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On Stack Overflow the tags and are referring to the same thing. Should I just retag all questions to or is there a way that these two merged automatically? Also can be removed?

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3 Answers 3

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You have essentially two options here:

  1. If you have at least 2500 reputation and a score of 5 in those tags (earned from upvotes to questions and answers you've posted carrying that tag), you can propose a synonym yourself.

    Just type in quartz-scheduler and click the "Suggest" button. Your suggestion will be placed into the Tag Synonyms queue, where other users can vote on it. If enough users agree with your suggestion, the proposed tag will become a synonym of the original tag, causing all questions originally tagged with one to point to the other.

  2. Alternatively, you can simply post a question here tagged with and/or , and a moderator will merge the tags for you. For example, as was done here and here, both of which have now been completed.

    In addition to being the only option for users with insufficient rep, this is particularly handy if you aren't sure about the retag or synonym suggestion. Tagging such a question with gives the community a chance to voice their opinions about the change before it gets implemented. This is a courtesy you should extend for any major tag changes.


The one option you generally shouldn't follow is retagging all of the existing questions yourself. There are a couple of reasons for this:

  1. It doesn't prevent anyone from coming along later and using the tag you attempted to abolish. Essentially, you've only provided a temporary fix. And if the tag was created once and applied to multiple questions, chances are it'll get created by someone again.

  2. Retagging a question "bumps" it back up to the top of the list. If it's an old question that's already been answered, it might be annoying to some. And if you retag a bunch of questions, this becomes extremely annoying for other users.

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If you have 2500 reputation you can suggest a tag synonym. Once a synonym exists, any future posts using the tag will automatically switch to using instead, and it's very easy for a moderator to merge the tags so won't exist at all.

If you don't have enough rep or score in that tag to suggest a synonym, you can post the request here and tag it

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  • Don't you also need a tag-specific score?
    – Andrew Grimm
    May 20, 2011 at 12:51
  • @Andrew Yes, I mentioned it later ("If you don't have enough rep or score in that tag"). I think it's 5
    – Michael Mrozek
    May 20, 2011 at 13:05
  • Whoops, didn't read that bit.
    – Andrew Grimm
    May 20, 2011 at 13:06
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I don't think you have the reputation to suggest that they're synonyms.

What I usually do in those situations is write a tag wiki for the "wrong" tag, noting that it's redundant to another tag.

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