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Possible Duplicate:
Tool for peer-reviewed no-bump mass retagging

The Issue

Most would agree that it is beneficial to add quality, relevant keywords to a post. It helps them be found appropriately (a sort of "optimization").

However, adding tags to a number of posts in one sitting is discouraged, because it floods the "active" area, hurting the visibility of new posts.

Wouldn't it be better for posts to not move up in active when only tags are added/edited?

The exception

I do think that when tags are added they should still gain more visibility within a given tag.

Potential Solutions (others have shared)

Tool for peer-reviewed no-bump mass retagging

Allow non-bumping minor edits, but review them on /review

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  • 2
    What about a question which had wrong/missing tags and had as such been "invisible" to those interested in certain tags relevant to the question? (Of course invisible is relative here)
    – Bart
    Mar 13, 2012 at 18:49
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    I feel like this is a dupe and the consensus was "we don't want people adding junk tags abusively"... looking for link. But hypothetically, this would allow someone to fairly silently add [teh-internets-viagra-cheap-dot-com] to hundreds of old questions.
    – Pops
    Mar 13, 2012 at 18:54
  • @PopularDemand - There should be a way (if there isn't already) to see when a single user is taking a number of actions. I'm specifically talking about adding quality tags to a post that add value to it, increasing its relevant "findability".
    – Andy Fleming
    Mar 13, 2012 at 18:56
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    @DesignerGuy: There's no way for the system to know if you added a "quality" tag or a bogus one.
    – user159834
    Mar 13, 2012 at 19:01
  • @Madmartigan - Sure. Why wouldn't there be? There could easily be a blacklist, like "viagra", etc. Especially if there is a user being unusually active, their activity could be flagged.
    – Andy Fleming
    Mar 13, 2012 at 19:03
  • @PopularDemand - I think there would be ways of catching that using mechanisms that are already in place, such as a reputation limit for bulk tag edits or some sort of moderator approval process. The core issue with these is the fact that there is only a single-edit "mode" right now and the concept of "bulk edits" is only a behavioral model and not a technical one.
    – cdeszaq
    Mar 13, 2012 at 19:04
  • @DesignerGuy: There are blacklists, and tags in the blacklist simply cannot be added. What about mis-tagging with real, relevant tags? Or trivial ones, like adding [interface] to a UX post?
    – user159834
    Mar 13, 2012 at 19:04
  • @Madmartigan - It isn't mis-tagging if it is the most relevant tag(s), right?
    – Andy Fleming
    Mar 13, 2012 at 19:05
  • meta.superuser.com/questions/3103/… talks about this topic in a more general sense.
    – Andy Fleming
    Mar 13, 2012 at 19:06
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    Based on these comments, it sounds like what you really want is Tool for peer-reviewed no-bump mass retagging.
    – Pops
    Mar 13, 2012 at 19:06
  • It is probably mis-tagging if I tag a PHP question with Java @DesignerGuy
    – user159834
    Mar 13, 2012 at 19:06
  • @PopularDemand - Bingo!
    – cdeszaq
    Mar 13, 2012 at 19:06
  • @PopularDemand - Ah yes, this seems like it would be a good solution.
    – Andy Fleming
    Mar 13, 2012 at 19:08
  • Why so many down votes?
    – Andy Fleming
    Mar 13, 2012 at 20:17

2 Answers 2

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Let's say I'm following the tag.

A new user posts a PHP question that's tagged or incorrectly as , which I have ignored.

A day later, someone finds it. and although there may be more things they could edit, they just retag it.

Without a bump from the tag edit, the question might get lost in the shuffle.

There are other reasons too: Ancient mis-tagged questions need a bump after the retag so they can be re-evaluated. Sometimes the answers need editing, or the post needs to be closed. This is probably more common on SO than on other SE sites (for now), but relevant nonetheless.

And as Popular Demand points out:

Hypothetically, this would allow someone to fairly silently add to hundreds of old questions.

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  • I guess within tags it would be nice to see posts that recently added the tag, regardless of when, but they shouldn't necessarily be updated as "active" for the post itself.
    – Andy Fleming
    Mar 13, 2012 at 18:51
  • Why shouldn't they be? Can you cite where you read that re-tagging a lot of questions in one sitting is discouraged?
    – user159834
    Mar 13, 2012 at 18:55
  • @DesignerGuy - You may want to update your question to reflect that distinction. Post activity is one of the major factors in list bumping but not the only one, and it is a useful distinction to make.
    – cdeszaq
    Mar 13, 2012 at 18:56
  • @Madmartigan - I don't know if I've ever seen it officially discouraged, but I do know that it has a very large impact, especially on lower-traffic sites and can quickly flood the list with old questions that got a rather trivial update to just their tags.
    – cdeszaq
    Mar 13, 2012 at 18:57
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    Those old questions are still valuable, I happen upon a lot of good material that way and even add answers sometimes. @cdeszaq I do see your point though, on low traffic sites the truly "active" posts gets drowned.
    – user159834
    Mar 13, 2012 at 18:58
  • @Madmartigan - I experienced this issue specifically on ux.stackexchange.com and had a number of quality tag edits declined.
    – Andy Fleming
    Mar 13, 2012 at 19:01
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    @Madmartigan - I agree that the old questions are still good, and I too have found good stuff that way, but I can also see how it could be rather irritating, since questions that get bumped off the top of the list, in my experience, get way less traffic and have an equally smaller chance of getting a good answer. I think there needs to be a better way to do such bulk re-tagging that doesn't have the downsides that are in place currently while still maintaining the benefit of churning up old questions.
    – cdeszaq
    Mar 13, 2012 at 19:01
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    FWIW I think the whole tag system could stand to be revamped.
    – user159834
    Mar 13, 2012 at 19:02
  • @Madmartigan - I agree. Or at least substantially tweaked.
    – cdeszaq
    Mar 13, 2012 at 19:05
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    @DesignerGuy I'm a UX mod and I disagree with what happened to your tag edits; I think they should have been accepted and perhaps accepted gradually so as not to flood the homepage. Quality tag edits are always welcome; thank you for taking the time to make the effort.
    – Rahul
    Mar 13, 2012 at 19:44
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It's been well established that the SE team and at least some of the community that a "minor edits" feature isn't wanted. Here's a post by Jeff on edit bumping:

I definitely do not support a "trivial edit" or "hidden edit" flag. All edits need to be vetted by the community, and hiding them is not the right way to accomplish this goal.

A while ago I thought it would be nice to have a minor edit box, but I really agree with Jeff's intent here; edits should be visible.

In fact, the case that caused you to bring this up is a good example of why minor edits would be a bad feature. A user tagged a whole bunch of questions. Regardless of intent and regardless of how much they didn't want to spam the queue, it turns out some of those edits weren't valid; the user was applying some tags in ways they shouldn't be used. that's exactly why we want to view those edits.

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3
  • There is a good answer to this though: Tool for peer-reviewed no-bump mass retagging
    – Andy Fleming
    Mar 13, 2012 at 19:12
  • This is another similar post about: Allow non-bumping minor edits, but review them on /review
    – Andy Fleming
    Mar 13, 2012 at 19:15
  • I think, rather than "hiding" such bulk edits, the goal should be to simply give bulk edits an appropriate workflow and acknowledge that a bulk-edit is different from a single edit. Requiring explicit edit review of all bulk retags would be one way of doing that. The advantage being that most of the effort is in finding the questions to re-tag. It's easier to make a "go/no-go" call on work already done than it is to do the new work of finding and re-tagging.
    – cdeszaq
    Mar 13, 2012 at 19:32

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