Now, there are questions that relate to a specific product X
.
The answers to these questions are completely dependent on the version of the product used. A particular function does not exist in version 1
, but is there in version 2
. Additionally, it is a fact of life that an answer like "upgrade to version 2
" is sometimes not proper. Maybe the person asking the question cannot upgrade. Maybe the function does not exist in version 2
either, but the solution is different depending on version.
Additionally, without the version-specific information, a question that was originally correct may degrade into "incorrectness": most current users may use the latest version, and may down-vote answers that were correct in their time frame or even edit a question/answer to correspond to "current correctness."
The proposed specialized version tag would provide versatility for a given question. It implies a tree of potential answers depending on the searched version. It may even constrict the potential answers to only that version.
It will play a small part when a user searches for an appropriate answer or wants to ask a question.
In some cases, normal tags can be used: there are already tags like c#-2.0, c#-3.0 and c#-4.0 (but where are c#-3.5, or even c#-1.1?). But what happens when I have question that relates only to nhibernate-2.0.1? Assuming that I have the reputation to create a new tag, this tag is only important as 'meta': I want a way to communicate that I have a version constraint. There are no followers of nhibernate-2.0.1, and it uses up one out of the five tag slots. Personally, I use the RSS tag-tracking feature for c#; why should I miss c#-x.x questions? And am I not polluting the tag cloud by inserting an x-y.z tag?
I am posting this here because it's a system thing, though only a few sites in Stack Exchange would benefit from such a feature — although you could have different versions of the same turkey salad on Seasoned Advice, I suppose.
So, is there any merit in my thinking? I could say some more things but I would also like some feedback. Maybe this discussion already took place in an earlier version of Stack Overflow and was down-voted into oblivion....