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Comments on A way to prohibit creating certain tags.
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A way to prohibit creating certain tags.
On EE.CO we have some tags that are utterly useless, but people keep on using them, for example voltage.
For non-experts: voltage is one of the main physical quantity used to describe the behavior of any circuit or electrical system.
Such tags become kitchen sinks used to tag questions of all sorts, so there is no benefit to use them to organize questions.
I was thinking whether we would need a new feature like a "forbidden tag" thing, with which mods could define a set of tags that cannot be created (when a user tried to create them, some kind of message would be displayed to warn them). They could appear on the tag list in a different color, with a notice to not use them.
However, I think this behavior could be emulated with existing features.
If we define a tag like do-not-use-this-tag-ever and then create synonyms with all the tags we want to prohibit, the users wouldn't be able to create them and the platform would already point that out.
Do you think this is a sound idea?
A problem I can see is that probably there is a limit on how many tag synonyms can be created (is it a DB limit or a UI limit?).
I've already created tags with 4 synonyms, but in this case we could be dealing with dozens of synonyms (commonly used words used in the field that are too generic to mean anything as tags). Maybe the system is not designed to handle this.
What do you think about the idea?
Category settings include some tag settings: - Required tags: a set of tags, one of which must be included in a post …
9mo ago
Moderator only tags Another existing feature that might be relevant as part of a solution: some tags can only be added …
9mo ago
Some thoughts: 1. If e.g. profanity in tags is becoming an issue, that should definitely be dealt with, perhaps with …
9mo ago
I don't see anything wrong with a way to ban tags, other than it would require more coding from CD devs. Nothing wrong w …
9mo ago
Post
Moderator only tags
Another existing feature that might be relevant as part of a solution: some tags can only be added by a moderator, such as "status-completed". If "voltage" is created as a moderator only tag, then the description can explain why it's not useful, to reduce user frustration when they find they cannot use it. I'm not sure if synonyms would be part of this approach or not.
Acceptable?
Does this work as a solution? Would moderators be happy with this or would it clutter their workflow too much? Does this depend on how many forbidden tags there are likely to be?
Alternative
If using moderator only tags for this is not acceptable, would it be useful to create a third type of tag, that cannot be added to posts but does not clutter the moderator only tags?
This would mean that instead of a notice not to use them, they would simply be impossible to use (with a friendly description explaining why).
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