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This is on Stack Overflow. On Meta I'm able to see what the tags are on the right side of the screen. In fact, I think yesterday or some point earlier today I saw tags on the right side of the screen (I can't screenshot or remember correctly).

It's right above the asked and active heading.

I know this is minor but what happened to it? It might be useful for browsing instead of having to look at the bottom of the question post.

No tags

Found an image on Google and it shows the tags on the right side of the screen: Tags

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  • 2
    Shhhhh! It's another experiment.
    – Jeremy T
    Feb 5, 2014 at 19:56
  • 2
    Now lie down on this metal surface. It's not an operating table, promise!
    – animuson StaffMod
    Feb 5, 2014 at 19:58
  • Why do none of these "experiments" affect me?
    – 3ventic
    Feb 5, 2014 at 19:58
  • 3
    @JeremyTunnell Y U DO DIS? It's useful for having to go back to the tag homepage so it's faster that way. Why remove it > EDIT: Lemme guess it's to make this faster :)
    – puretppc
    Feb 5, 2014 at 20:22
  • 1
    @puretppc It's one of the few items on the page that is redundant, and we found out that most people use the tags on the question. All part of our decluttering campaign.
    – Jeremy T
    Feb 5, 2014 at 21:20
  • 2
    While I rarely click on them, I frequently find myself using them after correcting someone's tagging. I realize my use case isn't the norm, but it's still a very small inconvenience. That said, testing is cool.
    – Charles
    Feb 5, 2014 at 21:56
  • 4
    Okay, I actually have another complaint about this. The tag list on the right contains the number of other questions with the tag. That's really handy information when doing tag editing, and it's information missing from the normal tag tooltip.
    – Charles
    Feb 6, 2014 at 0:14
  • 13
    I use those tags all of the time. They certainly are not redundant.
    – Andy
    Feb 6, 2014 at 10:37
  • 2
    If you are going to remove them at least put the tags attached to the question at the top of the question rather than at the bottom so they're easy to get to.
    – Andy
    Feb 6, 2014 at 11:33
  • 1
    Turns out that using a greasemonkey script will ameliorate this: $('.post-taglist').clone().prependTo($('#sidebar'));. Sad that's necessary tho.
    – Andy
    Feb 8, 2014 at 14:17
  • 1
    -1 for using freehand rectangles instead of circles...
    – Braiam
    Feb 10, 2014 at 0:52
  • 2
    Please bring these tag buttons back! StackOverflow's interface is far less usable to me without them, and I find myself contributing content less since they are gone. Feb 10, 2014 at 15:51
  • 5
    Bring back the tags! Or move them to the top-left (where there is nothing!) if it makes you feel better. Er, maybe not, I don't think my OCD would be able to handle them on the left after so long of having them on the right.
    – codeMagic
    Feb 10, 2014 at 19:14
  • 2
    @JeremyTunnell: When is this experiment going to end? I want my tags back! Feb 12, 2014 at 17:14
  • 2
    They serve as quick references back to the tagged section. Very useful to me. I use it frequently while I am editing questions of a particular tag. Just edit and click. Please bring them back :( Feb 14, 2014 at 0:06

1 Answer 1

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The test has completed, and we've decided not to bring these tags back. Making something more prominent by duplicating it is really not the right way to go.

Tag clicks are only down 15%, but the extra right sidebar space has bumped hot questions performance quite a bit and also answers as a result.

However, we do want to make the current tags on the question more prominent and move them to an easier location.

Any suggestions are welcome. We will be checking in some improvements to the current tags in the next few weeks.

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  • 1
    Would you consider adding back some way to tell how commonly used each tag on a question is, without having to click all of them? Maybe add the number of questions using the tag into the tag info popup? Feb 26, 2014 at 17:29
  • -1: Not a fan of this decision at all. It seems like you've made this change in the pursuit of academic purity, disregarding any real-world impact the change would have. I, for one, have noticed myself contributing far less to Stanck Overflow simply because the SO interface is now too difficult for me to use. My time is precious. If you make me spend that time hunting around for some silly button I have to push, I'll spend that time doing something else. Feb 28, 2014 at 14:28
  • @IlmariKaronen Yes, most likely will do that
    – Jeremy T
    Feb 28, 2014 at 16:47
  • @JohnDibling We don't do anything for academic purity. I just don't think it's defensible to have the same element twice on the page just because, but we also verified it with metrics. Were going to try hard to move the tags somewhere that will make everybody happy.
    – Jeremy T
    Feb 28, 2014 at 16:49
  • 1
    @JeremyT: You ignored an important metric provided during the tests: user feedback. If you want to move them somewhere that makes everyone happy, they need to be in the same exact place near the top of every page, regardless of question content. Feb 28, 2014 at 17:29
  • BTW, my reference above to "Stanck Overflow," while amusing, was a typo. Feb 28, 2014 at 17:31
  • @IlmariKaronen The number of questions has been added to the tag info popup.
    – Jeremy T
    Apr 15, 2014 at 15:08

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