Should we add tag tips for the [text-processing] tag

Question

There were several grumpy users in chat talking about how boring or outright bad questions are the text-processing tagged questions. One of the most pushed ideas was that text processing questions should include an attempt to get the desired output, the input, and the output (I think I got it right). Should we give a more detailed guidance to people asking these questions? If "yes", what would be a good, and specific guidance text?

Answer 1

I checked the 5 most recent text-processing questions:

• Extract multiple lines from text file
• How to update three CSV files based on a fourth file
• Extract and format data with `cut` and `awk`
• Insert missing string in multiple ordered columns
• Convert XML to SQL INSERT statements using the command line

Of those, only "Insert missing string in multiple ordered columns" was asked with text-processing. So its OP is the only one who would have seen the tag tip. Its OP is also the one who most clearly doesn't need it, having given a properly formatting question with example input and output and even links to three other questions already reviewed.

So, I think it'd not really help...

Answer 2

I have to admit my culpability in retagging at least three of the questions that derobert mentions with the text-processing tag.

My view is twofold: one, each of the questions I retagged was fundamentally about processing text and, two, consistent tagging allows people to follow tags, or in the case of the disgruntled chat people, ignore them. The latter case is why I also assiduously retag kali-linux questions...

In terms of addressing the problem, perceived or otherwise, I suspect that the type of questions that arouse the ire of the chat denizens, and justifiably so in the majority of these cases, are not asked by people inclined to read tag tips, the help centre or anything else that is going to convince them to think a little harder before pasting their questions into the text field.

For that reason, short of adopting a more decriptive tag (eg., rubbish) for everyone to ignore, simple editing triage seems the most effective approach.