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[noob] is making a slow come back; there were 8 questions today.

Could this tag be either black listed or transformed into an actual word?

Currently [noob] pops up in the tag auto complete feature, but [beginner] does not.

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6
  • meta.stackexchange.com/questions/60318/…
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Sep 1, 2010 at 18:47
  • @Grace Note - thanks for the link. I followed some more links from there. I'm still unclear as to the SOP for bad tags. A request post, or add it to the synonyms list (noob is already there) meta.stackexchange.com/questions/50088/… or what?
    – Peter Ajtai
    Commented Sep 1, 2010 at 18:53
  • Looks like all of them are gone.
    – kennytm
    Commented Sep 1, 2010 at 19:01
  • @KennyTM - Since there were so few, I edited them out; but noob still pops up in the tag autocomplete, so I'm sure it'll be back.
    – Peter Ajtai
    Commented Sep 1, 2010 at 19:08
  • Once the cache expires, it won't appear (until it's used again). Thanks for editing them out.
    – Gnome
    Commented Sep 2, 2010 at 6:47
  • is there a thread that 'debates' whether or not the noob tag is useful? Or is it just generally not liked by non-noobs
    – d-_-b
    Commented Sep 13, 2012 at 18:46

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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It should be synonymed to newbie or beginner, if those tags haven't been burned at the stake.

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  • @Lance - This does not appear to be possible, as there are no pages for the "newbie" or "beginner" tags - stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/beginner stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/newbie
    – Peter Ajtai
    Commented Sep 1, 2010 at 21:53
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    @Peter, I was afraid of that, they got rid of all 'Meta' tags on SO a little while ago, but never came up with viable alternatives.
    – Lance Roberts
    Commented Sep 1, 2010 at 22:47
  • @Lance Roberts: What would constitute a viable alternative that would accord with Jeff's policy on tags? His decision was that these tags added nothing useful to tagging the question as opposed to the questioner. In particular, "noob", "n00b", "beginner", etc. are useless at describing the question because a beginner has no good idea of whether a question is near-trivial or deep and complex.
    – David Thornley
    Commented Sep 2, 2010 at 15:12
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    @David, I don't necessarily have the answer for what is a viable alternative, but the point is that there is information there that no longer exists. So in this case if a beginner wanted a post that explained things from a novice perspective, he will not be able to search for that. In the case of the subjective tag, now people won't be able to filter those out (and no, I don't think those questions are appropriate for the site, but they exist).
    – Lance Roberts
    Commented Sep 2, 2010 at 18:47
  • @Lance Roberts: The tags are on questions, not answers. A novice might want to find answers that are elementary, but an elementary-looking question might have deep answers and a complicated-looking question might have simple answers. Moreover, a novice is incapable of knowing what complexity category a question is in. I've seen newbies asking very simple questions, and questions with very involved answers. So, I don't see what good a "noob" tag is when applied to a question. If we voted on the simplicity of answers, and were able to search on that, that might be worthwhile.
    – David Thornley
    Commented Sep 3, 2010 at 13:35
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    @Lance Roberts: If I could give you 100 up votes I would. As a beginner, I used to be able to find interesting/relevant content easily (beginner tag was a big part of this). Post the death of meta-tags, SO's value to me/other beginners has fallen sharply.
    – timepilot
    Commented Sep 26, 2010 at 9:55

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