Should we make country tags visually distinct?

Question

Some SE sites have questions that apply only to certain countries, or where answers should at least take laws or customs in the country in question into account. Example SE sites would be Workplace, Academia, Expats, Travel, Money or Law. These sites use country tags for this purpose.

Recently, it has been proposed on Meta.Workplace to make these country tags visually distinct, to draw attention to them and avoid people posting answers that simply don't apply to a question tagged with a specific country. The currently top-voted answer suggests adding an icon to country tags, like a globe. This might be doable using the wiring for sponsored tags. The same question at Meta.Academia and Meta.Travel also seem to be popular.

We could, for instance, add small flags to tags: However, there seem to be political reasons against this, as per some comments, plus one could imagine disputes about flags (might the PR of China have problems with the Taiwanese flag? Saudi Arabia's flag with the Shahada may be problematic for religious reasons.). A stylized globe would be more politically neutral. I'll set up answers for voting.

I'd like to ask the good folks at SE to allow adding such an icon to country tags. It could then be up to the individual sites whether or not to actually use this feature. (I'd assume people at Travel or Expats don't overlook a country tag as often as they might at Workplace or Academia.)

Answer 1

I think this is a good idea. I also think that country tags are fundamentally different from tags for programming languages and games. On the sites mentioned in the question, the country tag denotes a critical component of the question that is often buried (or even absent) in the text. Further, and more importantly for this proposal, users often miss, or possibly ignore, the country tag. For example, a question tagged germany often get answers specific to the US.

Regarding the comment that Arqade.SE might want game tags to be made visually distinct and programming stack exchanges might want language tags to be visually distinct, I am not sure how often a question tagged c++ gets a java answer on programming related sites.

Answer 2

Not sure if that's a good answer, but I made an userscript that can handle this problem until official solution is available.

Looks fine:

Only limited number of countries is included. I don't know how to automatically populate list of countries. I used google search to get tag names for commonly used countries here:

// ==UserScript==
// @name        Country tags
// @namespace   util
// @description Adds CSS love to country flags on Workplace.SE
// @include     http://*.stackexchange.com/*
// @version     1
// @grant       none
// ==/UserScript==
var country = {
  "italy": "it",
  "netherlands": "nl",
  "egypt": "eg",
  "india": "in",
  "ireland": "ie",
  "canada": "ca",
  "switzerland": "ch",
  "france": "fr",
  "united-states": "us",
  "united-kingdom": "uk",
  "germany": "de"
};
var countryNames = Object.keys(country);

var style = document.createElement('style');
style.type = 'text/css';
style.innerHTML = ".country-tag {"+
"  background-size: 2em auto;  "+
"  background-position: 0.5em center;"+
"  padding-left: 3em;"+
"  background-repeat: no-repeat;"+
"  background-repeat: no-repeat;"+
"}";
document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(style);


$("a.post-tag").each(function() {
  if(countryNames.indexOf(this.innerHTML)!=-1) {
    this.style.backgroundImage = "url('//www.geonames.org/flags/m/"+country[this.innerHTML]+".png')";
    this.className +=" country-tag";
  }
});

Answer 3

Currently in meta, there are required tags: feature-request, bug, discussion, support. These are highlighted by a different color. E.g. contrast with tags. This makes it easy to see the most important tag for the question. Changing the color and not providing an icon would retain sponsored tags' privileged nature while making country tags more prominent.

There are two problems with things like country tags. First, people tend to leave them off. Second, people sometimes ignore them. In regards to game (Arqade) and programming language (Code Review, etc.), the first is the larger problem. In my opinion this suggests that country tags are not the only tags that should be promoted. Thus I would suggest a system that allows for sites to specify which tags they want to differentiate from the others rather than a system that only works for country tags.

Note that I am not arguing that these tags should be required as with the tags on the meta sites, just strongly encouraged. It seems to me that it is possible to ask neutral questions on most sites (Code Review might be an exception).

Answer 4

As a mod at Money.SE, I'd be curious to see if anything would actually help the issue the flags are trying to address. In our case, there seems a plurality of US members, and unless a question is stated in a foreign currency, the tag is ignored and the question answered as if US.

Earlier today, question regarding Canada retirement account. It was interesting to me, but I would assume my US knowledge would help. Within seconds, the answer appeared, "I'm american and know little of Canadian law. I assume what I state here to be similar to American law..."

In this case, flag or not, the new member decided to answer a question that would probably be wrong.