As just about anyone who has joined RacersReunion knows, one of the premier features here is the photo collection. Its been built by some incredible members who've uploaded some fantastic pictures. More than 60,000 photos are available!
RR has an process for reviewing and approving the pictures before they are viewable by all. I've been asked to help with adding tags to photos without them and editing others for consistency. I assure you I'm a lonnnnng way from plowing through 60,000+ pictures.
What works best is if members will tag their own photos as they're uploaded - or by editing what's already being shared. Here are a few tips / best practices I've tried to follow. If others follow suit, I think it'll help folks with searches - inside of RR and from external search engines such as Google or Bing.
- Use all lower case letters when tagging (e.g. digard, wrangler, superbird). Regular capitalization is fine with captions and descriptions. But believe it or not, a mix of Upper and lower case lettering in tags can yield different search returns. Using lower case consistently will generally help with all search engines. For example, searching for Richard Petty has been known to return different results than richard petty.
- Choose keywords carefully tag with something that will help ID the pic in a search. Driver, track, year, sponsor, owner, etc.
- Avoid generic words that won't help narrow a search such as speedway, track, raceway, 500, etc.
- Include full names of drivers or teams in quotes (e.g. richard petty vs. richard, petty; "junior johnson","bud moore")
- I have confess I have a few exceptions: earnhardt, yarborough, waltrip, pearson
- ID unique year if possible in the tag. If unknown, at least add the decade with an "s" (e.g. 1960s). Dont use apostrophe or comma after the year as itll mess up searches.
- I encourage one word/location where possible for tracks (richmond, daytona, rockingham, pocono). If two words, put in quotes (bowman gray, watkins glen). Avoid spelling out full names such as Daytona International Speedway or using acronyms like MIS or IMS.
- The one exception I think I've made for capitalization is acronyms for sanctioning bodies. ARCA and NASCAR are fine.
- I have not been tagging photos with specific race names - just year and track. I figure the name of the race can be put in the description. But if you choose to use a tag like "southern 500", "daytona 500", etc., make it all lower case and in quotes.
These tips are not RR policy or TMC gospel by any measure. But I think by applying some consistency in tags, we can all benefit when we try to narrow our search for various photos.
Would appreciate hearing more tips or questions about the subject.
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Schaefer: It's not just for racing anymore.
updated by @tmc-chase: 12/05/16 04:02:07PM
