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I keep tabs pinned for the JavaScript section of StackOverflow as well as Code Review in my browser. During free time, I browse through some questions. Especially in Code Review, where it's a desert and no one posting that often, I go over to check on jQuery tagged questions. Lo and behold! More questions! They're not tagged as JavaScript!

I was wondering at first if it's right to tag them with JavaScript. I mean, jQuery is a JavaScript library after all. But sometimes I think that the user could only want a jQuery-only solution, which would make sense. Then again, jQuery is a JS framework, and a non-jQuery answer could have been better suited, thus the question needs to be exposed as JavaScript.

There are a lot of reasons the language tag isn't tagged. Most of the time, users think jQuery is a whole new language or syntax. Others tag only jQuery because they want jQuery-only solutions, which might not always be the case. Others might be thinking jQuery is JS, to come what may, even JS is acceptable.

So, should I tag the language when I only see the library tag? Will or will it not affect the sense of the question?

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  • Why wouldn't jquery imply javascript? After all, you can't HAVE jquery without having javascript. Is there a kind of 'tag implication' system, where having tag A automatically adds tag B or is included in searches for tag B? – Patashu May 9 '13 at 10:16
  • @Patashu I think the OP is implying about having to check 2 different tags, jquery and javascript, when he would just like to check one, javascript. – Cole Johnson May 9 '13 at 13:18
  • @Cole Johnson That's what I mean, if you search for javascript you should also find jquery. Like, there should be some kind of mechanism where this can happen. – Patashu May 9 '13 at 13:31
  • A more general question has been asked here. – Ciro Santilli 新疆改造中心法轮功六四事件 Aug 23 '13 at 9:49
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I think it makes sense to tag most questions as as well.

First of all, many questions are already tagged that way. Looking through just the 10 newest questions, six also have with no real rhyme or reason. Moreover, at least two of the other four would have benefited from the tag: one is about asynchronous code in general and one is very likely a problem in the asker's JavaScript code and not the fault of jQuery at all. Often the specific problem faced by the asker is immediately concerned with jQuery but is actually a more general JavaScript issue.

Second of all, I think it's very useful to have questions neatly organized by language. Chances are that answers to even very specific jQuery questions may still be interesting to a broader JavaScript audience. It also seems good from the perspective of somebody browsing around the site--chances are somebody interested in JavaScript is also interested in jQuery. In my experience, the programming language used in a post is the most effective way for me to tell whether it might be interesting, so having more languages

Of course, there are going to be some questions where the tag is less appropriate. (Although, from a cursory perusal of , these are not terribly common.) One example would be questions that are really only about CSS or HTML issues from using jQuery.

Another example would be what @lechlukasz pointed out: questions about the jQuery selector syntax. I think this is interesting because the selector syntax is not JavaScript--it's actually a DSL used by jQuery. So the question is actually about this embedded language rather than JavaScript proper, which is why the tag does not make sense.

So, in general, I think tagging most questions with is a good thing but, as always, you should use your judgement for weirder cases.

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The tags should be appropriate for the question scope and the targeted audience.

If the question is jQuery-specific, for example about the syntax of jQuery selectors, there is no need to tag them because they have nothing to do with JavaScript, and the JavaScript specialist that doesn't know jQuery wouldn't be able to answer such question (except the case when he read jQuery source code).

Of course jQuery is JavaScript library and it is written in JavaScript, but tagging all jQuery questions with wouldn't make much more sense than tagging all Python with because Python is written in C...

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    Your last statement doesn't compute. Python is a separate language that happens to have been written at its core in C. Jquery isn't a new language it's a javascript library written in javascript. I can't be typing along in my C code and go bam Python, but I can be typing along in javascript and go bam jquery. – Ryan May 9 '13 at 16:31
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    To add to the comment by @ryan, it's more like "tagging all jQuery questions with javascript wouldn't make much more sense than tagging all Django questions with python because Django is written in Python" -- which is to say, it sometimes does make sense (but of course, not always). Python isn't a C library; jQuery is a JavaScript library. – apsillers May 9 '13 at 17:11
  • @ryan Well, technically, you can write C that is valid python. Look at Stack Overflow's 404 image. Also look at this gist – Cole Johnson May 9 '13 at 21:59
  • @apsillers I am not sure what is the best thing to do in the Django case, but tagging all Django questions with Python would at least have the upside of allowing people who don't care about Python to automatically ignore Django questions once they ignored Python questions. The downside is of course that we would not be able to count who knows more Python language by counting how many Python tags he has. – Ciro Santilli 新疆改造中心法轮功六四事件 Aug 23 '13 at 9:46

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