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Jack_Indivisible

Better Grouping, Better Searching

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As a work-around (until proper filtering gets added), you could use little freezies as group-dividers (like people used to do for scroll dividers.)

E.g. if you make groups for generation counters, you could add freezies and name them accordingly, telling you "the following are checkers", "the following are other even-gens", "the following are stairs", "the following are spirals" and "the following are randomly lineaged". For 4th gen, I'd also add "the following are Lovely Commons" :lol:

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I really wish you could filter while breeding, so it only showed a selected group(s). 

I have a cave born group, and find it difficult to breed within the group and be free to experiment with different breeds. 

 

Also, letting it do stuff like automatically put specific gens in would be great. I had over 800 cave borns to find and add to the group, and dragons I have to keep updating. I have no doubt there’s at least one missing XD

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I would personally like something that lets me tag my dragons so I could search by generation, lineage, etc. Right now I could add them all to groups, but having that many groups is a cluttered mess.

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Filtering by group when breeding, and filtering by group *within* a group, those are the two things I (still!) want most. I'm not a huge breeder but even I get frustrated at the jumble of thousands of dragons on the breed page. I'd love to be able to easily see just my cavebreds on the breed page, or just my messies, etc etc. The other thing is filtering a group to only show dragons that are *also* in another group, for example going to my 'Shinies' group and then filtering for all the dragons that are also in my 'Beautiful Messies' group. Two functionalities that I believe would make Groups *soooo* much more useful and helpful.

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So, better filtering is something that would help MANY users.

I think the main issue is while breeding: showing all the dragons is a pain. When you are looking for a particular mate, ctrl+f is useful, sure, but when you're mass-breeding and just looking to pair random CB's (or 2g's or 3g's, etc) together, either you remember which of your dragons are CBs or then you have to put something in your dragons' name to know they are CB. Which I know plenty of users don't like.

 

Right now we only have the grouping system. It's better than what we had before (ie nothing) but it could be improved. 

Grouping dragons is useful when planning lineages, to display some dragons you are proud of, etc. When they have something in common, you put them together. Yay! But having a large amount of groups is counterproductive. Having a group for CB, for 2G, for 3G (but then, one for even gens, one for staircases); for lineages (but some will be CBs, some 2g... and wait, which one is already paired?).  We cannot make a group for every single things we need to separate our dragons. 

 

That's why a tag system would be delightful. Then every dragon could be tagged according to its individual features. If we could add filters in the breeding list to only display dragons having a particular tag, that would solve most of our problems.

 

I made some mockups to explain the idea better.

- When you go to a dragon's page, you could have the option to add tags, just like you can add it to a group:

Spoiler

1541974592-mockup-filter-system-2.jpg

 

- You could manage each individual dragon's tags. This is not a systematic / group thing. Each dragon has to be manually tagged. Yeah, it's a lot of work, but that's the point of tagging!

Spoiler

1541974592-mockup-filter-system-3.jpg

 

- Then when you want to breed your dragons, you have the possibility to filter the displayed dragons either by groups or tags (or both! --> maybe you want to see the dragons from the "XX Lineage" tagged as "2g").

Spoiler

1541974592-mockup-filter-system.jpg

 

What's the difference between a group and a tag? 

You can display, on your scroll, only the eggs pertaining to a certain group. You wouldn't be able to only see the dragons with a particular tag, on your scroll. Tags would serve the sole purpose of easing breeding (maybe other features, idk, right now my idea is breeding). (Scraping that idea because it would actually be helpful to display only the dragons with a certain tag, be it on all the scroll or within a group. The dropdown thing is what really makes the difference) There's no dropdown showing all the tags. You have to write them manually, therefore know what you want, specifically. You can have an infinite number of tags, as long as you remember how they're written (we could maybe implement a pop-up when there are 3 or 4 letters corresponding to an existing tag, like when you tag someone on the forum, but that's a bonus). 

 

If the whole tag thing is too complicated or deemed unnecessary by most users, then at least filtering by groups on the breeding page is a must. Pretty please.

Edited by relaks

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I think adding tags does add some confusion, because most of what we want can be achieved with existing methods being expanded upon: groups and filters (more filtering upon filtering upon filtering in groups).

