12

There's a suggested edit to the wiki defining it as the biometric fingerprint. But the actual use is rather mixed: there are several questions talking about key fingerprints (~1/3rd of the questions).

Should we tag the key fingerprint questions with something else?

3
  • Given the low rate of questions (25 as of today) and the "rather mixed" use, I'd highly encourage anyone listening to include good cross-reference guidance in the tag excerpts. If we end up splitting every "fingerprint" usage to separate tags, it might be worth a disambiguation tag excerpt on "fingerprint" to point the way to the correct tags.
    – Jeff Schaller Mod
    Oct 23 '19 at 12:48
  • @JeffSchaller is +6/-0 on the top answer enough for a consensus?
    – muru
    Nov 5 '19 at 5:44
  • Seems pretty undisputed to me. Do you need moderator intervention for any of this? I'm happy to help, it's just that I don't think I'm needed (retagging questions and updating tag wiki/excerpts is a 5k privilege, I think).
    – Jeff Schaller Mod
    Nov 10 '19 at 19:43
8

I think that we should split it up into two clearer tags:

We would then retag all questions with to use one of these two tags.

We might also create a synonym from to .

A suggested tag wiki for after the change:

For questions about biometric fingerprinting or fingerprint readers, please tag with . For questions about key fingerprints in relation to cryptography, please tag with .

2
  • 1
    I like this, but maybe fingerprint-authentication instead of biometric-fingerprint
    – muru
    Oct 27 '19 at 17:33
  • @muru That's the word I was looking for! Incorporated, thanks.
    – S.S. Anne
    Oct 27 '19 at 17:36
2

Since we live in the real world, even on a technical site real-world scenarios feel more common-sense (and less likely to be mistagged in the future).

So, if I were looking for an appropriate tag, I'd feel that "fingerprint" (being a common term amongst non-technical people) is more intuitive than "biometric". For example, many laptops and phones now come with a "fingerprint reader", and far less often marketed as a "biometric device" (although I have seen it once or twice when selling security systems in particular).

I'd therefore argue that dividing it into:

would be more likely to guide taggers to the right tag.

In general, I'd say "concept-industry" would be a good tag scheme in this case, however I also see that there's an overlap. For example, understanding the cryptography in fingerprint readers (to prevent MITM attacks) would fall under either (or both) tags. So there isn't a perfect answer here.

-3

I'd keep the tag for questions about key fingerprints (cryptography), and use a tag or similar for questions about human fingerprints, face recognition, etc.

2
  • 2
    I'd dispute this. Since we live in the real world, even on a technical site real-world scenarios feel more common-sense (and less likely to be mistagged in the future), so I'd feel that "fingerprint" (being a common term amongst non-technical people) is more intuitive than "biometric". For example, many laptops and phones now come with a "fingerprint reader", and far less often marketed as a "biometric device". I'd therefore argue that dividing it into "fingerprint-biometric" and "fingerprint-cryptography" would be more likely to guide taggers to the right tag.
    – tu-Reinstate Monica-dor duh
    Oct 23 '19 at 23:49
  • 2
    @tudor please write that up as an answer.
    – Stephen Kitt
    Oct 25 '19 at 15:44

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