The second stage of planned major search improvements is live. Right now this will only impact authors, but in the future this will help everyone search for files quickly and easily.
From now on when authors upload a file they will need to fill in a series of tags that pertain to their file. The tags have been divided up into categories to help authors pick useful tags.
During the reviewing process, reviewers may edit tags slightly so that wording remains consistent wherever possible (eg. entered tags of “puppy”, “doggy” and “hound” might be edited to consistently be “dogs”). This will make tagging more useful for search.
Please note that if your file tagging is incorrect or missing but otherwise the file is appropriate for sale, you file will still be approved. Reviewers will add or alter tags as they see fit during the review process, and you are free to update your file and refine your tags at a later date.
For now tags will only be visible on the upload and update pages. In the next stage tags will then be used in search and to navigate groups of files, which will be a massive improvement!
In order to add tags to existing files, authors will need to update their files, only filling in the Tagging fields. In order to assist reviewers in getting through any tagging updates quickly, please put “Tagging Update Only” in the reviewer notes wherever possible. This is not essential, but will definitely be helpful to the review team!
We expect a big jump in updates as authors will be adding tags to their existing files, so we ask for your patience if the queue gets temporarily longer. There will be at least a month before tagging will be used in search, so there is no need to update all existing files immediately.
If you have any troubles or questions about this new feature, please let support know, and stay tuned for stage three, where search will be supercharged with tagging!
