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We have alongside ,, and . However, does exist as a redirect. I think it would be better to make it the main tag, which would be more consistent. Some might also consider it more technically accurate, since the present perfect is generally described as a combination of tense and aspect.

Note: The answer to the following meta post suggests using the word "tense" in all of these tags, but the post is quite old and it looks like that suggestion was never implemented: Which should the tags for tenses be? In addition, the question talks about "past-tense and future-tense," which it does seem might have some ambiguity as single words; but "present-perfect" seems completely unambiguous to me as it is. The answer there even calls it a "problem" that "tags like are rather long."

In any case, I have now posted an answer there, so please upvote it if you agree with me and disagree with the older answer.

Edit Oct 1, 2015. There hasn't been as much community discussion as I would like, either below this question or below the linked question. However, there have been 11 upvotes, and there was only one downvote, and the post has been up for nearly a week. This indicates to me that the community is in favor of making this change, so I'm going to try to actually get it done now. According to this question on Meta SE: How to rename a tag?, a moderator should be able to do this, although I'm not sure if the issue is complicated by the fact that the two tags are already marked as synonyms of each other. I'll ask a moderator in chat and see what happens—if more community action is needed (for example, voting on tag synonyms) I'll post about it here.

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  • Can we please do something about all these questions coming in comparing the present perfect to the simple past? (and the past perfect vs. present perfect vs SP) I know it's the beginning of the scholastic year for many learners, but on EL&U we have shitloads of questions and answers asking and saying the same thing, all the time. Yet, ironically, it's not easy finding these "original" questions in order to close new questions as duplicates. It's like having a room littered with hundreds of paper sheets, it's difficult to know where to begin!
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Sep 28, 2015 at 8:09
  • Rant over. I know you can't do anything :)
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Sep 28, 2015 at 8:09
  • @MariLouA: there's even a tag for that: pp-v-sp.
    – herisson
    Commented Sep 28, 2015 at 8:31
  • I know there is, 90% of these questions are asking about the difference in usage and meaning, but I don't think tags is the best solution for finding duplicates. When you're faced with 70 questions, what do you do?
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Sep 28, 2015 at 8:39
  • @Mari-LouA: well, there was the "canonical posts about grammar" idea, but that was highly downvoted. Otherwise, searching Google is pretty much the main way of finding Stack Exchange questions, I guess. I wish there was more of a user-curated index in some cases, especially for questions dealing with concepts that are hard to put into a search engine. But that adds other problems, perhaps.
    – herisson
    Commented Sep 28, 2015 at 8:44
  • I wouldn't say four downvotes is a massive condemnation, just that EL&U users are jaded and indifferent. And I don't think that is the best solution either. I would merge different answers from duplicate questions in specific posts that talks about 1. PP vs SP "already", 2. SP vs Past Perfect vs Present Perfect "just", 3. "finished actions", 4. "repeated activities" etc.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Sep 28, 2015 at 8:51

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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There's been a mapping from to anyway, so I just went and swapped it. We can always swap it back should the need arise.

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  • Thank you! This is the first tag change I've brought up on Meta that has actually been put into practice.
    – herisson
    Commented Oct 2, 2015 at 9:53
  • There seem to be a few glitches, though: I can't find the tag wiki anymore, and the tag synonyms page for "present-perfect-tense"/"present-perfect" is also inaccessible for me. I don't know if these will fix themselves automatically in a little while.
    – herisson
    Commented Oct 2, 2015 at 9:57
  • OK, seems all better now.
    – herisson
    Commented Oct 2, 2015 at 10:30

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