6

I've just noticed that a user had removed the ldap tag from this question (and replaced it with novell): How to connect to LDAP Novell using SSL in C#?

The way I read it, this question is clearly about LDAP, so it would make sense to have the LDAP tag.

By coincidence, I also found that the same user had also remove the ldap tag from another question: Documentation on LDAP authentication in JAVA?, which also seems to be on-topic for LDAP.

Looking at this user's profile, he's done this for a number of LDAP-related questions.

The ldap tag description (in fact written by this user) says the following:

Questions that are specific to Active Directory should not be tagged with the LDAP tag unless the question is specifically related to the protocol or the Directory Information Model. Active Directory provides an LDAP interface, but that interface does not fully implement the LDAP standard, and deviates from it in important ways. Therefore, there are questions that can be answered specific to Active Directory that are not applicable to standards-compliant LDAP servers and vice versa. Correctly tagging a questions will result in a higher probability of an accurate, timely response.

This sounds like the reason behind this un-tagging, although that's not quite the way I would personally have interpreted this. This would seem to go against the guidelines specified here (although it's about versions, not specific products). In particular, if there was a question that's about Active Directory and its LDAP interface, I would have tagged it with both active-directory and ldap, if only to increase the chances to get an answer from someone who knows about the subtle differences between the LDAP standard and the Active Directory implementation.

Is there a policy for this?

(I must say I tend to look at the ssl tag and answer a number of questions there. If someone started un-tagging ssl or tls when it's an https question, I wouldn't necessarily notice them. It seems that un-tagging for similar but non-synonym tags reduces visibility.)

1 Answer 1

8

I removed the paragraph you referenced from the [ldap] tag wiki body. While Active Directory may not implement the LDAP standard "correctly," Microsoft still refers to it as an LDAP interface, and so tagging a question with both [active-directory] and [ldap] refers to Microsoft's implementation of LDAP in Active Directory.

The use of tags should not be the subject of pedantic wars relative to the veracity (or lack thereof) of a protocol implementation. That's like saying you are forbidden from tagging a question with [table] [layout] because using tables for layout is "bad".

I'm a bit mystified by the removal of the [ldap] tags from some of the questions. Tags should only be removed from a question if the tag clearly has nothing to do with the question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .