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I was on the cusp of editing the tag, which currently doesn't have anything in it's wiki, but decided against it. I assumed that the point of the tag was to discuss the linguistic currency in the sense of "the fact or quality of being generally accepted or in use."

There are 34 questions in the tag currently, most of them seem to be about linguistic currency. There is at least one question that has it tagged for the monetary sense of "words, phrases etc. about a medium of economic exchange."

I personally feel that the site is better served by restricting the tag to the linguistic meaning of currency. So I wanted to double check here: is it worth having a tag for linking questions on the monetary sense of currency?

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  • A downvote with no comment? I just want to know what to edit the tag to say... grumble
    – Patrick M
    May 10, 2014 at 21:18
  • Downvotes on meta do not affect rep, and mean only 'I disagree'. On the other hand, the question is currently badly worded; you seem to be simultaneously advocating and deprecating a change to the meaning of the tag. FWIW, I would prefer not to edit it; are there really questions about English that depend on (as opposed to mentioning) monetary units?
    – Tim Lymington
    May 10, 2014 at 22:37
  • @TimLymington I'm not worried about the rep... I just didn't see how someone could disagree with a question. Re-reading what I wrote, I see how I could have been clearer - the tag doesn't have a description for it's purpose. Edited the question to make that clear.
    – Patrick M
    May 11, 2014 at 2:57
  • Looking at the tagged question list, it looks like the oldest questions tend to use it in the monetary sense while newer ones use it in the linguistic. Because the monetary sense is what came to my mind first when I saw currency, I think it may be best to merge all questions explicitly about modern use with the contemporary-usage tag. If there's potential in tagging monetary questions, I agree that the wiki needs editing. Good question, @PatrickM!
    – user39720
    May 11, 2014 at 4:23
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    Hmm thank you dingo_dan. I'm of the opinion that every tag needs a wiki, at least a description. Is that not the standard? At first glance, I think contemporary-usage is probably a better tag. On the concern of whether a currency/monetary tag is relevant, I don't think that it is. Tags should be about parts of language, not the things that language can describe. (In my opinion, anyways.)
    – Patrick M
    May 11, 2014 at 5:12
  • I am new enough not to know what is standard but I agree, adding that we must also keep wiki entries current, complete, and distinct. With contemporary-usage, for example, I think a fuller wiki description about what the greater restriction from Modern English (also, is this referring to a tag or to something else?) is would be helpful; if it is meant for something specific and different, then my merge suggestion is not good.
    – user39720
    May 11, 2014 at 8:17
  • We already have a contemporary-english tag.
    – tchrist Mod
    May 12, 2014 at 0:04
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    @tchrist right, so what should we do with the currency tag (which also exists)? Synonymize it to the contemporary-english tag? Delete it and merge it over? Add a wiki for it describing how it is subtly different from the contemporary-english tag? Keep the tag as a rally point for questions about monetary exchange?
    – Patrick M
    May 12, 2014 at 1:24

1 Answer 1

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I'm a little surprised that this both has no answer, and that nothing has been done about the tag. I had the exact same response as Patrick M when I came across this question in the suggested edit queue. Someone with low rep was trying to remove the tag from the question on the grounds that it was "senseless".

When I looked for other questions with the tag, I noticed that the overwhelming majority of them are from Yoichi Oishi. To me, this indicates that it doesn't occur to most people to use the tag this way. It certainly doesn't occur to me, or to the person suggesting the edit.

Given that we already have , I think the reasonable choices are to (1) burninate, (1a) burninate and blacklist, (2) synonymize with (which I thought had already been done with , judging by the comment stream above, but instead seems to have been one-time merged instead), or (3) allow to live on for use with money questions.

Personally, I think questions like this are valid uses of the currency-as-money tag, so I'd go with option 3. However, it's hard to imagine too many more questions that could legitimately use the tag this way, so I'm fine with option 2. In either of these cases, the tag wiki should definitely be updated accordingly.

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    As a non-meta question, the word 'currency', in almost all contexts (except possibly the linguistic one), means something about money. The only places where it is used to mean 'current usage is in Yoichi's questions. As he is a non-native speaker, I think it is a misuse of the term for the tag, and his questions should be retagged with contemporary-english.
    – Mitch
    Sep 30, 2014 at 13:20
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    Also, for those like me who had never seen the word before, this is what 'burninate' means
    – Mitch
    Sep 30, 2014 at 13:22

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