Please synonymize the now-empty [php5] tag with [php] [closed]

Question

After discussions here on meta over the past years and practical initiative in the year 2012, it has been researched and practically established that the tag php5 actually is not needed any longer and has passed it's lifetime.

All questions with the tag have been reviewed and the tag has been removed where appropriate and possible. The handful of questions that were locked due to being merged have also been corrected by diamond moderators.

This effort would not have been possible without the nice folks in the php chat.

Please establish a tag synonym so that new users who enter the tag php5 by accident don't tag their question with the "wrong" tag.

Answer 1

I did one last merge as a few more crept in since you posted, but this is now completed. php5 is now synonymous with php.

This is another example of how the PHP community does a fantastic job of curating the tag, thank you all for your efforts.

Answer 2

Arguments in favor:

• As of December 2012, when people talk about PHP, it's about 5.x.
  • There will be no confusion between 4.x and 5.x questions:
    • The php4 tag has received about 50-60 questions a year since 2009.
    • PHP 4.x development and support were halted in 2008.
  • There will be no confusion between 5.x and 6.x questions for the foreseeable future:
    • The source branch that was to be 6.0 was killed in 2010.
    • This was not completely apparent when the last synonym discussion was had.
    • It's unlikely that we'll see whatever follows 5.5 within a year, and everyone's already calling it 5.6 unofficially (mainly in the ext/mysql deprecation discussion).
• Minor versions are the ones that matter in current discussions.
  • Almost every minor 5.x release has a tag dedicated to discussion of version-specific features:
    • php-5.2 - default filter, zip and JSON extensions
    • php-5.3 - namespaces, late static binding, closures, goto... eww
    • php-5.4 - traits, short array syntax, better array dereferencing
    • php-5.5 - generators, a password hashing interface, finally, etc
    • Apparently nobody cares about 5.1? It was a yawnfest anyway, with a focus on performance.
  • Nobody is proposing the removal or merging of these version tags.
• In modern use, and even in retrospective historical use, php5 is noise.

Previous arguments against that are now moot given modern use of PHP and the removal of all questions from php5:

• "PHP5 != PHP"
  • This was barely true when it was said in 2010, and it's even less true now.
  • ... and even less true now that the tag has been removed from all current questions.
  • It would be better expressed "PHP !== PHP5 && PHP5 == PHP". *
• Questions that do not belong to the tag should be removed from it.
  • This has been done. It took roughly twelve months, but it's done.

Previous arguments that have some weight:

• Having php4 but no php5 is going to be trouble when we need php6
  • We'll deal with that a few years from now, if 6.0 exists.
  • Can we just make sure to use hyphens when the time comes?

tl;dr The time has come, push the button.

^{* This is a PHP truth table joke. PHP is the real joke here.}