If you can make a group full of CB's instead of a tag full of CB's, you get the same result, as long as you can filter by them.

The filtering is the most important part, otherwise we just have the same problem, it's just called 'tags' now.

 

With that said, if for some reason a tagging system is easier to code for whatever reason I'll gladly take it over what we have now :) call it whatever you want, I just want to filter my groups in whatever way possible.

 

Also, I don't see why we wouldn't have a little page showing us all tags currently in use on our scroll, only viewable by the scroll owner. Why do we have to manually remember all of the tags? XD That will absolutely get annoying even with as little as 5 tags because of difference in spelling/code names etc.

Edited by Cinspawn

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I'd much rather be able to filter my groups than have to add tags all over the place. Tagging every dragon - or even a lot of them  - NIGHTMARE !

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13 minutes ago, Cinspawn said:

Also, I don't see why we wouldn't have a little page showing us all tags currently in use on our scroll, only viewable by the scroll owner.

What I meant was that when filtering by a tag, you'd have to manually put the tag. A page to manage all your tags would be a given, though. The point of the tags is to avoid having to use 1000 different groups to manage our dragons. I have like 20 twenty groups and already it feels super cluttered. If a I had tags, I could add and remove as I pleased, and when filtering I wouldn't have an infinite amount of tags to choose from (like on a dropdown list), I could just write the tags I'm interested in. 

 

I don't know, maybe it's clearer in my head. I think tags would be nice, but that's like, a bonus.

 

For me, like for both of you, the main issue is filtering, ad if we can find a good solution to keep the groups as is while implementing a good filtering system, then by all means! ^^But honestly, having to go through a long list of groups is becoming rather painful.

 

For example, I have a group for Holiday dragons (all 3 holidays) for forum purposes. But for my own personal use, I also need to sometimes only display Halloweens or Christmas or Valentines. That results in 4 different groups, which make my dropdown seem way too long. If I could, under the "Holidays" group, add a filtering system to only display dragons tagged as "Halloween" (so, not a new group, just tags that I gave to the dragons), that would simplify things.

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1 hour ago, Fuzzbucket said:

I'd much rather be able to filter my groups than have to add tags all over the place. Tagging every dragon - or even a lot of them  - NIGHTMARE !

 

I mean, you don't /have/ to use tags if you don't want to. Some of us would love to be able to do that.

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Personally I don't see a need for an entire new tag system when just modifying groups could accomplish much of what people want, and personally I wouldn't *want* a tag system if that means the groups system wouldn't get modified in those ways. ie, I'd rather have groups with filters then groups without filters plus tags. I have spent a *lot* of time making my groups, literally going through 6,000+ lineages to make groups for specific ancestors, I have spent hours upon hours for *months* getting my groups in order... I really really don't want to have to start completely over with tags. 

 

THAT SAID, I understand that many people *do* want tags, would see them as very useful, and have been asking for them for a long time. I'm not *against* tags, as long as groups are also expanded and not just forgotten in favor of tags.

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12 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

I'd much rather be able to filter my groups than have to add tags all over the place. Tagging every dragon - or even a lot of them  - NIGHTMARE !

Wait, but filtering by groups would still require you to assign all of your dragons to a group manually - unless you want automatic grouping? Like, a button that puts all of your 2G dragons in a group, etc?

 

Because that would be a little more work to implement I think, considering the system will have to 'recognize' certain 'groups'. Not to mention it won't recognize groups with arbitrary rules.

 

I'm for manual all the way. It only sucks because we now have a lot of dragons and never were given the chance to keep up with it in small batches. That's why I want a better system ASAP! :D

 

 

 

@relaks I actually understand tagging vs grouping a little bit better now. I too would rather have groups as the 'big folders' and then tags for searching and filtering the details (again stressing that it's actually the filters we need, whether it's in groups or with tags, @HeatherMarie which is why it doesn't make sense to me to say "as long as groups are not forgotten in favor of tags" because tags would be there to help filter the groups)

 

I think the only issue with tags is that it might be ever so slightly confusing in the beginning, because lots of people have made groups to act as tags. And yes, that would mean you'd have to tag all your dragons all over again - but that is the fault of a mediocre group system in the first place, unfortunately.

