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Occasionally I notice a topic that has been discussed often enough to merit a tag, but there isn't one. For example, today on Raspberry Pi, a question popped into the active queue about using the DietPi operating system. I've seen these often enough and so went to add the 'dietpi' (or 'diet-pi', or what have you) tag only to notice it did not exist. So I created it by adding it to the question.

Not surprisingly, a site search for is:question dietpi turned up a list of 50 Q&As. Possibly a couple of these don't merit it, but chances are most of them do, and I'd rather go through that list and remove the ones that look inappropriate than go through it and add them all one at a time.

I know SE has an HTTP and/or JavaScript API that can be used for automating things, but (a little shamefully) I've never looked at it or anything that uses it. Is anyone aware of a script, etc., that could do this? If not, does the API have potential to do so and where could I find the documentation that would help me to do so? All apologies for being too lazy to start digging myself on the last point as I am hoping the script already exists.

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    If there are only 50, and you don't know how to scrip this, you are definitely much better off doing this by hand. Also you don't want to edit all 50 at once, since that would flush out the entire "active" sort on the question pages, especially on lower traffic sites.
    – Luuklag
    Commented Feb 2, 2022 at 15:54
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    This has been suggested in various incarnations, especially as something that only moderators should be able to do, or possibly the community via some special review queue. Usually the main themes are that it shouldn't ruin the active page (like manual edits) but also there needs to be some mechanism in place to prevent misuse. Still no tool.
    – Laurel
    Commented Feb 2, 2022 at 16:07
  • It did get me thinking there should be a moderator only API for this kind of thing (I am a mod there), since it does have a lot of disaster potential. @Luuklag It's not that there are only 50, it's that there are only 50 this time, and it is exactly the kind of tedious activity I find myself doing over again enough that I finally go "You would be saving yourself more time in the future if you sat down for a couple of hours and automated this" (which, API permitting, I have no doubts about my ability to do so).
    – goldilocks
    Commented Feb 2, 2022 at 16:16
  • ...The upshot is that I often cannot be bothered to do this when today there are "only 50", having already done it too many times before. Meaning, if tagging is something the community thinks is important, this hassle should not be built-in. Make it easy, don't make it hard pointlessly.
    – goldilocks
    Commented Feb 2, 2022 at 16:18
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    @goldilocks been there, done that (maybe not as many times as you but enough...) The whole purpose of creating a tag is ensuring it leaves your hands in excellent condition (and often there'll be bordeline posts where you can't make a clear call if it should be included in the tag or not). Either do it slowly over time or post on meta requesting assistance, but in my experience using a tool would either be pointless or do more harm than good.
    – bad_coder
    Commented Feb 2, 2022 at 16:28
  • Don't forget that a new tag still needs a proper tag description.
    – Mast
    Commented Feb 2, 2022 at 20:30

2 Answers 2

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If you are retagging you have to make sure each post belongs on the tag individually and the occurrence of DietPi isn't merely textual. In other words the questions "have to be about DietPi" and not just mention the OS by name. For example: this question mentions the OS, but the reference is merely coincidental since the problem is general and not OS specific - although it contains the OS name it probably shouldn't receive the tag.

The main purpose of a tag is filtering for the above difference!

There's no way a tool can substitute individual case-by-case evaluation of each post. So at best you could compile a shortlist of the posts after you've evaluated them and find a tool to automate the edits and spread them out over time. But even then if you're retagging you should be taking the opportunity to overhaul each individual post.

I did search the tag tag (pun intended) on Stack Apps and apparently there's no app that does exactly what you want.

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I read that you are a moderator, so I take it you know what constitutes a valid tag and what questions should have the tag added to them. But as bad_coder already mentioned in their answer, every edit should strive to improve the post as much as possible. That isn't something that could be done with a script.

While it is tedious work to do manually, there definitely is benefit in that. As it is easy to rate-limit the amount of edits taking place at once, as not to overflow the "active" pages, and to be 100% sure that the question needs that tag.

Luckily you aren't the only member of your community, and I suggest you wield that power to your advantage. Discuss the creation of the tag on your local meta site, and have other users help you in editing the posts you selected. You could reverse the process that is in place on SO for the removal of tags, burnination.

You would essentially provide users with firm guidelines under which circumstances the tag should be added, and what other things people are to look for when editing the question (besides the general readability and grammar fixes of course).

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