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I just noticed that a lot of our tags here do not have any wikis/excerpts, and they seem like they're almost identical. Can someone please suggest how they're different and whether or not we should remove them or add descriptions? Perhaps some of them could be marked as synonyms too.

An excellent example of a question which looks like it has some really redundant tags is Are there guidelines for reopening questions? (v1; not edited by Qmechanic yet :P). I do not blame the OP, since those tags exist and obviously one would be compelled to use them, but I do feel that at that point, they're not helping accessibility: they're actually making it harder to find questions. For instance, if I have a certain question I'm trying to find, of if I want to look for "some" category (note that if there was a tag excerpt for the following tags, I'd know what to replace "some" with), I have no idea if I want or . IMO if you're talking about a closed question, you're almost inevitably going to discuss the reason why it's closed, and that would also pull in a subset of the tag. However, the scope tag is not present for a lot of these. Similarly, most of the questions in the tag are not technically about the mechanism of close votes: only this and this from the tag's first page appear to be appropriate.

  1. Can we add tag excerpts to these and create a few synonyms? Preferably the creators would do that; I have no idea what those were created for, and the lists of questions underneath them does not really indicate what they're supposed to be categorizing. Hopefully the tag excerpts would contain some notes about where the tag could be used.

  2. Once the superfluous ones are obliterated/turned into synonyms, and the surviving ones have excerpts/wikis, can I/we go on a tag editing spree for the last couple of weeks' questions? I see a lot of questions just on the front page which I suspect could use a fix of that kind, based on my slight guesses regarding the meanings of the tags. Or should we just leave the old ones and make sure that the new ones can be chosen well?

  3. If they are indeed distinct tags, could someone post an answer regarding the differences? After that, can I/we go through the first page or so of that tag and remove it from the questions which don't need that, to ensure that the question list gives readers the correct impressions of the use of the tag?

Other redundant tags I've noticed: /*, /, and / (though there's a pending synonym suggestion for those two).

* This is a great example of a case which may seem like perfect synonyms based on the usual usage, but 'moderation' could theoretically refer to broader moderation activities by the community

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  • $\begingroup$ The question you linked has only two tags and they don't seem redundant to me. Any chance you meant to link to something else? $\endgroup$
    – David Z
    Feb 9, 2019 at 2:08
  • $\begingroup$ @DavidZ Yikes, that's the last thing I copied on my PC :P. Clearly a mistake; it's an answer, not a question, and it's even on the main site, not meta. Thanks! $\endgroup$
    – user191954
    Feb 9, 2019 at 2:32
  • $\begingroup$ Yeah that makes more sense now :-) How about including a list of the tags which you'd like to act on in this question? $\endgroup$
    – David Z
    Feb 9, 2019 at 2:45
  • $\begingroup$ @DavidZ I think the only problematic tags from the front page are the ones I've lined in the question (that's still 4 of them, and all show up multiple times!). 'scope' is often missed, so I'm not sure where it's supposed to be used, and the closing-related ones appear to be either misused or identical. Nothing else off the top of my head. $\endgroup$
    – user191954
    Feb 9, 2019 at 2:48
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    $\begingroup$ "a lot of our tags here do not have any wikis/excerpts" - as opposed to the tags on main, which have meticulous documentation? $\endgroup$
    – Emilio Pisanty
    Feb 9, 2019 at 10:50
  • $\begingroup$ @EmilioPisanty Of course, I've seen several tags on the main site which have no tag excerpts. But their usage is usually pretty obvious, and I have not seen any places where the tagging is this random/vague. I'm sure that there are examples, but clearly they are not as abundant as they are on our meta. Perhaps I should say "a lot of the frequently used tags do not have wikis/excerpts and their implications are not always obvious". $\endgroup$
    – user191954
    Feb 9, 2019 at 10:59
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    $\begingroup$ @DavidZ I've found 3 other pairs which may not be synonyms but are definitely used as if they are synonyms. The post has been edited. $\endgroup$
    – user191954
    Feb 20, 2019 at 8:39
  • $\begingroup$ Hm, I guess we should do something about this. Unfortunately I'm pretty busy the next few days so it's unlikely I'll get to it. $\endgroup$
    – David Z
    Feb 20, 2019 at 8:45

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