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I want to tackle an teensy tiny bit of the homework debate: How many people set the homework tag on their ignore list as a way to improve their experience of the site?

This is one of the arguments for keeping the tag around, but there's not much to go on regarding how important this mechanism is, and the latest go-round of the discussion includes suggestions that it should be removed, which on some counts wouldn't be a bad idea.

So: there's two answers below; vote on the one that describes you.

If you do have the tag on ignore, I would also like to ask that you disable that for a bit and see how the site feels without it, and add an answer here with your experience. If it turns out that there's a nontrivial fraction of high-value answerers that would find the site much less interesting if the tag were eliminated, then that's an important data point. On the flipside, if there is a population of users that actively looks for homework-tagged questions to answer, then that is also important to know.

Oh, and it should go without saying, but it's worth spelling out: this is a very unscientific polling method and the results need to be taken with a grain of salt. The relative weight between the two options is obviously not very meaningful, since there's a huge default inertia on not ignoring the tag. However, I think there's a reasonable chance of filling in the data point from the paragraph above, so let's give this a go.

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    $\begingroup$ Perhaps there should be a third alternative: No, I was not aware of the ignore feature. $\endgroup$
    – Qmechanic Mod
    Commented May 26, 2017 at 22:19
  • $\begingroup$ @Qmechanic Isn't that a subset of 'no, I don't have it on ignore'? $\endgroup$
    – Emilio Pisanty
    Commented May 26, 2017 at 22:20
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    $\begingroup$ Yes, but most users probably haven't given it a serious thought and just left it in the default position. $\endgroup$
    – Qmechanic Mod
    Commented May 26, 2017 at 22:31
  • $\begingroup$ @Qmechanic By popular demand, in it goes. $\endgroup$
    – Emilio Pisanty
    Commented May 27, 2017 at 17:19
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Frankly, with the amount of improper tagging that goes on (at least, before QMechanic gets to the question), ignoring any tag would not hide all the questions I don't want to see and would hide some questions I do want to see. With that in mind, it doesn't seem to be worth it (to me) to ignore any tags. IMHOOTAJ (In my humble opinion of the almighty Jim) $\endgroup$
    – Jim
    Commented May 30, 2017 at 12:10

4 Answers 4

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No, I don't have the tag on ignore.

Upvote if this is the case. To keep the numbers clean, please don't downvote.

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No, I was not aware that this was possible.

Upvote if this is the case. To keep the numbers clean, please don't downvote.

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    $\begingroup$ Nice to see that people are capable of reading & following the "please don't downvote" bit. $\endgroup$
    – Kyle Kanos
    Commented May 28, 2017 at 11:28
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    $\begingroup$ @KyleKanos I guess these answers are too long and people didn't read through to the end. $\endgroup$
    – Emilio Pisanty
    Commented May 28, 2017 at 16:21
  • $\begingroup$ People. $\endgroup$
    – AccidentalFourierTransform
    Commented May 31, 2017 at 21:13
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I normally don't put tags on ignore, but tried putting the tag on ignore just to try it.

I hated it, for two big reasons.

  1. It didn't eliminate all the junk - far from it. There's plenty of bad questions that aren't tagged and shouldn't be.
  2. It made it harder to get rid of the junk that was tagged - because I couldn't really see it (I only had it grayed out, not completely gone).

In summary: if you hate the junk that comes with that tag, don't ignore it, deal with it, and anyway, you'll have to face plenty of junk not in that tag. So.....I didn't find it very useful in the "improve experience" category.

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  • $\begingroup$ Is this really relevant as an answer to the poll? $\endgroup$
    – JMac
    Commented Jun 6, 2017 at 15:03
  • $\begingroup$ @JMac Emilio says in his question "If you do have the tag on ignore, I would also like to ask that you disable that for a bit and see how the site feels without it, and add an answer here with your experience" - I just did the inverse of that. I think it's a relevant answer. $\endgroup$
    – auden
    Commented Jun 7, 2017 at 19:51
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$\begingroup$

Yes, I've got the tag on ignore.

Upvote if this is the case. To keep the numbers clean, please don't downvote.

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    $\begingroup$ Please don't downvote, as it makes it impossible for people with <1k rep to see the results of the poll. $\endgroup$
    – Emilio Pisanty
    Commented May 31, 2017 at 15:25
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    $\begingroup$ Currently (for clarification) the score is +2/-2 which is why it shows zero. PLEASE read directions downvoters!! $\endgroup$
    – auden
    Commented Jun 1, 2017 at 16:50
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    $\begingroup$ One may conjecture that users that got the tag on ignore spend their (limited?) time on the main site & tend not to visit meta. Conversely, if you are interested in the workings of Phys.SE, policy-making & the meta site, it's more likely that you cannot afford to ignore tags. $\endgroup$
    – Qmechanic Mod
    Commented Jun 6, 2017 at 13:57

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