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I just killed (a misspelling of a meta-tag). I'm not fond of , , (homework discussion) or (unix tag discussion) either. Will anyone speak up for these tags?

Aside: I encourage y'all to go over the tag list and

  • Write tag wikis for the tags that lack one (or improve existing ones).
    There's no consensus on what a good tag wiki looks like, but here are a few tips:
    • Copy-paste from Wikipedia is not a good idea. Describe what the tag is about, link to Wikipedia, but concentrate on what people come to SE for: troubleshooting and howtos.
    • Link to the most interesting questions (not necessarily the most viewed ones, which is what /questions/tagged/$tag?sort=faq shows).
    • Link to related tags, explaining how they are related. This is especially important if there's a risk of confusion: direct readers to the appropriate tag.
  • Suggest synonyms where two tags are used for essentially the same purpose. (If you have ≥2500 rep, go to the synonyms page for the tags with the most uses. Otherwise, post on Meta or in chat.)
  • If a tag is used on very few questions and is very close to an existing tag, it may be best to just remove it.
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  • troubleshooting might be ok if it was referring to something like debugging techniques. but there is already a debugging tag.
    – Faheem Mitha
    Apr 3 '11 at 20:40
  • @Faheem: Troubleshooting and debugging are different. debugging makes sense because there are specific tools for debugging (i.e. finding out what a particular program is doing). I don't see the value of troubleshooting as a tag: who would subscribe to it, ignore it or search on it?
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Apr 3 '11 at 20:46
  • @Gilles: Agreed.
    – Faheem Mitha
    Apr 3 '11 at 20:47
  • @Gilles: After a quick tag review, I am wondering if a guideline for tag writing exists? If not, would you consider writing one? Eg. what kind of information is appropriate. Also, if you could clarify what purpose the tag information serves. Is this to specify the scope of the tag? Or to tell people what the tag means? I still kind of fuzzy about that.
    – Faheem Mitha
    Apr 4 '11 at 11:33
  • @Faheem: Start with dmckee's advice and Jeff's blog post, and more generally the tag-wiki tag on the main Meta.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Apr 4 '11 at 20:18
  • @Gilles: Thank you for the pointers.
    – Faheem Mitha
    Apr 4 '11 at 20:36

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