Tag requirement issue when editing question on Facebook.Stackoverflow mini site [closed]

Question

When trying to edit this question, I am getting this error message:

must include at least one tag not in 'facebook facebook-graph-api facebook-connect facebook-c#-sdk facebook-fql facebook-like facebook-javascript-sdk facebook-php-sdk facebook-iframe facebooker facebook-iphone-sdk facebook-graph facebook-social-plugins facebook-fbml facebook-page facebook-fanpage facebook-sharer pyfacebook facebook-chat facebook-authentication facebook-android-sdk facebooker2 facebook-oauth facebook-credits facebook-java-api facebook-rest-api facebook-hacker-cup facebook-actionscript-api facebook-wall facebooktoolkit facebook-widgets facebook-java-sdk facebook-as3-api facebook-ads-api django-facebook phfacebook facebook-ui facebook-read-only-api facebook-js-sdk facebook-ios facebook-insights fbml'

Why am I required to have a separate tag when editing somebody elses question? And did somebody really think this was a good error message?

Answer 1

What, you don't like Facebook?

First, for the error message. It will be changed to this:

with the next deploy. The link will go to the FAQ section containing the tags considered related "facebook". This is less Malkovichian I feel.

As bemace surmises, using only Facebook tags on a question that's going to appear on a site dedicated to Facebook is... less than useful*. We've also found out the hard way that single tag questions are kind of poor (and it gets even worse when you suggest a tag [like say, "facebook" via the site name], since then everyone just uses that one rather than think of an appropriate one).

So what we ended up doing is requiring a minimum of two tags, at least one of which must not be Facebook related. I'm keeping an eye on how many people are running into this error, and may re-evaluate our position later. It's much easier to relax restrictions than to tighten them, after all.

_{*There is a workaround, which is to ask the question directly on Stack Overflow instead, but that requires enough "inside baseball" knowledge of the system for us to give the user the benefit of the doubt.}

Answer 2

Just to chime in, I just asked a similar question: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/131489/question-validation-you-must-include-at-least-one-tag before realising that this thread existed.

I think this restriction needs to be loosened. Facebook officially advertises this subsection as a replacement for their forums so questions are most likely going to be directly and specifically related to certain aspects of FB and their development libraries and nothing else.

For example, If I have a query specifically about the return value of a particular Facebook Javascript SDK function, I would argue that I only need to tag it with facebook and facebook-javascript-sdk (or similar). I could go on to tag it with javascript or api or something, but these are actually harmful as someone with great javascript knowledge is unlikely to be able to help as this is facebook specific issue.

Answer 3

Seems like "must include at least one non-facebook tag" would be a simpler message. I kind of suspect the limitation itself is by design though. Having only Facebook tags on a question doesn't help much to categorize things within the Facebook portal, so they want to force editors to add other tags so there are more useful groupings.

Answer 4

This restriction, as described in the accepted answer, is meant to solve two problems. One of these problems is already solved, and the other one is a misconception. There would be no problem if this restriction were removed (especially as it's already not present on the main site), and there are problems the way it currently is.

The problem of generic, non-descriptive tags, like facebook, is a problem that applies to Stack Overflow as a whole (not just the Facebook mini site), and Stack Overflow already has a mechanism to solve it- meta-tags. Questions are already required to use one descriptive, non-meta tag to be posted. If facebook is a meta-tag (which I believe is already the case), that problem is solved, for the Facebook mini-site and the site as a whole.

The other surmised problem, as posited above, is "having only Facebook tags on a question doesn't help much to categorize things within the Facebook portal". Having only Facebook tags on a question does help to categorize the question, whether you're within the Facebook portal or not. Just because you're restricting the scope of your view to only show tags relating to Facebook, does not mean that there's no information in a tag that describes in what way that question relates to Facebook. Indeed, which specific Facebook-related tags it has are often the only way you can classify the question.

It would make equally as much sense to disallow tags unrelated to Facebook in this context as it does to require them. I could make the argument that I don't want to read questions about bugs in Google Chrome, that tangentially include its behavior on Facebook - all I'm looking for is Facebook programming questions. Such a restriction absurdly restricts the tag vocabulary, just as the current inclusion requirement absurdly extends it.

This restriction is harmful, because the only way to get around it is by adding irrelevant tags, which reduces the usefulness of the other tags - see Timmy O'Mahony's answer. It also makes it harder to post your question.

How you're filtering the tags when you're browsing shouldn't change your capabilities when you're asking.