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Tag cleanup TLDR: Let's get rid of the tag.

Overview:

Following up with this question on broad overused tags, I would like to see how people feel about cleaning up some of the really useless tags that we have, such as , , , and . Generally speaking, one tag should not apply to the vast majority of questions on this site otherwise it doesn't add any organizing value. I would like to go through each of these four tags and figure out a long-term strategy for managing these tags.

The tag:

Currently (ha!) there are 512 questions that are tagged . Of those 512, only 19 are only tagged current, the rest have other tags. This means that there are relatively few questions that must be retagged in any case. This means that if we just nuked the tag, the untagged results would be easy to deal with.

What do we do without a tag!?!?

There are a few different use cases for the tag:

Proposed Actions:

Let's nuke the tag (administratively delete it from all questions in a way that does not impact the front page), and blacklist it so that it doesn't come back. Future questions will not be able to use it, and we will need to retag 19 or so questions, which will not put a huge load on the front page.

Why Nuking?

Ideally, all the questions tagged would be manually retagged. At 500+ tagged questions, this would take a long time and pollute the front page with minor edits. Additionally, new questions will be added that misuse the tag. It is possible to blacklist a tag so it can't be used on new questions, but it will cause edits to existing questions with the tag to fail (apparently in a way that will cause a lot of confusion). Nuking the tag (administratively removing the tag from all questions that use it) is probably the most realistic option for big tags, but we are basically deleting information about those questions.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ For reference, you can use the StackExchange Data Explorer to find questions with only one tag with this query: data.stackexchange.com/electronics/query/142695/… \$\endgroup\$
    – W5VO Mod
    Commented Dec 16, 2013 at 20:24
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    \$\begingroup\$ I support this proposal, but I think some newbies might be confused when they can't use the tag when asking a question about current as a concept, or calculating current in a circuit, etc. \$\endgroup\$
    – JYelton
    Commented Dec 18, 2013 at 16:57
  • \$\begingroup\$ @JYelton Ideally they would be using a more descriptive tag, such as circuit-analysis or homework (just kidding, don't tag things homework). \$\endgroup\$
    – W5VO Mod
    Commented Dec 18, 2013 at 17:10
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    \$\begingroup\$ Just saw this tag resurface as the only tag on a pretty trivial question, did we not do anything with it? \$\endgroup\$
    – Matt Young
    Commented Nov 12, 2014 at 13:39

2 Answers 2

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\$\begingroup\$

Having a "current" tag is about as useful as having an "electrons" tag.

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If it's not broken, don't fix it.

Current is a [very] fundamental thing.
I have a few undergraduate EE texts. Here's an excerpt from the table of contents of one of them (Schwarz & Oldham)

  1. Principles of electrical circuits
    1.1 Electrical quantities
    charge / current / voltage / power

Besides, the 19 questions that have only the current tag is not a negligible number.

Don't nuke it. Please.
[we could find you some other tag to nuke]

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    \$\begingroup\$ My point is that it is so fundamental that it could apply to almost every question. That doesn't doesn't make for a useful tag. \$\endgroup\$
    – W5VO Mod
    Commented Dec 19, 2013 at 3:31
  • \$\begingroup\$ You are looking at this from a taxonomization standpoint. Look at it from an EE standpoint. \$\endgroup\$
    – Nick Alexeev
    Commented Dec 19, 2013 at 4:02
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    \$\begingroup\$ I'm looking at it from a taxonomy standpoint because we're talking about an organization scheme (tags). \$\endgroup\$
    – W5VO Mod
    Commented Dec 19, 2013 at 12:36
  • \$\begingroup\$ @W5VO Do you have access to statistics on how much people search by a given tag? \$\endgroup\$
    – Nick Alexeev
    Commented Dec 19, 2013 at 16:38
  • \$\begingroup\$ In terms of internal search results, I don't have any information. From Google searches, nobody is searching for "current" and coming to our site. \$\endgroup\$
    – W5VO Mod
    Commented Dec 19, 2013 at 19:34
  • \$\begingroup\$ Just to be clear, we're not saying that we won't answer questions on current, and you'll still find a whole bunch of questions about current if you type current into the search bar. You mentioned "If it's not broken, don't fix it." but from my perspective/opinion, it is broken. For a comparable example, would you want to keep a tag called "length"? \$\endgroup\$
    – W5VO Mod
    Commented Dec 19, 2013 at 21:34
  • \$\begingroup\$ @W5VO I would keep the tag "length" and "distance" on forum where it's a principal quantity, like geometry or topography, yes. \$\endgroup\$
    – Nick Alexeev
    Commented Dec 20, 2013 at 0:36

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