5
\$\begingroup\$

I recently used the tag for a question about transformers and noticed that it had no description. I then wanted to add one, but noticed that it is used for two very different subjects: transformers and processors.

Should it be split into two separate tags or potentially merged with other tags? There are only 89 questions with this tag, so it is still feasible to do this.

EDIT (to shamelessly bump the question):

I am merely curious now how action is usually taken here. I guess "everyone" agreed that the tag should be deleted and - for a few questions - replaced with a more specific tag if they didn't have one already. As explained in dim's answer.

I am now interested in: will such action be actually ever taken ? If not (fine, after all, it is work), then I will probably not bother anyone with such questions about the tag organisation in the future.

EDIT 2 (conclusion and deletion?):

I've gone through all questions with and assigned appropriate tags to a few of them, so they still make sense when is deleted.

As a result, can be deleted by a mod with the respective priviledges.

\$\endgroup\$
4
  • \$\begingroup\$ My take on your last question: I don't think you can expect diamond mods to do that. Diamond mods resolve flags, and do various things which tag cleanup could be part of, but I'm not sure what availability they have here, since they didn't answer. Besides, people with rep as low as 2000 can take care of that (basically, you simply need the edit privilege). So... The action to be taken is down to you, me, or any other regular user with enough rep. On my side, I'm... washing my hair... so I can't do it. Sorry. \$\endgroup\$
    – dim
    Jan 25 at 10:27
  • \$\begingroup\$ @dim I see :) Well I can (by priviledge) edit questions carrying this tag and add more appropriate tags. This doesn't really apply to many questions because most already have more appropriate tags in place. However, I can't globally remove this tag. Stripping it off from each of the questions seems like a stupidly redundant task and doesn't even get rid of the tag in the end (I think). \$\endgroup\$
    – tobalt
    Jan 25 at 10:32
  • \$\begingroup\$ You're right, this part is on the diamon mods. I believe they have specific tools for that. \$\endgroup\$
    – dim
    Jan 25 at 12:44
  • 2
    \$\begingroup\$ Moderators don't have any special tools to mass-delete tags (perhaps you were thinking of our ability to easily synonymize). We can't block them, either -- only SE employees can do that (and you still need to delete the tag from all questions). See here and here. You just have to slowly edit questions to remove the tag, and it would have been best to do that at the same time you were adding tags to those questions. Don't edit too many questions at once and flood the front page, though. \$\endgroup\$
    – Null Mod
    Jan 27 at 14:44

1 Answer 1

11
\$\begingroup\$

In my opinion, a tag isn't relevant at all, whether applied to transformers or CPUs.

Questions should have a or tag (along with the relevant HDL language tag in the latter case, if applicable), but adding the "core" bit of information adds no value. Tags are mostly relevant for searching and categorizing questions, and don't see how is a useful criteria. It's too specific. It also doesn't work when used alone by itself: it needs to be paired with something else (see the concept of "dependant tag" in the famous "meta-tag" blog article). This last problem could be solved by having and , but who's gonna search on this?

So this tag could probably be removed altogether, provided that the questions currently using it include the other appropriate, more relevant tags.

\$\endgroup\$

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .