generalized while tags are discrete and specific. Let’s say I’m having trouble finding a last 3g Sunsong x Gold checker I swore I had, or a 4g dragon from all four Snow Angel variants. A group might get me to “checkers” or “Spriter’s Alts,” but it’s not going to get me to the specific ones I want the way tags would.

I still fail to see the difference. No matter if you search by "tag" or by "group" name, you end up getting a list of matching dragons. It all depends on how well you did your housekeeping before, how meticulously you assigned each dragon to where it belongs, in your world.

 

What I'm trying to say is, if you managed to deal with groups before, you don't need to be afraid of tags, since they are essentially the SAME, just with a different name.

 

Groups like in DC are not like a file system, where each file can only be in exactly 1 folder and every other instance of that file is just a copy. Each dragon can be in x groups, just like it could have x tags. Just try your imagination for a moment and mentally rename the "add to groups" drop down to "assign tags".

 

What we need is a better handling for what we have, not yet another labelling system.

Edited September 19, 2018 by Ruby Eyes

[angelicdragonpuppy]

@Ruby Eyes but then every time I tried to filter by groups, instead of getting a handful of high use ones (like my current breakdown of IOU, WIP, 2g Prize, 2g SA, and Sunsong), I’d get a million and one. Making groups for what’ll often amount to very tiny amounts of dragons (all my Sunsong x Gold checkers is probably 9 dragons, all my Snow Angel variant containing dragons is maybe 2) just seems wasteful to me. Tags are hidden and easier to stamp on then making new groups over every little thing.

 

I see it as groups being computer folders and tags being file names. The first is good for amassing large collections of whatever, the second for picking out specifics.

Edited September 19, 2018 by angelicdragonpuppy

[Ruby Eyes]

2 minutes ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

a handful of high use ones

Tags - whatever you think these are - would not solve that. What you seem to be looking for is an activity tracker.

Believe it or not, I do have a group for my current "high use" ones to which I add or from which I remove dragons frequently. That doesn't mean that the same dragons couldn't be assigned to other groups at the same time.

 

3 minutes ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

I see it as groups being computer folders and tags being file names.

As I explained above already: Groups are NOT like folders. Because each file can only be in ONE folder, while each dragon can be assigned to MULTIPLE groups.

If you have been using groups like folders up to now, you apparently haven't used them to their full extent yet.

[angelicdragonpuppy]

X___x

 

I would like groups to be my big things, the things I show at the top of my scroll, the things I filter by. THOSE are my high use things, my IOUs and 2g Prizes and what not. 

 

I don’t want to have to make a thousand five-dragon-strong groups to find little specific things like “Marrow x Rosebud checker” or “has Aegis alts,” which would clutter up the filters I use for more important things. I know dragons can be in multiple groups, some of mine are, but I don’t want a thousand little groups.

 

I think tags would be quicker to tack on then groups are to make. 

 

I also think tags would be handier to use when sorting or breeding than groups are.

 

Maybe you have a more idealistic vision of groups, but right now I see them as overlapping some aspects of tagging, but not replacing them. I like groups, but if I’d had the choice I would’ve picked tags over them.

Edited September 19, 2018 by angelicdragonpuppy

[JavaTigress]

10 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

Personally I think the groups would satisfy pretty much all my organizational needs if they were just a little more fleshed-out. There have been *many* suggestions/posts since Groups were introduced asking for filters, and honestly that's something that many people were surprised *wasn't* a function when Groups were introduced. The entire point of Groups, imo, is to have better/easier access to your dragons. Right? But when you can't use Groups at *all* on the 'breeding' page, which is arguably the most data-intensive page people will use on any sort of regular basis, it can get very frustrating. Having the exact same filter that Fertility uses would be awesome on the breeding page, while being able to actually filter by *group* would be even better. 

 

I really don't need nested groups or tons of tags or any of that stuff, I'd just like the already-implemented *groups* to function better. There are so many things that Groups *could* be used for, but right now can't. So much potential there, and yet right now they really don't do anything at all beyond showing us our dragons in a certain way. It would be so wonderful to use Groups to filter breeding, but it would also be great to have other expanded group functions... Like maybe automatically adding all 'such-and-such' dragons in the future (ie, right now when we make a group we can 'add same breed' to add all our current dragons of that same breed, but it would be great to check something so that every dragon you get *after* making the group, that is the same breed or same lineage or whatever, will just be automatically added to the group).

