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There's a jQuery plugin named DataTables. There's a .NET class named DataTable.

There are SO tags named and , both of which describe the jQuery DataTables plugin.

A number of posts (here, here, and here are good examples) are tagged and use the .NET DataTable, yet there's the occasional question (like this one which is tagged and actually refer to the jQuery DataTables.

Similarly, there are .NET DataTable questions that are tagged (like this one).

To throw more confusion into the loop there's also a Yahoo UI plugin named DataTable, which is seen in this question.

It's all so convoluted.

How's this for a solution: jQuery DataTables questions go under , .NET DataTable questions go under , and YUI DataTable questions go under... uh, I dunno, ?

Whatever happens, and should not be synonyms, even if their info pages seem to suggest they are (and I think I'm going to go edit the info page after this).

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    The tags should probably be split and prefixed: .net-datatable, jquery-datatables, yui-datatable
    – Charles
    Sep 8, 2011 at 19:55
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    Yeah, that's what I was thinking too, but I wasn't sure what the protocol was surrounding prefixes. Then would datatable be a synonym of .net-datatable, etc.?
    – CanSpice
    Sep 8, 2011 at 19:57
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    To add to the confusion, the home of the jQuery plugin is datatables.net
    – Pekka
    Sep 8, 2011 at 20:58

3 Answers 3

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I would suggest for the jQuery plugin. It fits the convention that seems to be used for jQuery plugin tags such as: , , , etc.

The -plugin suffix only really gets used in a couple of instances:

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As already mentioned on this question, I think the optimal solution, or at least the starting point to end all the confusion, is to make the jquery datatables plugin tag be:

jquery-datatables-plugin

Allowing this jquery plugin to be synonymous with "datatables" or even "datatables.net" means the ambiguity will be permanent.

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The word "datatable" is widely used in IT, so, in my opinion, the best option is to leave the tag and use it for general questions about datatable-like structures.

Questions about jQuery plugin should land to or .

Questions about .NET class should land to .

Any questions about specific datatable implementation should have specific tag. For example, for PrimeFaces p:dataTable it should be .

The tag wiki should be edited as well, to point out, that this tag is for general questions, and implementation-specific questions have own tags.

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  • I don't think the .net suffix is used in tags to refer to classes of the framework. It's only used for projects that have the .Net as part of their name.
    – madth3
    Sep 21, 2013 at 1:00

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