As an example, SO prefers sql-server-2005, while SF seems to have gone for sqlserver-2005, resulting in questions migrated from SO like this one (which I've just retagged) to have the wrong tag for SF. Should the tags across the trilogy be consistent, or is this just something that has to be fixed manually?
The reason I noticed this is because I have sqlserver-2005 in my ignored tags list on SF, but not sql-server-2005 so I noticed the question and wondered why it wasn't ignored.
I believe this is a good issue to address. For instance, on SuperUser, anti-virus is the preferred tag, while Server Fault uses antivirus. I assume that these are synonymized on these two sites, but it's rather inelegant when two very related sites have such idiosyncrasies and the users are left to adapt their tag lists, queries, etc.
There are three different sites with three different communities. Retagging sometimes will be necessary, and it will be an ongoing job, as the communities decide on the tags. There is no way of keeping it from happening that tags divert between the systems.
We - within the single sites - depend on proposing existing tags and stirring the user in the direction to reuse an existing one. To do that over the border of the three sites will not be practical - they span realms too different to share a common set of tags.
We can only do this the way we do it now for synonymous tags on one site: have somebody propose a retag on one of the sites.
The other possibility would be to warn during migration if a tag does not exist on the target site and give a list of possible hits. This would leave the responsibility for each single tag cloud to the corresponding community and their "standards" or way of thinking, while aiding in the migration process and preventing some retagging exercises due to migration.