 

 

Edited to add: I'm okay with just expanding the group system to enable filtering within groups of filtered groups (etc), it just would be a bit messier/less attractive. But I'm starved for functionality most, so whatever works, works. So, basically what Relaks said. 😅

Edited by Cinspawn

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@Cinspawn I want filters *on groups*. Yes, I understand tags would help filter groups, but not unless you spend hours and hours manually tagging dragons that you have *already* grouped. I already have my dragons 'tagged' the way I want them, by using groups. I already have my CBs in one group, my messies in another, my specific 'clans' in different groups, etc etc. I want to be able to filter *those*. I do not want to have to add tags to thousands of dragons in order to use a filter. 

 

Now, if *groups* have filters, *and* you could *also* filter by tags if wanted, that would be great.

 

I guess I just don't understand why anyone would want to start completely over and go through their entire scroll tagging every single dragon in order to use 'filters', when 'filters' could just be added to something we already have.

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1 minute ago, HeatherMarie said:

I just don't understand why anyone would want to start completely over and go through their entire scroll tagging every single dragon in order to use 'filters', when 'filters' could just be added to something we already have.

Exactly my thoughts. I'd say "tag" just sounds fancier than "group." Could someone write a userscript to replace all occurrences of "Group" on the site with "Tag" and suddenly people would be happier :blink: (or scared, like Fuzz) for no reason other than it sounding like new-fangled stuff.

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The only upside would be less of a messy list cause not every single super small group you can think of will be packed in that super long list, it will instead be a tag. But I totally understand not wanting to tag thousands of dragons, AGAIN. The ideas are pretty similar, honestly as long as we can filter one way or the other I'll be pleased :)

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41 minutes ago, Ruby Eyes said:

Exactly my thoughts. I'd say "tag" just sounds fancier than "group." Could someone write a userscript to replace all occurrences of "Group" on the site with "Tag" and suddenly people would be happier :blink: (or scared, like Fuzz) for no reason other than it sounding like new-fangled stuff.

 

OOh yes I am SO SCARED :lol: :blink::wacko:

 

But I would love to be able to set up my own filters for groups. Open up my Holiday group and filter for CBs. Yeah - everyone would do that. Open up my holiday group and filter for those in this lineage or that - that would be awesome. But is NOT the same as tagging them; it could be done, for instance, using the script already used for "add all dragons of this lineage". It would be very wonderful.

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In terms of searching through my dragons I would love if there was a "go to" option. For example, if I have my scroll sorted by breed there could be a drop-down menu of all the breeds I own, and I could select "Nebula Dragons" and go straight to the page with the Nebulas. Or if I have my scroll sorted by date the drop-down menu would have the years I've been playing, and I could select "2010" and go straight to the dragons I got in 2010.

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1 hour ago, UnicornMaiden said:

In terms of searching through my dragons I would love if there was a "go to" option. For example, if I have my scroll sorted by breed there could be a drop-down menu of all the breeds I own, and I could select "Nebula Dragons" and go straight to the page with the Nebulas. Or if I have my scroll sorted by date the drop-down menu would have the years I've been playing, and I could select "2010" and go straight to the dragons I got in 2010.

 

Oh man I'd love that. Especially since where a dragon is on your scroll changes constantly as you get new dragons. My Prizes used to be on page 5, now they are on page 7 if sorting by breed (wait, no, I believe page 8 now). And depending on how you sort it could be much more complicated then that. The browser's 'find' option helps a little if I know a name, but I still have to get to the right page to use that. I'd really love a way to simply search for a certain dragon or type of dragon.

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Personally, I'd love to be able to see all the groups a dragon of mine belongs to when viewing the scroll page it's on. (In other words: I'd love to be able to tag my draggies, and have the tags be shown on the scroll page.) Maybe show these labels in miniature, with a custom shortening of the tag. For example, I'd shorten my Shadow Walker x Ribbon Dancer group/tag with SWxRD.

These things don't have to be public, either. I think their displaying habit should coincide with the privacy setting of the group they belong to. If you have the group set to private, you're the only person who can view them. If the group is set to public, everyone can see them. If the group is set to highlighted, the leetle tag will always be displayed before non-highligted tags.

 

And, yes, filtering. Pretty please. Filtering for dragons that belong in two or more groups - like 3rd gen and my_lineage_project and unmated.

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