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Possible Duplicate:
Request for comment: structured tag cleanups

I think we're starting to already get some duplication and unnecessary tagging; we should use this post as a means to figure out what should be combined and what should be blacklisted.

Questions to consider

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    Can someone explain me why the meta tag [poll] is useful? I see a lot of questions that already have [poll] and a lot of questions that could be worth tagged as poll. Aren't discussions inherently polls or am I confused here? (Example: programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126/…)
    – Tamara Wijsman
    Sep 10, 2010 at 2:42
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    @TomWij, you're confused. What was the first language you learned? is a poll, What's the origin of foo and bar? is not.
    – user8
    Sep 10, 2010 at 3:47
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    Maybe I'm confused, but [poll] is defined as "an inquiry into public opinion conducted by interviewing a random sample of people " so [discussion]s are [poll]s and there might not be a need for that extra tag or [poll] should be renamed to avoid a lot of questions that are tagged with both, if you take this too broad even your second question could fall under this as the origin might not be known... But thanks for showing a possible subjective non-poll question. Still... Is this meta tag [poll] really useful?
    – Tamara Wijsman
    Sep 10, 2010 at 9:30
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    I don't mind the tag poll per-say, but I'd rather the answers be created organically not boiler-plated by someone for the sole purpose of up-voting. I created a poll like question only to have someone else "help" me out by creating a bunch of answers for people to vote on. If I were being cynical I would say that smacked a little bit of reputation seeking, which could be a problem.
    – dwynne
    Sep 14, 2010 at 0:15
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    I'm voting to close this for being "too open ended and usually lead to confrontation and argument", there are too much things being asked which could better fit in separate questions. Tags are an essential thing and each issue should get it's own attention, rather than closing new things as being a duplicate and letting those issues rest in the past.
    – Tamara Wijsman
    Sep 30, 2010 at 23:01

2 Answers 2

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Meta tags

Given the nature of the content on Programmers.SE, I think some meta-tags would be helpful. Many questions are going to have specific topics of interest, but others are so subjective they necessarily encompass vaguely defined topics but are still on-topic.

One example of a tag I think would be beneficial would be poll. Assuming it's decided that asking people about their favorite X is considered on-topic (related discussion: What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?, it'd be really useful for people to add those types of questions to their ignored or interested tag lists.

A similar use-case could be made for humor and other similar tags.

Programmer tags

I'd like to see those renamed or removed: they're redundant. It's assumed if you're talking about a language, it's C++ or Erlang, not French or Spanish; and every question on this site has something to do with programmers

Edit: Programmers tag removed, programming-tool renamed to tools.

Favorite tag

I'd like to see this renamed to poll. Favorite is subjective and does not convey anything about the question: is it the author's favorite question? The taggers? Poll is specific and concrete.

Edit: Favorite tag is deprecated in favor of Poll.

Hiring/Job/Career tags

These should be consolidated into one tag: careers and synonyms created for the other tags. There is no difference in the type of questions among these tags.

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  • +1 for wanting to get rid of the [programmers] tag. That's what the temporary domain is already!
    – TheLQ
    Sep 2, 2010 at 11:27
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    Re Favorite: I agree. I started Favorite because I couldn't think of anything else off the top of my head, and it seems likely to grow. Poll has my support.
    – Fishtoaster
    Sep 2, 2010 at 17:56
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    Re Career: I think we may want to delineate the hiring process (resumes, interviews, interviewers, test questions, etc) from job (work environment, advancement, bosses, etc).
    – Fishtoaster
    Sep 2, 2010 at 17:56
  • What does [favorite] have to do with [poll]?
    – Tamara Wijsman
    Sep 10, 2010 at 2:43
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    @TomWij, people were using [favorite] to tag "What is your favorite X?" type questions.
    – user8
    Sep 10, 2010 at 3:39
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I'd have thought this'd be obvious, but someone went through and tagged a bunch of questions "subjective." I've untagged them, and I really don't see any reason to have such a tag, since it's almost all subjective here.

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    There are absolutely questions on this site that have one (or more) definitive answers. There are also questions that are entirely subjective in nature (questions such as "Do you think", "is it worth it", etc.) These questions have no definitive/right answe since the question and answers are pure opinion and there, are subjective.
    – Scott Dorman
    Sep 4, 2010 at 19:01