robotics is a deprecated tag that defines a set of off-topic questions. For a question about electronics related to robotics it does not change the solution space or change anything about the question.
Please remove robotics.
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2 Answers
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Robotics is not part of the site anymore, but this just means that purely mechanical questions are off-topic, right? Questions about the electronics of a robot are still perfectly acceptable, like PID algorithm implementation using computer vision, and a robotics tag can be helpful in differentiating them. So I don't see why it should be deleted.
The tag is more meaningful now that robotics is not in the title of the site.
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2\$\begingroup\$ how does the robotics tag have anything to do with that? He is controlling servos based on Computer vision processing then control signals. That could, without error, be broken into two distinct questions. One about servo control, one about computer vision. The servo control, how is robotics any better then tagging servo? The computer vision, why does it matter that is used for controlling a robot? In both cases the reason is non-important. All physical world interfaces could/could not be used for robotics, why does the robotics tag help? \$\endgroup\$– KortukOct 1, 2011 at 15:59
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There are potentially three kinds of questions with the robotics tag.
- a question that doesn't have any connection with robots. Like any other incorrectly applied tag, it should be removed from that question.
- a question that has nothing to do with electronics, other than it has something to do with robotics. Apparently such questions used to be on-topic here, but are now off-topic and should be closed. (I wish that change in scope had occurred at least a few seconds after the robot-oriented stack exchange had been set up). I see no reason to remove a "robotics" tag from a closed question.
- a question about electronics that happens to have something to do with a robot. (For example, questions about H bridge transistors, ultrasound circuits, infrared beacons, routing power and data through rotary joints, correlated double sampling, etc.) I feel such questions should be tagged "robotics", and kept as on-topic.
In particular, no open question should have only the "robotics" tag, much like no open question should have only a car, datasheets, books, light, programming, telephone, cad, tutorial ,enclosure, c++, workbench, music, documentation, energy, or programming tag. All such questions are either somehow related to electronics in some other way and should have additional tags describing that way attached (in some cases, by creating new tags), or are not really on-topic here and should be closed and moved to a robot-oriented site.
While some people say "If the tag can’t work as the only tag on a question ... [that tag should be] systematically eradicated"(1), they're talking about getting rid of meta tags that don't describe the content of the question, which doesn't apply to the robotics tag and these other tags.
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\$\begingroup\$ If I am building an H-bridge, why does it matter that I will use it in a robot? Does that change the solution space? And it is a meta tag in that case, it does not describe the question. That would be like adding a cell-phone tag when I am doing RF with the intent of building a cell-phone. It does not describe the question in any real way, it is just an extraneous tag. \$\endgroup\$– KortukOct 1, 2011 at 17:17
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\$\begingroup\$ the robotics community was quite adamant that including it as part of an electronics site was misrepresenting the scope of robotics. I disagreed, but at some point they will have a site and there will be even less of an issue. Only a couple question on our entire site did they consider good questions and it has made it much easier to sort out low quality questions on robotics, which most have been. \$\endgroup\$– KortukOct 1, 2011 at 17:19
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1\$\begingroup\$ @Kortuk: If I am building something electronics-related, why does it matter that I will use it in a car, telephone, tutorial, enclosure, robot, etc.? Because these devices have different constraints on available power and reliability than otherwise electrically-similar devices that don't move and are plugged into an indoor wall outlet. \$\endgroup\$ Oct 1, 2011 at 18:02
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2\$\begingroup\$ @Kortuk: The blog post I linked seemed to describe the unwanted "meta-tags" as (a) tags describing the form of a question -- poll, howto, homework, etc.; or (b) tags that could be applied to every question on the entire site: best-practices, beginner, -- and on this site, electrical-engineering. I don't see how either of those definitions apply to "robotics" or the other tags I listed. \$\endgroup\$ Oct 1, 2011 at 18:13
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\$\begingroup\$ I have a robot at work with 480V power hookups. I have built one with a set of AA batteries. A Robotics tag does not define what our constraints are. Those need to be defined. Many Many robots are locked to a power source. \$\endgroup\$– KortukOct 1, 2011 at 18:29
electronicsis a bad tag because it should apply to everything on the site.roboticsdoes not apply to everything, though, so it adds information. there are questions about robotics that are in the scope of the site, no? \$\endgroup\$beginner, for instance. So I vote for blacklisting because it's off-topic. \$\endgroup\$