Regarding the tags on the question you mentioned (because I retagged it), I completely understand the objection.
Yes, I realize it may have been better to use [equality-operator]
rather than the existing [equals-operator]
tag. However, if we start getting into using both [equality-operator]
and [equals-operator]
, that will result in a mess when new questions are posted (or even retagged). It's a spot for tag synonyms, certainly. Until that's implemented, I think it's better to just group them together in a similar tag instead of being pedantic about it. (Better searchability is the goal, yes?)
As for the retagging, I completely support any measure taken to:
- Not bump questions to the front page during an obvious retagging. I think it's reasonable that if only the tags change, a question should not be bumped. This would be a feature available only to users beyond a certain rep threshold. (By the way, I would even support this if the rep threshold is above my current score on SO.)
- Increase the rep threshold needed to create tags. This isn't a huge problem per se, but finding those crap tags is. The only filters there are now are (a) seeing a new question with one of these tags and retagging it immediately, and (b) the 10k tools. Even with that, the tags can only been seen near the time of creation. It is currently impossible to get a list of all tags matching a certain pattern. See also, my request to improve the Tag Search user experience. If there was a way to do this, there would be far fewer crap single-use tags in the system, because I would be active in cleaning them up.
It really sucks that people like myself want to help organize the content of the sites, but in the process of doing so, negatively affect the user experience of others, particularly when the site is in a period of low activity.
I try to be conscious of how fast/slow the sites are to throttle my edits, but it's really difficult sometimes. If I feel like doing a retag late at night and no one is asking questions, it's a situation where either I do a fraction of the work I'm willing to do by throttling my edits, or sacrifice usability of the front page. That's no-win if you ask me, so we need to come up with a better option.
waffles
tag just for irony..