Is the vocabulary tag helpful?

Question

It seems to me that the vocabulary tag is mostly superfluous.

I found this old post from 2010 which compares the tags words, which has since been rightfully discontinued, word-choice, single-word-requests and vocabulary. RegDwigнt asserts at the end that the words tag is a simple cop-out for someone who doesn't know which tag to use.

Of course, the state of the taxonomy has evolved since 2010. I am well aware that the tag is in the all-time top30 of used tags. However, it seems, that the vocabulary tag might be actually obsolete now. Every use of the tag - which is by the way not given by the tag wiki - seems to be covered by other tags.

More importantly, the tag info says:

This tag should be distinguished from:

• word-choice, which is for questions about choosing a word from a set of alternatives
• single-word-requests, which is for questions about finding a word to fit a meaning, when you don't yet have any alternatives to choose from
• meaning, which is for questions about definitions and nuances of meaning in a word or phrase

Naturally, that's not how the tag is used.

• 321 overlaps with single word requests
• 200 overlaps with word-choice
• 227 overlaps with the tags containing meaning

Looking at the questions tagged with vocabulary almost none besides the example questions seem to match the tag's intention.

• List for 2016 vocabulary only questions
• All time vocabulary only questions

Another indicator that the tag in its current state might be not that useful is that almost 30% of the vocabulary only tagged questions are closed which is higher than the overall rate.

As first step I edited the usage guidance of the vocabulary tag to match its intention as described in the old post and the example questions. Thankfully, that has since been approved.

What am I suggesting now?

As a second step, however, I want to ask if the tag vocabulary is necessary at all? Especially considering that we have a closing reason too broad and it seems to apply to most of the example questions.

P.S. It would be nice to get some insight by the people who actually use the tags. Especially the highly involved tag editors.

Answer 1

I agree that "vocabulary," as it is used, is often redundant or overly vague. Most of these questions seem like they could be tagged with at least one of the following: single-word-requests, meaning, differences, word-choice and if they are tagged with one of these, vocabulary doesn't add any information that I can see.

• single-word-requests and phrase-requests are all related to vocabulary.
• meaning questions, based on just the tag name, sound like in principle they might refer to the meaning of grammatical structures rather than words, but in practice they are, as the tag info says, used for "questions related to definitions and nuances of meaning of a word or phrase." So in other words, it's safe to assume a question tagged with meaningis related to vocabulary.
• differences questions are almost always about meaning or usage in my experience, and it already implies that we're discussing multiple words.
• word-choice already implies that we're discussing multiple words.

One of RegDwight's undeleted examples of a vocabulary question is "Informal terms for money amounts". I agree that this doesn't quite fit into the above categories. It's kind of like a "single word request"/"phrase request," but explicitly requesting multiple words.

The question is from very early on (Aug 15 '10) and I'm not entirely sure that we need a special classification for it in our current categories. Things I'm wondering: Is this kind of question on-topic anymore? I kind of feel like it would get closed if it were asked today, but is this how it should be? It has a greater than average number of answers (9) and many of them are single-liners without citations. It also uses the "community wiki" convention for list questions and answers, which seems to be kind of dead nowadays (from what I understand, questions cannot even be posted as Community Wiki anymore).

Answer 2

I had, once upon a time, tried manually retagging some questions without flooding the feeds... Then I gave up. Now, I know there's a feature where we can blacklist tags, or burninate(?) so that they vanish without affecting the posts' activity status... I wonder what would happen if we were to try banning the tag. I don't think there's much harm in it.

In short, in my time here, I've found no specific use for the said tag. It's either redundant or mistagged.

_{I also think it's time we look into "terminology" tag.}