Merge all the entity tags

Question

The following tags:

• entity (33 questions),
• entity-system (316 questions),
• entity-component (68 questions)

(total of 350 questions) are all mostly about the Entity Component System architecture.

Although entity-system is the most popular and has the best wiki summary, I suggest merging them into a new tag: entity-component-system.

Answer 1

In reference to Josh Petrie's comment, I think entity is silly.

When referring to an entity in the context of an Entity-Component-System architecture, for instance, the role of the Entity is quite agreed upon.

So in the context of the tags entity-system and entity-component, we have a good idea of what the entity there will be used for.

But when we use entity by itself, what does it mean? What is its role?

IMHO, when it is used on its own, it's generally used in the context of a set of parameters and features that form a whole; I see it as a synonym of object, game object, agent, etc.

Used in that context, we already have the tag gameobject, which, IMHO, would be equivalent.

Thus I don't really see why we need to keep the tag entity.

I think the questions that have the tag entity should be revised one by one, and re-tagged entity-system, entity-component or gameobject, (or just removed) depending on the content of the question.

Answer 2

I agree with Alexandre Vaillancourt, in regards to the entity tag. However, I think we should discuss all tags within the scope; it seems redundant to make decisions on replacing a tag, when we are still discussing potential removal of the possible replacement tag.

I think a couple of the tags can be improved in order to assist usage, either through synonyms or usage clarification. I am going to bring up another tag, as I feel it works well as a potential synonym.

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component-based: A previous question raised issues in regards to confusion with the correct usage, suggesting it as a synonym for entity-system. I feel that the answer applies to this context, and highlights a common relation:

I don't think all entity systems are component based. Common consensus at this point in time might be to steer people who are asking about non-component-based entity systems towards component based systems, but I wouldn't call them synonyms.
_{- answered Apr 23 '12 at 14:14 by Tetrad♦}

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• entity-system: I think we should keep this tag. However, we should amend the usage guidelines. The guideline should address the fact that entity systems are not always component based, and suggest additional use of the component-based tag, if the user is specifically asking in context of a component based entity system.
• entity-component-system: I do not think we should implement this tag. Between entity-system and component-based, we have this covered. Furthermore, the two are not necessarily linked, so the single tag would not actually replace the two separate tags.
• entity-component: I see this going one of two ways, but ultimately, I do not think we need this tag for the same reason we do not need the entity-component-system tag. Given that the context appears to be specific to component-based entity systems, the questions using this tag should use the entity-system and component-based tags. I think it might be easier to simply merge the tag into entity-system (specifically because it has more relevance to an entity system than a component-based system), but we should consider any potential to confuse users who note that we have the two as synonyms, and thus assume that they are synonyms by definition and not by definition of how people are using the tags, themselves.
• entity: As per Alexandre Vaillancourt's answer, we should assess each question. Some questions appear more relevant to gameobject, in which case, they should be re-tagged. Ultimately, I feel this tag should be made a synonym of entity-system, once the prior cleanup is complete.

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While we are on the subject; I can find a couple more tags that somewhat fall into the context of this discussion. However, for the purpose of quality control, my stance is that we should clean up the tags already discussed before involving others. That said, when this reaches a resolution I am happy with, I might bring the other tags to the attention of meta, to ensure we are directing users and questions in the right place.

Answer 3

Quoting Tetrad's answer on the similarity between entity-system and component-based (or entity-component??):

I don't think all entity systems are component based. Common consensus at this point in time might be to steer people who are asking about non-component-based entity systems towards component based systems, but I wouldn't call them synonyms.

And Josh Petrie's answer on merging re-tagging questions that have a both entity-system and entity-component or both entity-system and component-based into a new entity-component-system:

Not all entity systems are component-based, and not all component-based code is an entity system.

I don't think it would be wise to merge all of the three tags into a single entity-component-system.

What we need is a better description for each tag.

I would have suggested to introduce a new tag entity-component-system (I already did :P), but, again, quoting (myself):

Here is what an ECS is:

(Image source)

By this, I mean that every dev and every company has its own view of what an ECS is or should be.

The tag would either be too specific or too broad. So I don't think we should introduce a new tag entity-component-system either.