tags for countries on multiple continents

[horwitz]

e.g., Russia is tagged with UG::Europe (its only other tag is UG::Sovereign_State)—should it also be tagged UG::Asia?

I'd certainly prefer something more authoritative than Wikipedia, but here's its list of transcontinental countries to potentially start some discussion 🤷‍♂️

[axelboc]

Do you have a practical reason in mind for this change that I'm not seeing? Because tags are just meant for breaking up the deck for easier learning. The UG::Europe tag for Russia is definitely not meant to say that "Russia is part of the European continent and no other".

On the contrary, I feel that tagging a note with multiple continent tags may not be what people are after: if one creates a filtered deck for one continent and then for another, they may not want to see the same cards.

If the problem is that it's not clear how continental tags are chosen (i.e. why Europe over Asia for Russia), I'm open to adding a guideline for this in the CONTRIBUTING guide if someone feels really strongly about it (but I don't).

[horwitz]

When I create an Asian deck, I'd expect (and want) Russia to be in it. When I create a European deck, I'd expect (and want) Russia to be in it.

(Naturally, these points apply to all transcontinental countries—Russia is just meant to serve as an example.)

Also, when I look at the deck and see that Russia has the UG::Europe tag but not the UG::Asia tag (nor any other continental tags), it does read to me that "Russia is part of the European continent and no other".

It never crossed my mind that someone might think that Russia appearing in both filtered decks is a bad thing! (So already I'm learning.)

Right now it sounds like that deciding between what are basically two options (status quo vs. the original post's implied change) resolves to essentially choosing between:

1. when a filtered deck for Asia is made, it will have no Russia*
2. when a filtered deck for Asia is made and one for Europe is made, Russia will be in both*

(Admittedly, there may be other issues, but that description covers what I presently see.) FWIW, while option 1 is the status quo, option 2 would require work—but since I'd be happy to tackle it, I think that distinction is at least moot.

I realize that I'm only one user—do most others have strong feelings and feel that Russia appearing in both a European-filtered deck and an Asian-filtered deck is worse than Russia not appearing in an Asian-filtered deck?

I'm a bit embarrassed that I didn't even consider that there'd be users who'd want the continental tags to partition the full deck—sorry!

• and other similar effects for other transcontinental countries, of course

[aplaice]

To preface: I've never used the tags in AUG, and these are some haphazard thoughts.

Firstly, I 100% agree with @axelboc that tags are intended to be used for filtering purposes rather than informational purposes, and so we should aim for usefulness rather than technical accuracy if these ever come in conflict. (For instance, if we do decide to have multiple continent tags, I think we definitely shouldn't have them in cases like France, the Netherlands, the USA or the UK, and possibly not in cases like Egypt or Kazakhstan — even though these all are technically transcontinental countries, they're not what one would expect to see if one filters for, say South America (in the case of France) or Asia (for Egypt) (?).)

However, I'm not certain either way if there is much wrong with a country having multiple continent tags? The main use cases for filtering that I can see (continuing to use Russia as the example/punching bag):

1. (Permanently) just learning certain regions or types of "entities" (and not others), in which case they'd either a) create a filtered deck (tag:UG::Asia) from which they'd learn, ignoring the main deck or (more likely) b) search for deck:"Ultimate Geography" -tag:UG::Asia and suspend everything other than what they want to learn.

   For this, the users would likely want Russia to be in both UG::Asia and UG::Europe.

   (A risk with multiple continent tags, here, is that the user will instead search/suspend tag:UG::Europe or tag:UG::North_America or ... and end up unintentionally suspending, say, Russia; but for Russia and Asia (at least) this wouldn't make things worse over the status quo, since Russia currently isn't in UG::Asia (though it would for Russia and Europe.)

2. Starting learning grouped by region. i.e. first create a filtered deck with tag:UG::Europe then tag:UG::Asia etc.

   In this case, having multiple continent tags makes things more complicated for them, since they'd instead have to do something like is:new tag:UG::Europe and then is:new tag:UG::Asia.

3. Reminding themselves of a specific region just before a test (not that that's good practice with SRS :)). Here they'd create a filtered deck with tag:UG::Europe or tag:UG::Asia and would probably want Russia to be in the filtered deck in either case.

Overall, I'm not sure...

(Disclaimer: I haven't tested any of the Anki search queries I list here, so syntax might be slightly wrong — hopefully they all make sense, though.)