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I got thinking, and the tag is pretty dumb. What's everyone think about nuking, banning, and retagging the affected questions? There are 197 at the moment, 30 of which are single tag.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Yeah, that's pretty dumb. We should get rid of them all and replace them with the "question" tag. \$\endgroup\$
    – Olin Lathrop
    Oct 7, 2015 at 23:16
  • \$\begingroup\$ That's going to leave a lot of untagged questions \$\endgroup\$
    – Passerby
    Oct 8, 2015 at 1:31
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Passerby What's worse, a stupid, meaningless tag, or having to go through a re-tag some questions? \$\endgroup\$
    – Matt Young
    Oct 8, 2015 at 1:33
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    \$\begingroup\$ Considering there's a bunch currently untagged, including year old questions, maybe deal with those first instead of adding another what, 30? electronics.stackexchange.com/tags/untagged \$\endgroup\$
    – Passerby
    Oct 8, 2015 at 1:50
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    \$\begingroup\$ Given that the site has both "electrical" and "electronics" in the name, it's pretty much implied that any on-topic question here is already about something vaguely electrical. So the [electrical] tag doesn't really seem to add any value. \$\endgroup\$
    – MarkU
    Oct 8, 2015 at 2:03
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Passerby most of those [untagged] questions are downvoted/low quality, but I agree with tagging the useful questions. \$\endgroup\$
    – MarkU
    Oct 8, 2015 at 2:13
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    \$\begingroup\$ Just flagged most of those as "Per meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5221/… and meta.stackexchange.com/questions/78048/… and meta.stackexchange.com/questions/225586/… please delete this negative score, unanswered, closed, rejected migration question. It's crudding up the place." \$\endgroup\$
    – Passerby
    Oct 8, 2015 at 2:14
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    \$\begingroup\$ Because we try to migrate a lot of stuff out -__-, when those get rejected, the system Locks the questions, and prevents them from being auto deleted like normally crap questions get deleted. And that's just the ones in the untagged tag, who knows how many other exist \$\endgroup\$
    – Passerby
    Oct 8, 2015 at 2:26
  • \$\begingroup\$ @MattYoung sorry, didn't mean to hijack your question... \$\endgroup\$
    – MarkU
    Oct 8, 2015 at 2:45
  • \$\begingroup\$ @MarkU No matter, I think we got some positive actions going as a result. \$\endgroup\$
    – Matt Young
    Oct 8, 2015 at 2:47
  • \$\begingroup\$ Per @MarkU's observation, maybe we could change the software to tag every question "electrical". I like uniformity :) \$\endgroup\$
    – gbarry
    Oct 8, 2015 at 4:51
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    \$\begingroup\$ In the UK it's a pretty common distinction to use "electrical" to mean higher voltage and/or power (ususally mains AC, but also automotive 12V and 24V, DC links etc.) engineering and "electronic" to mean small-signal and low-power engineering. The tag makes sense to me in that context, but I've realised recently that that distinction isn't international. \$\endgroup\$
    – Xcodo
    Oct 8, 2015 at 12:44
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    \$\begingroup\$ @xcodo we have a tag for mains and high voltage already. See the related questions in the side for the clean up on that \$\endgroup\$
    – Passerby
    Oct 8, 2015 at 13:56
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    \$\begingroup\$ I'll ask for a tag wipe on Monday, barring any compelling counter argument. \$\endgroup\$
    – W5VO
    Oct 10, 2015 at 0:39
  • \$\begingroup\$ @W5VO It's Friday and the tag's still here. Any update on this? \$\endgroup\$
    – Matt Young
    Oct 16, 2015 at 15:21

3 Answers 3

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Are you damn sure about destroying electical?

I was. I also blacklisted the tag. Please look over untagged questions to provide correct tags or vote to delete.

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I'm in favor of removing it. While one could argue that we do allow non-electrical questions (signal/control theory, embedded programming, HDL, history...), all of those subjects are on-topic because of their relation to electricity and electrical engineering. Also, there are far more electrical questions than any other kind. Looking at the front page right now, I see one programming question, one control theory question, one pure digital question, and 47 "electrical" questions. A tag that applies to ~95% of our questions does not seem very useful.

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    \$\begingroup\$ In some parts of the world a distinction is made between electronic engineering and electrical engineering (low power/voltage vs. high power/voltage?). \$\endgroup\$
    – Peter Mortensen
    Oct 8, 2015 at 19:05
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    \$\begingroup\$ Power distribution vs. electronics is a legitimate distinction, but I don't think "electrical" is the right term for that here. \$\endgroup\$
    – Adam Haun
    Oct 8, 2015 at 19:58
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    \$\begingroup\$ TLDR; this "electrical" tag is as useful as stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/programming or stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/software would be on SO. \$\endgroup\$
    – Fizz
    Oct 8, 2015 at 21:11
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    \$\begingroup\$ @AdamHaun: Correct. For power distribution we have [[power-distribution]]. And for power transmission, we have [[power-transmission]]. \$\endgroup\$
    – Li-aung Yip
    Oct 9, 2015 at 8:11
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I've looked at this on and off over the past week. Now, I count approximately 10 questions with the single [electrical] tag, and some of these questions are very poor - they should be easy to deal with.

I think the tag is safe to remove. The untagged remainder can be cleaned up pretty quickly.

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