I do agree that I wish we could do more stuff with groups( which we already have!) 

For instance I really LIKE your suggestion of making the breeding page filterable BY GROUP ( or perhaps tags could do that?).( I'd have instant access to all my CBs when breeding, then!) AND,personally,I'd LOVE the option to highlight more groups than four!

 

I don't think I am opposed to the idea of tags on top of that, though. They would fill a slightly different function, I think, like @angelicdragonpuppy said.

BOTH could be useful tools ( And I believe groups could be made MORE useful?)

 

 

Edited September 19, 2018 by JavaTigress

[Ruby Eyes]

36 minutes ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

I think tags would be quicker to tack on then groups are to make. 

 

I see that more as a flaw of creating groups than a necessity to add yet another thing to implement. Really, when I'm on a dragon's page and want to add it to a *new* to-be-created group, the "new group" page shouldn't even pop up, it should just ask me for a name and use default sorting and visibility for it until I feel bothered to change those, and then just auto-add the current dragon!

 

 

36 minutes ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

I also think tags would be handier to use when sorting or breeding than groups are.

 

I'm still not convinced about that.

 

 

36 minutes ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

Maybe you have a more idealistic vision of groups, but right now I see them as overlapping some aspects of tagging, but not replacing them. I like groups, but if I’d had the choice I would’ve picked tags over them. 

 

What I see is the implementation work that would need to be done for creating another set of labels you call "tags" vs. expanding what we already have with the groups.

That's less of an idealistic vision of groups, more of a realistic vision of the time someone - whose fulltime job is NOT this game - can spend on this.

 

As you say, there are already overlapping aspects. I'm sure groups can be adapted to be used more comfortably. For now, they are merely a skeleton for what they can become, something to start from.

[HeatherMarie]

4 hours ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

 

On a related note, if tags happen I’d really like them to pop up when you hover over a dragon during breeding or sorting. Again, this is a level of fine detail you couldn’t have with groups. I arrange dragons in a specific order on my scroll (CB —> SAs —> Prizekins —> Checkers —> Other pretty lines —> Messies) and often arrange within those groups as well (ie all the Sunsong x Gold checkers together). But when I’m sorting a fresh new batch of twenty adult dragons among a dozen breeds, it can be hard to remember where each subgroup starts and ends, and I’m forced to clunkily open up a seperate lineage page to tell what exactly the neighbors are like. This, again, isn’t something groups would help with.

 

I'm not sure I agree that tags would be so much better then groups, but PLEASE NO with text pop-ups whenever you hover over a dragon. Please please please no. That would get very annoying very fast, and if you have more then a handful of tags applied to each dragon it would get very very clunky and messy. Maybe for your specific use it would be helpful, but for many of us any sort of automatic pop-up text would just be very very annoying. 

 

I very very much agree with those who've mentioned cross-grouping/filtering, I've mentioned it before in other threads that I'd *love* to be able to go into a group and then filter by another group. Like, see all my 'Shinies' that are also in my 'Beautiful Messies' group. That would make things so much easier in general.

[angelicdragonpuppy]

2 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

 

I'm not sure I agree that tags would be so much better then groups, but PLEASE NO with text pop-ups whenever you hover over a dragon. Please please please no. That would get very annoying very fast, and if you have more then a handful of tags applied to each dragon it would get very very clunky and messy. Maybe for your specific use it would be helpful, but for many of us any sort of automatic pop-up text would just be very very annoying. 

 

I very very much agree with those who've mentioned cross-grouping/filtering, I've mentioned it before in other threads that I'd *love* to be able to go into a group and then filter by another group. Like, see all my 'Shinies' that are also in my 'Beautiful Messies' group. That would make things so much easier in general.

