up vote 2 down vote favorite

We currently have a very frequently-used tag, presumably used whenever the question is asking about anything regarding a phrase in English or Spanish. Should there be an analogous tag for questions about a single word? If not, should the tag even exist?

share

3 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

Probably not. The English site doesn't have a tag, or at least tries not to [1] [2].

Generally speaking, I recommend following the tag structure of the English Language & Usage Stack Exchange. It's already gone through most of the issues, and I think it's done a good job with a difficult subject matter.

On French Language & Usage, we've largely followed EL&U's tagging practices from the start, and haven't regretted it. Of course, there will be minor differences, for example having to do with grammatical constructs that don't exist in the other language, or having [american-english] on one and [quebec] on the other.

share
There are some bad tags which seem to have crystallized on EL&U and got stuck there. I think "single word requests" is particularly bad since it is often misused for requests which are not single words and fractured into not so useful sibling tags like "phrase requests" and I don't think either truly "characterises" their questions which are all about finding the right way to say something you can provide an explanation for but can't think of a good word or phrase. Not hard to come up with a good tag that covers it all though! – hippietrail Dec 9 '11 at 8:02
up vote 4 down vote

It strikes me that both and are worthless tags, since every question on this site will be about words or phrases. Which questions would not use the tag?

Now, there's a tag, which I think makes sense.

I propose that and should be done away with.

share
1  
Note that "phrase" is useful because it doesn't just mean "sentence". Actually it doesn't mean "sentence" at all (as you know because you're an English speaker). :D – Alenanno Dec 7 '11 at 9:06
"word choice" is good for now but soon enough we will have questions about choosing between to short phrases or a word vs a short phrase. So at some point it might be a good idea to change it to just "choices" or "choosing". – hippietrail Dec 7 '11 at 10:32
I agree with deleting word but not phrase... phrase is different than sentence and than statement as well... – Joze♦ Dec 7 '11 at 10:55
@Joze: When would you use a phrase tag, though? – Flimzy♦ Dec 7 '11 at 18:44
@Flimzy: hmmmm I think I would use it for phrase transition questions into another phrase like connectors and those kinds of things. Or on phrase structure. – Joze♦ Dec 7 '11 at 18:59
1  
@Joze: Wouldn't translation work better for the first class of question, and grammar or syntax for the second? – Flimzy♦ Dec 7 '11 at 19:05
@Flimzy: You have a point there mister. You're right, phrase should die too. :-) – Joze♦ Dec 7 '11 at 21:19
up vote -1 down vote

Tags are created automatically when you tag your question with a tag that doesn't exist. If that tag is used, it will survive. If not, it will disappear by itself. So, since you can create them, try to use this feature wisely. Always prefer existing tags when they exist.

That said, there are many more than , so this last one defines something more specific than the former tag would... But I'd like to ask you a question, so you see it for yourself if the tags is needed: what questions could/would use the tag ?

share
Well, many questions are asking about a specific phrase, and they're tagged phrase. Many other questions are asking about a specific word, and I was wondering what people thought about tagging them word. I'm not arguing either way, just thinking it should be consistent whatever we end up doing. – jrdioko Dec 6 '11 at 23:38
You make a good point, but "words" sounds too general. I mean, almost any question would get that tag... I think that maybe there was a similar issue on EL&U, but I'm not sure... :/ – Alenanno Dec 6 '11 at 23:40
@Alenanno "Word" tag -- useful? Blacklist the [words] tag – Gilles Dec 7 '11 at 0:10
There are some blog posts or podcasts talking about what makes a tag a good tag in the way the Stack Exchange people want them to be. They always use that each tag must be able to characterize the question and should be usable on its own and still be good. This means that popularity of a tag is not the only concern. Yes tags can grow wildly but it is better to cultivate them. – hippietrail Dec 7 '11 at 10:37
@hippietrail if you're the one who "disagreed" with me, then I don't understand your point, since I basically agree with what the others said. – Alenanno Dec 7 '11 at 10:40

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged