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Tags were recently added for and . The intent seems to be a pattern where requests for certain categories of things get their own "request" tag. What does the community think about having "request" tags?

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This sounds a lot like the tag which I see used a lot on EL&U. I think having one of these around is probably a good idea, but we don't need multiple synonyms. I'd vote for either or (if we want to include multi-word terms).

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  • Yes choosing between two or more terms that look like synonyms is a common thing, and it is characteristic. Whether you're choosing words or phrases is not characteristic. "Term" covers both words and phrases so it would seem best despite being kinda ugly or too technical looking. Dec 9, 2011 at 9:51
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In fact EL&U for the longest time had "single word request", maybe they recently changed it.

But it had lots of problems. Used for requests other than single words, then getting splintered into "phrase request" and possibly others.

The SE people always say good tags must characterise questions.

So the fact that somebody has a concept and doesn't know what to call it is characterised by "request" and not by "word", "single word" or "phrase", those parts would be what the SE people call "meta" and meta tags they say are bad.

Maybe another name for a requests tag would work better, requests, request-a-term, reverse-dictionary, whats-it-called, etc?

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  • As flimzy said, probably Term-choice is better...
    – Jose Luis
    Dec 9, 2011 at 10:34
  • Yes it was me who made the "term choice" tag but I'm willing for people to not like it hence the other suggestions (-: Dec 9, 2011 at 10:42
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    I think it wouldn't hurt to have some synonym tags for it :-9 That way we won't have to worry about the diabolical single-word-request tag.
    – Jose Luis
    Dec 9, 2011 at 10:44
  • Yes in my experience it tags new SE sites quite a while to figure how to make effective use of tag synonyms. Dec 12, 2011 at 8:49
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The way I see it, or similar doesn't make any sense, since a Q&A site is all about requests. makes sense to me when there are multiple words that mean similar things and you're trying to choose the right one or differentiate between the options. sounds a little awkward to me.

Then there's the tag. Couldn't that work for translating a difficult word or phrase from English to Spanish or vice versa, as opposed to heading down the slippery slope towards things like ?

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    Hey, found a bug in the tag image rendering :)
    – jrdioko
    Dec 9, 2011 at 17:17
  • Keep in mind that choosing the best name for a tag is only part of what a tag is and we have tag wikis and excerpts to define how a tag is to be used. So you are correct that all questions are "requests for help" but a request tag would not be for that, it would be for "request the word or phrase that expresses this concept I'm explaining". If you can think of a better name for such a tag then I'm sure we are open to hear something better. Dec 10, 2011 at 13:42

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