Gallery "keywords" are actually album cross-links

[Rick]

This is a bit of Coppermine idiocy strangeness...

Keywords is mis-named. It allows you to place an image in other secondary albums.  Each album can have its own "keyword", and your image will appear in any album for which it has the matching "keyword".

To make this clearer, the O.A.S gallery has had "keyword" changed to "link-word".

The gallery's search can look at any of the fields in the description. If you think an image needs keywords (in the more normal sense of "a word useful for identifying...") then use them in the title or somewhere in the description, and a search will find them.

Please note that the gallery search looks at titles and descriptions, so it is not necessary to put terms into the "link-words" section to make the term searchable. You only need to use "link-words" if you want an image to show up  in more than one album. (Yes, I know I've said that twice in different ways...)

The "link-words" for the main gallery albums are:

• Stars, Nebulae and Galaxies
  
  • "Galaxy" for Galaxies and Clusters
  • "Messier" for Messier Objects
  • "Nebula" for Nebulae
  • "Star" for Constellations and Star Fields
  
  
• Planets
  
  • "Jupiter"
  • "Mars"
  • "Mercury"
  • "Neptune" for Uranus and Neptune
  • "Saturn"
  • "Venus"
  
  
• Sun and Moon
  
  • "Aurora" for Aurorae and Atmospheric Phenomena
  • "Eclipse" for Eclipses, Transits and Occultations
  • "Moon" for The Moon
  • "Sun" for The Sun
  
  
• Comets and Asteroids
  
  • "Asteroid" for Asteroids and Dwarf Planets
  • "Comet" for Comets
  • "Meteor" for Meteors
  • "Satellite" for Satellites
  
  
• Instruments and Data Files
  
  • "Astroart" for Artistic Interpretations
  • "Data" for Raw data files
  • "Equipment" for Observing Kit
  • "Hazard" for Lights and Hazards
  • "Process" for Processing examples
  • "Scope" for Telescopes and Observatories
  
  
• Society Events
  This is where things get a bit more complicated, because there are some sub-categories of albums along with the main categories.
  
  First, for the main categories, the "link-words" are:
  
  • "Celebration" for Anniversaries and Celebrations
  • "Meetings" for Society Meetings
  • "Observing" for Observing Activities
  • "Outings" for Society Trips and Outings
  • "Outreach" for Community Outreach Events
  • "Social" for Social Activities
  
  For location and year we've chosen to use "link-words" that combine a place name and a year in a single word. This allows us to put photos into both "by Decade" and "by Location" albums, and (via the Search function) show the photos from a single year's events at a single location.
  
  For the Society Overseas Trips by Destination sub-category, the current location "link-words" are:
  
  • "CERN"
  • "COAA"
  • "Iceland"
  • "LaPalma" for La Palma
  • "Paris"
  
  For the Society Events in the UK by Venue sub-category, the current location "link-words" are:
  
  • "Campsites"
  • "LocalArea" for places like Orpington, Bromley, High Elms, Chelsfield and Otford
  • "London" for places inside or very close to the M25 that aren't quite local
  • "Picnics" for places where picnics and starbecues are held
  • "Chichester" for Chichester and Selsey
  • "Greenwich"
  • "MillHill" for Mill Hill
  • "ScienceMuseum"
  • "SpaceCentre" for the Space Centre in Leicester
  • "UKPlaces" for other places in the UK
  
  For the Society Events by Decade sub-category, the location "link-words" should have a four-digit year appended to the location name. For example, photos of the Society's visit to La Palma in 2024 should use the "link-word" "LaPalma2024". It's only necessary to add the year to one of the "link-words" (should a photo merit multiple location links).
  

Each user also has a private album with a "link-word" usually matching the username, but some have been made a bit longer to avoid link-word clashes.

By the way, it's worth remembering that the visibility of linked files (ones that have an album's "link-word" in their "link-words" section) is controlled by the settings of the album they're in. If you use a "link-word" to link an image from your Previews and Works-in-Progress to a public album then you will be the only person able to see it in the public album.

[Rick]

This has been causing way too much confusion. I've taken the plunge and changed the nomenclature to match the function.

"Keywords" are no more.

"Link-words" is the new term.

[Mac]

can we have a link-word for pluto please.

