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According to this blog post that I just came across: The Death of Meta Tags, the use of the [beginner] tag, as well as [best-practices] and [subjective], are discouraged on SO. More generally, all tags which "do not describe the content of the question" - that (1) can't stand alone as the only tag on a question and (2) mean different things to different people should not be used.

Which tags should be removed (See the list below for my ideas, feel free to edit/comment)? Should any tags be removed? If so, what is our timeline for this action?

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2 Answers 2

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We use the tag frequently on E&R, and a couple other meta tags have also been used:

and, of course:

Finally, there are some 'intrinsic' tags which aren't specifically meta, but should not exist because they're implied by the scope of the site. These include:

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  • \$\begingroup\$ This is community wiki, so anyone with a little bit of rep can edit it. Please don't post whole answers with one new tag. Also, please use the [tag:tag-name] syntax so we link to the tag. \$\endgroup\$
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Oct 25, 2010 at 18:26
  • \$\begingroup\$ Careers amd 7805 seem like descriptive tags. Also, it appears that some of our tags just need better names. Should we do a general tag overhaul in addition to (and separate from) the meta-tag removal? \$\endgroup\$
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Oct 26, 2010 at 17:33
  • \$\begingroup\$ Also, I retagged the question labeled [third] [party] to [third-party] \$\endgroup\$
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Oct 26, 2010 at 17:34
  • \$\begingroup\$ I was adding tags and did not have time to note that I think 7805 is descriptive \$\endgroup\$
    – Kortuk
    Oct 26, 2010 at 18:06
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    \$\begingroup\$ I agree that 7805 is descriptive. \$\endgroup\$
    – Daniel Grillo
    Oct 26, 2010 at 18:36
  • \$\begingroup\$ I can slowly clear out this list and delete them off of the list as I remove them if it would work well for how this is being done. What does everyone think? I think if when someone adds a tag someone else adds a comment next to it that they agree we have a double check, plus I will make sure it makes sense before I axe it also. \$\endgroup\$
    – Kortuk
    Oct 26, 2010 at 18:54
  • \$\begingroup\$ Also, can we agree that tags with multiple words should be hyphenated? I wanted to mark "logicanalyzer" as a synonym of "logic-analyzer", for instance, but it only lets you merge less commonly used tags into the more commonly used. I wasn't sure if I should go around retagging just for this. \$\endgroup\$
    – endolith
    Oct 27, 2010 at 15:06
  • \$\begingroup\$ I think I can rename it. I Think tags with multiple words being hyphenated makes sense. \$\endgroup\$
    – Kortuk
    Oct 27, 2010 at 15:23
  • \$\begingroup\$ The same thing applies to smd/smt/surfacemount. I'm generally in favor of more explicit names, so surfacemount or surface-mount should be the "master" tag, but I had to map them to the most commonly-used instead. \$\endgroup\$
    – endolith
    Oct 27, 2010 at 18:28
  • \$\begingroup\$ What compelled you to map them to the most commonly used tag? If we (all of E&R) agree that surface-mount is better than any of these, it should be the tag we use. \$\endgroup\$
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Oct 27, 2010 at 18:58
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    \$\begingroup\$ @reem, he was saying that it was not letting him make the most commonly used tag a synonym. He wanted to do the other. \$\endgroup\$
    – Kortuk
    Oct 27, 2010 at 20:54
  • \$\begingroup\$ Yeah, the system doesn't let you do anything else. \$\endgroup\$
    – endolith
    Oct 29, 2010 at 21:55
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    \$\begingroup\$ There's also questions where the asker tagged it "printed circuit boards", which gives 3 tags. Not sure if that's relevant to this discussion, or if that's a separate retagging effort altogether. \$\endgroup\$
    – W5VO
    Dec 9, 2010 at 21:25
  • \$\begingroup\$ It's hard to call this a retagging effort, as little has been done since this list was started. We're not as big or well organized as a site like Stack Overflow. If you want to start a new retagging effort, go right ahead! \$\endgroup\$
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Dec 10, 2010 at 19:17
  • \$\begingroup\$ I think we should delete the [beginner] tag since it is a meta tag. Any thoughts? \$\endgroup\$
    – W5VO
    Dec 29, 2010 at 1:30
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Once I get to about page 6 of Tags I start getting a very large number of tags that are not descriptive and have only been used once. I think these may be worth just getting cleared out in a bulk fashion.

We do also need to decide what should be renamed. I can do all of these modifications through the moderator menu. Just let me know when you would like me to start.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Before renaming, please vote to mark tags as synonyms: electronics.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/tag-folksonomy-and-tag-synonyms \$\endgroup\$
    – endolith
    Oct 27, 2010 at 15:01
  • \$\begingroup\$ Yeah, I was checking to make sure that this is what everyone wanted before I started cleaning. It seems that it needs to be done, just want to make sure everyone agrees and understands why. \$\endgroup\$
    – Kortuk
    Oct 27, 2010 at 15:35
  • \$\begingroup\$ Holy crap endolith, thanks for getting all those synonyms in the system. Awesome job. \$\endgroup\$
    – Kortuk
    Oct 27, 2010 at 15:53
  • \$\begingroup\$ Yeah, I merged a bunch of tags on chiphacker, but I see the duplicates coming back. I think the synonym system is better in general since they are automatically handled when people use them in the future. \$\endgroup\$
    – endolith
    Oct 27, 2010 at 18:25
  • \$\begingroup\$ I agree. I do think we need to go through and delete things similar to what reemrevnivek has on his post. It will just take time and us being active in informing the community as a whole. \$\endgroup\$
    – Kortuk
    Oct 27, 2010 at 18:32
  • \$\begingroup\$ Don't single-use tags eventually get purged by the system? I wouldn't spend too much energy on those. \$\endgroup\$
    – markrages
    Dec 29, 2010 at 18:42
  • \$\begingroup\$ @markrages, this was posted before I learned of that. I will not worry about them now. \$\endgroup\$
    – Kortuk
    Dec 29, 2010 at 19:04

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