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So our first round of proposals for the Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative is about to close, and it's looking like will be first up to the chopping block. Career questions are tricky in that people, despite the tag wikis and tag wiki excerpts and the constant retags, still use it on a constant basis.

Stack Exchange won't lock (i.e. blacklist) a tag from getting new questions if it has hundreds of questions in it as it provides a bad experience to the user. So instead, what I'd like to propose is renaming to something more jargony——in order to help dissuade random passersby from using it while we clean it up.

This tag would be temporary, and—should there be any questions left—would be renamed back to once the cleanup is finished. We'd of course have the usual slate of (ineffective) tag wiki warnings saying not to use the tag.

Good idea, bad idea?

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Good idea, I like it. Maybe throw a non-printing invisible in the middle of that tag as well.

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    Tricky: what I would call a "clever use of game mechanics."
    – user8
    Commented Feb 20, 2012 at 21:41
  • @MarkTrapp To handle ChrisF's point, put the non-printing char in the middle of “career” so it won't match.
    – Josh K Mod
    Commented Feb 20, 2012 at 22:21
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The only drawback I can think of is that the autocomplete is fairly intelligent and if the user types "career" will match "stci-career" anyway.

I think editing the tag wiki excerpt (and perhaps even body) to make it clear that this was not the "career" tag might work. The user would be looking for "career" and when it didn't come up as a suggestion they might be more likely to read the excerpt.

Would setting up a synonym be a good idea too? Just in case someone decides to recreate the tag anyway.

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  • Yeah, my hope would be that the stci- prefix would give someone not informed of what's going on the site the impression that it's a very specific concept and not the general purpose career tag. Although Josh K's suggestion to add a non-printing character to the tag would stop even the smart autocompletion.
    – user8
    Commented Feb 20, 2012 at 21:40
  • @MarkTrapp - yes indeedy.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Commented Feb 20, 2012 at 21:42
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Why not just rename is to "stci"? Remove career entirely, yet make it easy to find. If there are any questions deserving of the "career" tag, it can be added, but since general career advice is off-topic, it seems like the "career" tag would be pointless.

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    Basically for fault tolerance: it's clear to people partaking in the STCI know this is about the career cleanup and not some other cleanup, which might get hairy when we switch between tags (someone might still be working on the wrong tag and not realize it since they're all called stci)
    – user8
    Commented Feb 20, 2012 at 21:49
  • @MarkTrapp one cleanup should be completed and the tag eliminated before another cleanup is started.
    – Ryathal
    Commented Feb 21, 2012 at 20:49
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    @Ryathal The last 6 months have already demonstrated tag cleanups don't work: the STCI is designed around fixed, unmoving time limits and that's not going to change just so we can use stci for all cleanups.
    – user8
    Commented Feb 21, 2012 at 20:56

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