Please make [polling] a synonymous of [list-questions]?

Question

This question use both tags What close reason for polling questions?

list-questions (34 questions) has tag excerpt and wiki, polling (36 questions) doesn't.

I think that list-questions should be the main tag because as concept it's a bit broader than polling and because we already have What is the definition of a list question?

Answer 1

I disagree.

List questions and polls are quite different. To illustrate:

• What books should I read if I want to get better at painting bike sheds?
• Name all of the Pokemon in the Pokemon Crystal game.
• What are the possible reasons that my cat just peed in my shoes?

These are asking for a list. The list can have any number of answers, ranked or unranked. We don't necessarily care which is the best choice, only what the choices are. Lists can be both finite and infinite.

• Should we paint the bike shed red, green or blue?
• Which three Pokemon do you forget about most often?
• Considering my cat's peeing issues, what should I name it?

These are polls - they're asking what the users prefer in a specific situation. They may need to pick only one, as in this case, or several, like choosing three candidates in an election on one of our sites. Figuring out which is the best, preferred or most appropriate is generally the goal. Polls can have limited choices or be fill-in-the-blank.

Neither are great fits for the network (though some sites do make them work) but they are quite different. I've added an excerpt to the polling:

Use this tag when asking about questions that ask users to rank or show a specific preference for one of a list of options over another. Polls and polling are an often subjective type of question that the Stack Exchange Network isn't optimized for.

If someone has a better description, feel free to submit an edit.

Now, the larger question may be whether we're using these two tags appropriately. There's a good chance we're not, as tags can always use some help. Now might be a good time to go through them and make sure that

1. questions using these tags are doing so properly
2. questions that are about these subjects are tagged with one of them (or both, if appropriate).

Having the tags used properly will help encourage their correct usage - or at least help guide editors who might want to clean them up in the future.