Over the last couple of days I have seen a number of tag-wiki edits for tags that was just created and sometimes isn't even used on a question. I started to notice that they all were from the same user which seems to be doing nothing but tag-edits.
I wouldn't mind if they were good, informative wikis that helped people know more about the tag and when to use it, but many of them are really uninformative or general.
Is there something that we can do to avoid this?
My first idea was to disable tag-wiki edits for a tag until it has at least a small number of questions (maybe 5-10). This would at least mean that someone is interested in the tag before it gets a wiki that someone else has to review. Hopefully, this wouldn't hinder new, upcoming and interesting tags from receiving good wikis.
My second idea was to limit the number of tag-wiki edits that a user can do in one day to prevent a farming (like the 90 edits this user did yesterday (18 November)). This wouldn't necessary increase the quality of the tag-wikis but it could potentially reduce the number of short, uninformative wikis.
In my opinion it's not always better to have a wiki. Some tags are self-explanatory or at least requires a long, descriptive wiki to provide more information than the tag name itself.
A third idea that I had was to indicate in the review interface that the tag isn't used anywhere or perhaps add another reason for rejection.
The most fitting rejection reason is "excerpt not helpful" with this paragraph:
Some tags are common knowledge. Most tags require a bit of explanation in the excerpt, even if it’s only 3 or 4 words. But if the tag is common knowledge — that is, if you walked up to any random person on the street and said the tag word to them, and they would know what you were talking about — then don’t bother explaining the tag at all. Stick to usage of the tag within your community in the excerpt.
but sometimes the the tag is simply not useful (like .net-4.0-beta-2). Almost all that can be said about that tag is in the name.
heterogeneous
does not say much about what a question is and probably would be for the best if it does not existed. The problem I see is to identify tags like that in the beginning. My point is if one is going to create a tag, it is nice if he/she could fill an excerpt which would say to what purpose the tag is being created. Then, it would be easier to take further actions (improve, burninate, blacklist, etc). What I am also arguing is that premature wikis does more good than harm. continues.. – Andre Silva Nov 19 '13 at 12:22