[Rick]

can we have a link-word for pluto please.

There is one already. Pluto belongs in the "Asteroids and Dwarf Planets" album which has the link-word "Asteroid". Therefore the link-word for Pluto is "Asteroid". 

There is one (and only one^*1) link-word for each individual gallery album. 

You only need to enter a link-word if you want your image to be visible in more than one album. There's no need to enter the link-word for an image's primary album, and random words in the link-word field which do not refer to any album are a waste of space.

^*1 Insert appropriate Highlander quote if required...

[Rick]

random words in the link-word field which do not refer to any album are a waste of space

I've cleaned out quite a few recently. I've also finally re-applied the "Keyword" to "Link-word" change...

[Rick]

We're expanding the "Society Events" section of the gallery considerably, and using appropriate link-words makes a big difference. There are "by Venue" and "by Decade" sub-sections of the photos, as well as the main albums in the section. Photos can only be placed in the appropriate sub-sections if they have appropriate link-words.

For photos in the "Society Events" albums, please, where you can, use the appropriate link-word for the venue, and append the year of the event.
For example:

• Suppose your photo was taken at an event at High Elms in 2017.
• Find the link-word from the description of the appropriate album in "by Venue". In this case it would be "HighElms".
• Then add the year, making the complete link-word "HighElms2017".
• Put that in the link-word field.
• Your photo will then appear in the "High Elms" "by Venue" album and the "Twenty Tens" "by Decade" album.

Please only do this for photos within the "Society Events" albums.

[AndrewRamsay]

RIck -

I've hit a snag.  Just uploaded 5 photos from our recent Outreach event at Lullingstone Park, but of course there is no Lullingstone Park link-word.  They have ended up without their tags.  Do we need to apply to you to get additional link words every time?

- Andrew

[Rick]

The most important thing to do is to give each picture a good title (because that's what shows up with the thumbnail), and preferably some more detail in the description. If there's useful information there then the search function can find them.

For the most-part, one-off venues don't seem to be worth their own link-word gallery, but if you give them an appropriate link-word including the year then they will turn up in the appropriate "by decade" gallery, and the link-word will (probably, so long as there aren't too many of them) show up in the search window. There are venues (like Wandsworth) that don't have their own "by venue" section. I don't see a problem with there being others like that, so long as they have some useful handle to find them by. It also gives us the option of creating a "by venue" section in the future. The gallery displays up to twelve on a single page. I split the venues into UK and overseas at least partly to avoid having more than one page of them under a single heading, as the ones on the next page will be missed by a casual browser. If necessary, we can remove the "by venue" pages that don't get a useful number of photos in them to keep the whole set on one page.

[Rick]

It looks like folk have been putting all sorts of stuff into the link-word field.

It doesn't work that way....

• Each gallery folder has a link-word which is mentioned in that folder's description.
  
  
• When you upload a picture you put it into a primary folder.
  
  
• If you want a picture to appear in another folder as well, then you type the relevant link-word for the other folder into the link-words field for that picture.
  
  
• The only things that should go in the link-word fields are the link-words that have been assigned to the various folders.
  
  
• For the Society Events section, we use link-words that have the location or event combined with the year into a single item, so "LaPalma2024" is the appropriate link-word (and note it is all one word) for the 2024 La Palma trip.
  
  
• Care needs to be taken to pick link-words that don't clash with other link-words in any way, or things get messy.
  
  

I will do a bit of clearing up, and along the way I will create appropriate folders for other trip locations. This may take a while...

Please, when you put pictures into the OAS gallery:

• Pick the most appropriate folder to which you have access.
  
  
• Give the picture a clear meaningful descriptive title.
  
  
• Use the description field to say more about the picture.
  
  
• For astro-photographs, please also fill in the "Image date, time and location", "Telescope aperture and focal ratio", "Camera and filters used" and "Processing applied" fields.

Thanks.

[Rick]

I think I've done most of the cleaning up that's needed. The most common error seemed to involve the title being put into the link-word field, which is an easy mistake to make because the title is up above the description, while the link-word field is with the other short fields.

There's still a bit of sorting out of UK locations to be done.

[Carole]

Thanks for sorting Rick. 

[Rick]

I have modified the top post to give a better description of the way we are using the link-words today.