 

I think if it was just during those situations I mentioned it wouldn’t be too terrible. But right now if I go to breed or move something, other than pure memory (which can forget a few things when remembering thousands of dragons!), I have no way to tell what’s what short of opening lineage pages. Do you have a better suggestion? I think a little text pop up would be harmless and, more than that, helpful.

[osmarks]

You can kind of bodge search with Ctrl-F (on non-mobile stuff), assuming you only have one page.

[olympe]

Getting a single group organized is quite a hassle at the moment, because you need to have 2+ tabs opened at the same time: One tab for sorting, another for the original group so you can go to the respective dragons' view page and then lineage page. *sigh* And it's still pretty much impossible to sort them in a way that is helpful for larger groups, unless you do what I started doing.

Example group

Using pygmies as banners. Others might prefer hatchlings or something like it. (Ideal: Crimson Flare hatchlings. So tiny. Even the adults are pretty small. I just don't have enough of those.)

[HeatherMarie]

9 hours ago, angelicdragonpuppy said:

 

I think if it was just during those situations I mentioned it wouldn’t be too terrible. But right now if I go to breed or move something, other than pure memory (which can forget a few things when remembering thousands of dragons!), I have no way to tell what’s what short of opening lineage pages. Do you have a better suggestion? I think a little text pop up would be harmless and, more than that, helpful.

 

You said 'during breeding or sorting', I definitely think pop-up text every single time my mouse hovers over a sprite when on the breeding page would get very annoying very fast. Maybe a separate 'tag mode' would be possible? Like, a checkbox you could check that would then show the pop-ups like you want on those pages, but if the checkbox isn't checked then it doesn't show it. 

 

I don't know what you or anyone else would use tags for, but me personally, I know I would have a TON of tags applied to most dragons. If we had actual tag capabilities I would use the heck out of them, even though I don't necessarily think they'd be better then tweaking groups. I can already picture a huge pop-up list of tags taking up a good half of the screen, having that pop up every single time my mouse hovers over a sprite when on certain pages would be *very* annoying. I do see how it could be helpful, though, if you only have a couple tags on each dragon and want a fast way to check the tags.

 

For reference, I poked at my groups to figure out what kind of stuff I might want as 'tags' if we were to get that capability, this is what I came up with for a single specific dragon:

 

I would not want a long list like that, or possibly even longer, to pop up every single time I hover. 

 

[angelicdragonpuppy]

8 hours ago, HeatherMarie said:

 

You said 'during breeding or sorting', I definitely think pop-up text every single time my mouse hovers over a sprite when on the breeding page would get very annoying very fast. Maybe a separate 'tag mode' would be possible? Like, a checkbox you could check that would then show the pop-ups like you want on those pages, but if the checkbox isn't checked then it doesn't show it. 

 

I don't know what you or anyone else would use tags for, but me personally, I know I would have a TON of tags applied to most dragons. If we had actual tag capabilities I would use the heck out of them, even though I don't necessarily think they'd be better then tweaking groups. I can already picture a huge pop-up list of tags taking up a good half of the screen, having that pop up every single time my mouse hovers over a sprite when on certain pages would be *very* annoying. I do see how it could be helpful, though, if you only have a couple tags on each dragon and want a fast way to check the tags.

 

For reference, I poked at my groups to figure out what kind of stuff I might want as 'tags' if we were to get that capability, this is what I came up with for a single specific dragon:

 

I would not want a long list like that, or possibly even longer, to pop up every single time I hover. 

 

 

Hmm, maybe instead of hovering you'd have to double click? Doing so again hides the tags, as would double clicking a different dragon. Bonus: would probably work better on mobile then hovering.

[Jack_Indivisible]

Hm, don't know why I wasn't getting notes for this.

 

On 9/19/2018 at 8:44 AM, Ruby Eyes said:

As I explained above already: Groups are NOT like folders.

Symbolic Links. Groups are folders. However, you are correct that groups are exactly equivalent to tags, except they haven't been completely implemented yet. With sub-groups (folders), you'd simply put the constraint that some tags have strict is-a relationships with other tags.

 

Currently the whole discussion over groups/tags is entirely semantic. I'd prefer sub-groups over tags, with the caveat that subgroups aren't shown on the main group page (so like how every other file system works). That satisfies everyone who doesn't want a bunch of groups cluttering up their space (as you just make a throwaway group for all your tagging needs), though I can see how that is less natural than just typing tags into a text field. 

