What are the guidelines for using version-specific tags?

Question

I believe that some of my questions were asked before but I didn't find any satisfying guidance. I just found only this question. I hope senior members will help me to understand the situation and use tags correctly.

I have several questions which are related to following explanation:

• What is current community's attitude towards version specific tags on Stack Exchange?
• How to correctly use version specific tags?
• When is it good to create version specific tag?
• Should any version specific tags be at least marked as synonyms to version unspecific tags?
• Should I use version specific tags if I re-tagging questions?
• Should I re-tag questions if I think that incorrect version specific tag is used?

For example, I mainly visiting questions related to two main topics: WCF and Entity framework. Tagging questions in these topics follow very different rules. WCF uses single main tag wcf sometimes combined with wcfservice currently proposed as synonym to WCF, whereas Entity framework currently have:

• entity-framework
• entity-framework-4 - version 2 and 3 never existed
• entity-framework-4.1 - I started this tag myself but now I think it was a mistake

and two ridiculous tags (both for CTP5 of EF 4.1 – their meaningful lifetime was about 3 months):

• entity-framework-ctp5
• entity-framework-5

I've already several times retagged questions introducing tag for EF 4.1 RC. Separate problem is in Code-first approach related strictly to entity-framework-4.1 where 5 other tags are used to describe the same:

• code-first
• codefirst
• code-only
• ef-code-first
• ef4-code-only

I asked for merging these tags in separate question.

As you can see that EF topic currently contains too many tags to describe the same. There are other related tags to EF but they are mainly used as supporting tags for specific features.

First I thought this is a common situation because ASP.NET MVC uses also new tag for each version even questions usually asks for general problems related to any version but then I was informed by @Richard in this question that EF is probably tag polluted.

I regularly retag questions in EF topic. Currently I'm using:

• entity-framework as general topic's tag because I was already informed by @Slauma here that people usually have only this tag between their favorites and I should not remove it. It was a good point.
• entity-framework-4 for questions related directly to EFv4 features
• entity-framework-4.1 for questions related directly to EF 4.1 features
• ef-code-first for questions related to fluent and annotations mapping from EF 4.1

But still I think that entity-framework-4 and entity-framework-4.1 are somehow redundant but I'm not sure if my opinion is shared by other participants in these tags. WCF also has 3 versions and almost twice as more questions than EF and it still uses only single main tag wcf without any problem. I think the used version should be information included in a question.

Are there any general rules? What about version related tags to C#, .NET and ASP.NET MVC? I first thought that it is common and accepted approach to create version specific tags just because users around ASP.NET MVC (strong tag) do the same.

Sometimes I think I received privileges too early and I don't use them correctly. I need some guidance.

Answer 1

In general, you should strongly avoid creating version tags.

I would only use version tags when the question content is irrevocably tied to a specific version of something and can never be relevant to earlier versions or later versions.

In other words, it is perfectly sufficient to tag your question c# when it contains c# code. You do not need to say that it is c#-4.0 because it uses LINQ features. c# is c#!

The only questions that should use the c#-4.0 tag, in my opinion, are those questions which are specifically asking for detail about features that were added in 4.0.

Answer 2

Version-specific tags for the latest version should never be used, assuming we follow the reasoning of Jeff Atwood:

I would only use version tags when the question content is irrevocably tied to a specific version of something and can never be relevant to earlier versions or later versions.

If this condition holds true cannot be known for the latest version. Most likely, the condition will not hold true because in most cases, future releases will be reasonably similar to the currently latest version.

Still, version tags are likely to be used, as askers think that saying "I'm using version x" through a tag (with x being the latest version) adds valuable information. Arguably, there is a little information in such a tag, but at the price of leaving us with lots of incorrectly tagged questions when a new, mostly compatible version comes out.

To avoid this problem, we should follow this general approach:

• Remove & discourage version tags for the latest version of a technology. Instead, tag all questions that apply to the latest version with the un-versioned tag.
• When encountering a question that does not apply to the current version, take one of the actions proposed here, e.g. re-tag the question with the predecessor version.

IMHO, with this approach, we have the defaults right: By default, questions are assumed to be valid for future versions. And if someone happens to find out that this wasn't right for a particular question, this is easy to fix.