Tags were recently added for term-request and single-word-request. 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?
3 Answers
This sounds a lot like the word-choice 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 word-choice or term-choice (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
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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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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1I 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. Dec 9, 2011 at 10:44
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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
The way I see it, request or similar doesn't make any sense, since a Q&A site is all about requests. word-choice 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. term-request sounds a little awkward to me.
Then there's the translation 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 request-to-translate-three-words-from-english-to-spanish?
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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