Alot was discussed tagging and retagging wise, and a few things changed this week on SE, so I'd like to recap and consolidate everything into one post, which can be used by those of us doing tagging and retagging work. If you have any disagreements with the content here-in, please post it as an answer, then the community will vote, and when they've spoken, we'll amend this document.
- Tag synonym search was fixed.
- Prior to yesterday, even if a tag was merged with another, a tag search for the synonym wouldn't instead do a search for the master.
- Tag voting was clarified
- Even when the community votes to synonymize a tag, that only fixes future instances. A merge needs to take place, which can currently only be done by a mod. Merge requests should still happen here in meta. Also, discussion tag removal and synonymization discussions are on-topic.
- Here is th list of synonyms: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms?tab=newest&filter=suggested You can can to it by doing any tag search, then clicking the "info" subtab of that search, then clicking the link to suggest a synonym. (Tedious, I know.)
- Get rid of meta tags.
- Read this post by Jeff Atwood on the official stance on meta tags. A lot is derived from our very own Aaronut. Kudos to him! The main points are:
- From this point on, meta-tagging is explicitly discouraged.
- These tags are useless: subjective, beginners, best-practices
- If the tag can’t work as the only tag on a question, it’s probably a meta-tag.
- If the tag commonly means different things to different people, it’s probably a meta-tag.
- If a meta tag is the only tag on a question, retag it as untagged until you can come up with some better tags.
- Read this post by Jeff Atwood on the official stance on meta tags. A lot is derived from our very own Aaronut. Kudos to him! The main points are:
- Plural vs. Non Plural
- Plural should have preference unless a collective noun is more appropriate.
- To make it easier to think about, use the tag in this sentence: "this question is about [tag-name]". It's obvious that "cookies" is better than "cookie". However, it's not so clear that "avocados" is better than "avocado".
- I (Mike Sherov) am in the process of reversing these now, as I had originally goofed it.
- Verb Tense
- same "this question is about [tag-name]" applies... use "sautéing" and not "sauté"
- American vs. British Spelling:
- The most popular spelling should probably be used. However, not a ton of data is available at the moment.
- Was already discussed on meta.stackoverflow.com and US English was declared as preference considering it was most likely to already be the most popular term.
- Spelling really doesn't matter, because synonym tag search was fixed!