Do not allow users to tag questions with "untagged"

Question

It seems that there is an automated process that can result in questions getting tagged as untagged, but it should not be possible for users to generate questions with this tagging. (The example is from SciFi.SE, but I think the rule should apply network wide.)

If no other mechanism exists the moderator only tag mechanism could, perhaps, be made to serve here.

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Side question: should untagged be allowed to users on meta site? Or would it be better to use untagged-questions to for questions about question tagged untagged?

Answer 1

We just blacklisted untagged across the network, so it can no longer be added to a question by any users. Another side-effect is that the question must be retagged before (or at the same time as) any other edits are performed.

The "tag" will still appear on questions as it does now if another tag is destroyed or a question is migrated to the site by a moderator and doesn't share any tags with the destination site.

Answer 2

I'd keep it in place, as honeypot.

I mean, if you can't find any tags for your question, the possibility is very high that that question needs to be burned. Otherwise, if there are tags but the user fails to tag correctly, there's a 99% that the question needs attention anyway...our should be burned.

One way or the other, we can burn^H^H^H^H find bad question quicker with that tag.

Answer 3

There was a bit of a thing on Arqade earlier where it was being used as a catch-all when tags-to-be-cleaned-up were being removed, and I was surprised to see that it was even possible.

I know there was some resistance in the past to blacklisting tags that have stuff in them for fear of confusing users, but untagged really isn't a user tag: we never want people adding it to questions, only removing it.

It seems like it could be in the same class as status-completed et al: unavailable to regular users, but available to the system (so it can handle tag deletions) and to moderators (for whatever unforseen emergency requires it).

Then again, red tags can't be removed by regular users, whereas untagged should be, so if it does become a red tag, it'd still have to be modified somewhat.