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I am questioning the necessity and the value of some recent organizational efforts of user menjaraz.

He puts quite some work in retagging Delphi related questions, something I can only applaud for. All the tags he adds seem to be both valuable and applicable. But to me, some of his retags in which he exchanges common known tags with Delphi specific typed tags seem not to be useful.

Some retag samples of his revisions activity:

Explanation for non Delphi users: e.g. TCheckBox is the class type of a check box in Delphi.

I wonder if those Delphi class type names will be used (as tags) in search queries. The variants without the t-prefix are more likely to be used to find questions.

Is this the preferred way? Or should all these retags be rolled back?

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  • +1 for pointing to me the post. My intent is to provide specific (Delphi) tag along with generic one likewise when a delphi tagged post is also tagged along with version specific delphixe where it applies.
    – user174958
    Commented Jan 28, 2012 at 9:04
  • @menjaraz That's different. TCheckbox (the type name) is the same for every Delphi version. The implementation of TCheckBox migth differ between Delphi versions, and that is where the version specific tags are for. Besides, no do not only add the language specific component tag; you also delete the general one.
    – NGLN
    Commented Jan 28, 2012 at 9:17
  • Maybe I didn't make myself understood. What I mean to say is a Checkbox is quite always the same thing whatever the programming language from the standpoint of the user (Generic level) but under the hood it's different (Specific language level): TCheckBox is peculiar to Delphi and is VCL centric whereas the corresponding implementation in Java doesn't overlap some of it's capabilities and vice versa.
    – user174958
    Commented Jan 28, 2012 at 12:00
  • @menjaraz Questions tagged only with checkbox will indeed raise confusion, but in combination with the a specific language tag, which is needed anyway, it is absolutely clear what type of checkbox the question is talking about. Mentioning the language twice serves no purpose and leads only to tag growth and needless tag synonyms.
    – NGLN
    Commented Jan 28, 2012 at 12:32
  • It's a good thing that the issue is raised here. My point is that retagging like any edit is a contribution licensed under Creative Commons: It can be reverted if anyone feel like it and editing is encouraged. Any stripped tag can also be reverted if need be. It would be fine if our community here on SO can devise a rule applicable to the case.
    – user174958
    Commented Jan 28, 2012 at 15:29
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    @menjaraz: What additional value or capability does having t-specific tags provide to the community?
    – user102937
    Commented Jan 28, 2012 at 15:54
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    @Robert Harvey: Prepending <t> is just a Delphi convention, it's more than just adding <t> : It Delphi (Language) centric. There are cases where stripping off the <t> will lead to something meaningless in other context. What I have done was focused on Delphi posts.
    – user174958
    Commented Jan 28, 2012 at 16:10
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    @menjaraz: Honestly, I'm not feeling the love. If you're just adding t-specific tags to delphi posts, that might fly. But if you are replacing generic tags with more specific ones, you are breaking search for people who want to search for [delphi] [checkbox], for example. I'm inclined to agree with NGLN on this one.
    – user102937
    Commented Jan 28, 2012 at 16:58
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    @menjaraz - I have to agree with Rob here. You have to think in terms of what people really search for rather than taxonomic correctness. In most most environments, a checkbox is a checkbox is a checkbox, regardless of what the framework might call it. If there was a demand for this from the our delphi users then we'd have see the t- series of tags a long long time ago. Until now it doesn't seem to have existed, or if it has, was considered not useful and replaced with checkbox. I think you're making a bit of a mess here.
    – Kev
    Commented Jan 28, 2012 at 18:21
  • @Robert Harvey: I assume Delphi literate should have a fair knowledge of objects hierarchy and can easily fancy [delphi] [tcheckbox]. Using the loose [delphi] checkbox retrieves more posts due to the high propability occurence of checkbox in the body of the post.
    – user174958
    Commented Jan 28, 2012 at 18:30
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    @menjaraz: Try putting brackets around "checkbox," as in [delphi] [checkbox] You won't get a tag search unless you use the brackets.
    – user102937
    Commented Jan 28, 2012 at 19:12
  • @Robert Harvey: Yes I know that [delphi][checkbox] and [delphi] checkbox are different things. [delphi][tcheckbox] and [delphi][checkbox] are mutually exclusive.
    – user174958
    Commented Jan 28, 2012 at 19:27
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    I ceased my retagging efforts which may introduce some discrepancy. I have observed for a while the flow Delphi question posts trying to make sense out of it: The mainstream behavior is the usage of Delphi specific tags (posters are Delphi literate).
    – user174958
    Commented Feb 27, 2012 at 10:47

1 Answer 1

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No, these kind of retagging efforts should not be encouraged.

To quote Kev's comment:

You have to think in terms of what people really search for rather than taxonomic correctness. In most environments, a checkbox is a checkbox, regardless of what the framework might call it. If there was a demand for this from the Delphi users then we'd have see the t- series of tags a long long time ago. Until now it doesn't seem to have existed, or if it has, was considered not useful and replaced with .

Tags are added to a question in order to specify and narrow the topic and to provide means for searching and filtering. Multiple tags should complement each other and they certainly should not repeat (nor exclude) each other. The tag is the aggregation of the tags and and should be split as such. When the language tag is specified, the language specific prefix on the checkbox tag has no added value and is only repetitive.

Add tags as the most general form in which they exist, whereby the combination of all tags still is as specific as possible or as desired.

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