This question is a follow-up to How to use the text-processing tag effectively?
Recently, a question on text processing was tagged as linuxshell-scriptawksedgrep. The question itself didn't mention any tool the OP needed to use/had problems using to achieve the task. Given that grep
actually wasn't even suitable for the purpose, I interpreted this as the user being "not sure which tool to use" in the sense of the text-processing tag wiki - which I considered the consensus on the usage of these tags - in which case the usage guideline is to use the text-processing tag instead.
Since no other specific tool was asked for in the question text, and one of the tool-specific tags (grep) was clearly misplaced, I felt the question did not fall in the "If your question is about multiple tools, include this tag and the tags for the other tools." use case, so I removed the tool-specific tags (in addition to the linux tag) from the question and replaced them with the generic text-processing tag.
This has prompted a discussion on the use of tags, in which one argument against this kind of re-tagging is that users looking (e.g.) for awk
-based solutions will have a harder time finding this question and related answers. I tend to disagree with this view since that
- would warrant putting all text-processing-tool-related tags onto such question, defeating the purpose of the five-tag-limit, and it
- would mean applying tags in an attempt to characterize the (possible) answers, rather than the question.
Request for discussion
- Should tool-specific tags be used on questions that do not explicitly ask for how to do this with a specific tool, or that do not describe problems arising from the (incorrect) use of a specific tool to perform the described text-processing task?
- If the answer to the above is "no", does this warrant removing tool-specific tags on such questions in favor of the text-processing tag? Of course, asking the OP whether they unintentionally used an assortment of tool-specific tags when the text-processing tag would have been more appropriate is probably the first step here; my bad for not thinking about that.
- What can be done to ensure visibility of questions tagged text-processing for generic text-processing tasks for future readers that look for solutions using a specific tool (such as awk)?
Procedure suggestion
Anyone can post their proposal for handling such situations in an answer. We may then choose to accept the highest-voted answer as community consensus (but maybe there is a better, established way on how to "decide" such issues?).
text-processing
tag? I see the benefit of addingtext-processing
of course, I just don't know the benefit of removing everything else.chunkbig10_1039
oreppix*
- the latter being prone to misinterpretation as formatting tag btw.) and thereby actually improve the appearance, you have omitted.