The [broken-link] tag here is being used incorrectly

Question

It seems people are using broken-link to specify broken links, but not within posts as the info/excerpt says.

Tag Info

For discussing the effects of broken links within posts and comments across the network, what to do with them, and how we can prevent them from becoming broken.

Examples:

• Help center page on flairs links to a YouTube video that has since been made private - I had once abandoned the idea of adding this tag, but now it is.

• Dead link in the 'create chat room' page

• Link to Reddit is broken in the Help Center article on harassment

What should we do?

Either we should expand the scope of the broken-link or we should remove the tag from those questions where it is used inappropriately.

People may be using them as some of the help center articles are technically posts, but this is not the case:

1. Some of the questions are not just about the help center, e.g. chat.
2. There is the tag 404-not-found that is/was used for system content like the help center.
3. There are more or less suitable choose-on-context alternatives that make more sense, e.g., link-rot.

Answer 1

We've got a few situations where we need to get help to fix things when a broad set of very useful links move or go away. This might involve bots or community clean up. Some of these might affect the network broadly. Here's a great modern example. When links broadly break, broken-link seems a correct call.

I think the custom 404's whether or not we keep them should keep the 404-not-found - Especially for things like this . I would prefer broken links on the network to have the broken-link.

Between link-rot and broken-link, I'm leaning towards broken link - it talks about the immediate problem, not the slow gnawing embrace of entropy that will take us all.

As such I feel we should use broken-link for questions pertaining to broken links across the network, and the 404-not-found tag for 404 pages custom or otherwise on the network, especially when it pertains to the 'custom' closure pages where applicable.

Answer 2

I don't think there is all that much need to distinguish between user generated content, and content provided by the site itself when considering how to tag a question regarding a broken link.

For example if there is a broken link in a help center page we could use the tags: supporthelp-centerbroken-link.

I think this is the intuitive thing to do under these circumstances.

If a broken link appears elsewhere, there are plenty of other tags we could use to indicate that it is in system generated content. For example review for something in the review queue's or profile-page for something on a users' profile.

Therefore I suggest we make 404-not-found a synonym of broken-link and adjust the tag wiki and excerpt accordingly.

As Journeyman kindly pointed out in the comments we still have a legitimate use for 404-not-found, namely the custom 404 pages the network has. Therefore making the tag a synonym of broken-link is not the right solution.

We should rather narrow the scope of the 404-not-found to be specifically about the (custom) 404 pages the network serves, and re-tag questions about broken links to broken-link.

I'd imagine the excerpt for broken-link would become something along the lines of:

Use this tag when you want to report a broken link in content that can't be edited by users, or to discuss the effects of broken links within posts and comments across the network, what to do with them, and how we can prevent them from becoming broken.

And the excerpt for 404-not-found would become something along the lines of:

For discussing or reporting bugs with the (custom) 404-error pages of the network itself.

_{improvements are welcomed}