The purpose of tagging

Question

I've recently felt that my work in the Unanswered queue has hit a stable point and have moved on to helping fix up the tags. My first attempt was to scan through the tags looking for overlap so we can merge tags that are not providing a useful distinction from other, already existing tags.

The first target was phrase-requests as noted in this meta discussion: Can we merge [single-word-requests] and [phrase-requests]?.

Despite getting generally positive support for the merge, the synonym request was apparently voted down after I reminded people that tag merging can be voted on. So that's brilliant. Yet again, a small but active minority has blocked progress on this site.

So this is a rant. If you, as a general community, feel it is appropriate to just downvote tag synonyms because you see some minute technical difference then I have no idea what you think tags are for. I have little interest in helping clean up the tags on ELU if people want to keep a bunch of demonstrably useless tags around. Especially if people feel it is appropriate to actively fight me during the voting process.

Therefore, you tell me what you think the tags are for. Tell me:

• Why we have tags
• How to determine the usefulness of a tag
• How to determine whether two tags should be synonyms
• Which tags are commonly misused

I have personal opinions on all of these points but I don't feel like arguing with you lot anymore. All you do is complain about the state of things but then fight the few people who are actively making an effort to improve the state of things.

But, foolishly, you never seem to realize that there are differing opinions based on nothing but hunches and you will never reach an actual consensus. And now that you feel it is necessary to block tag cleanup from occurring, you are doomed to leaving the tag situation the way it is.

So here is your last chance to figure it out. And when, inevitably, a significant portion of you is outvoted suck it up and realize you have two choices: (a) throw a fit and block progress or (b) let the site move forward even if it isn't in the direction you prefer.

End rant.

Answer 1

I have a great deal of sympathy for MrHen. I know he's put a lot of effort into clearing the Unanswered queue, and if he's willing to attack the tags mess with antthing like that gusto, we should all be supportive.

But I think he picked the wrong battleground with merge single-word-requests and phrase-requests. I do actually lean in that direction myself, but knowing there's a certain amount of debate on that particular proposal, I refrained from voting one way or the other when I went through endorsing all the other outstanding proposals here.

What caused me to stay my hand on that one was mainly the fact that there are currently almost 1000 phrase-request questions, most of which don't also have the single-word-request tag (which is itself on over 4500 questions). I assume if we merge those two tags, that's a lot of cases where the distinction will be lost forever. I think there should be a lot more attention (i.e. - votes cast) on the relevant meta question before we take such an "irrevocable" step.