 

On 9/20/2018 at 9:53 AM, angelicdragonpuppy said:

Hmm, maybe instead of hovering you'd have to double click? Doing so again hides the tags, as would double clicking a different dragon. Bonus: would probably work better on mobile then hovering.

The way tags are normally implemented they get a special place on the page, rather than being hidden like groups are in their drop down menu. The most natural place to put potentially a lot of tags would be at either the bottom of the page, or in an expandable spoiler thing with the other dragon information.

 

On 9/19/2018 at 3:51 PM, olympe said:

Getting a single group organized is quite a hassle at the moment, because you need to have 2+ tabs opened at the same time: One tab for sorting, another for the original group so you can go to the respective dragons' view page and then lineage page. *sigh* And it's still pretty much impossible to sort them in a way that is helpful for larger groups, unless you do what I started doing.

That's my biggest problem with the cave right now, how aggressively anti-UX and page happy it is. Breeding is ludicrous, requiring like 2 or 3 pages just to breed one dragon. Of course, I get around your specific problem by just making a group for every generation. I don't mind having a ton of group, and that way I can sort it right on the dragons page.

 

In other news, I was poking around the search code, because peoples reports on how large scrolls make it lag sounded kind of janky to me. Didn't find out anything about how exactly that works yet, but you can search not only by breed(though plated colossi aren't implemented???), name, and code, there's also the option to search by #breed, #gen, and #biome! (those aren't typos, the tag is written eg #CB, #2G, etc though the pound sign isn't necessary) Groups could be added trivially, with zero front-end change in code and minimal back-end code changes.

[olympe]

On 9/20/2018 at 7:27 AM, HeatherMarie said:

I don't know what you or anyone else would use tags for, but me personally, I know I would have a TON of tags applied to most dragons. If we had actual tag capabilities I would use the heck out of them, even though I don't necessarily think they'd be better then tweaking groups. I can already picture a huge pop-up list of tags taking up a good half of the screen, having that pop up every single time my mouse hovers over a sprite when on certain pages would be *very* annoying. I do see how it could be helpful, though, if you only have a couple tags on each dragon and want a fast way to check the tags.

Oh, I'd use tags excessively, especially if we could sort dragons on our scroll and on breeding pages by tags (option to only display dragons with the chosen tags). I'd tag every dragon for generation, kind of lineage (if it's a special lineage, like checker, stair, EG, a certain project...), the breed of the mate and probably a number of other things (mated/unmated comes to mind). Sub-groups wouldn't be nearly as helpful as that.

[relaks]

I'm saying a big fat YES to all of this.

Yes to tags especially, and to be able to filter dragons by groups (and tags if implemented) when searching dragons in: a group (being able to search the "2g" tag in my "XX lineage" group would be great, I'm crying thinking about it), while breeding, while doing a BSA...

 

So basically, please, please, tags and a filtering system. Pretty please.

[Cinspawn]

I was about to make groups for every gen I have (CB group, 2G group, 3G group, etc...) when I realized there's no point to doing that because if I wanted to search for an "even gen 4g" dragon, I'd still have to manually click all the dragons in my 4G group.

 

I'd think it would be a HUGE QoL improvement if we can filter groups within different groups. So I can make an "Even gen group", and filter that group with the "4G group",  and it will show me all my 4G EG dragons. I could then even filter further by filtering for "Waterwalker" and then I'd see all my 4G EG Waterwalkers. I want to stress the importance of being able to filter multiple times, perhaps infinite times, but I'm not sure how that works in coding-land (I can't imagine it's much different from filtering once, though.)

And I am okay with putting all dragons manually in these groups. But if we can't filter properly there's no point in making groups for dragons with multiple "qualities" (unless I'd make a group for every single kind there is - which some people have done, bless them -  but that's insane and this system shouldn't work that way.)

 

Being able to add all 4G dragons (for example) to a group automatically would be even better of course, and probably very needed for people with thousands and thousands of dragons... But if at least the above option is available I'd be very happy already.