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The issue of questions bumping after retagging has come up before several times, e.g. here.

I have a concrete suggestion: disable bumping for users with high enough reputation (10k, 15k or 20k), or at least for moderators.

The main reason which is given for this bumping is that retagging might be erroneous, but I think that high-rep users can be trusted.

Edit: Here's a concreter suggestion. Users with high-rep can optionally check a box saying "don't bump", as long as all they do is retagging. Their retagging is then pending for approval by a moderator (or a trusted user, if you want to spare the mods).

What we gain: we can retag to reduce clutter without disrupting ongoing questions.

What we lose: a moderator can mess up tags, either on purpose or because of negligence.

In my view, in this case gain > loss.

Originally asked on the math meta.

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    A better feature may be to optionally allow whatever particular group of folks you want to choose whether or not it bumps the question. Sometimes you may want to bump a question by a retag (not often, but sometimes).
    – Daniel DiPaolo
    Commented Jun 3, 2011 at 23:07
  • This would complicate the interface, however.
    – Yuval Filmus
    Commented Jun 3, 2011 at 23:25
  • possible duplicate of It should be possible to retag a question without bumping it to the front page.
    – Cody Gray
    Commented Jun 4, 2011 at 5:13
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    @Code Gray: I'm well aware of these duplicates, my suggestion is more elaborate and, hopefully, constructive.
    – Yuval Filmus
    Commented Jun 4, 2011 at 5:26
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    Isn't one of the ideas of retagging that the question should be seen by a new set of people who might know the answer? If it remains way down, it is a bit pointless to correct the tag.
    – Bo Persson
    Commented Jun 4, 2011 at 8:55
  • See also: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/46729/…
    – Jon Seigel
    Commented Jun 8, 2011 at 4:14

1 Answer 1

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I think that high-rep users can be trusted.

You'd be surprised...

Everyone makes mistakes, and high-rep users are no exception. Bumping a handful of questions isn't a big deal, but if a user decides to go and re-tag dozens of them in an evening, they should probably have a bit of oversight.

I think there is a solution to be had for coordinated, group-retaggings / cleanups... But this one is just dangerous.

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    How about having someone else "superlegalize" it, like we currently do for tag summaries?
    – Yuval Filmus
    Commented Jun 3, 2011 at 23:24
  • Plus, I'm sure you trust your moderators.
    – Yuval Filmus
    Commented Jun 3, 2011 at 23:25
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    @Yuval: So now you have an edit queue with 50+ retags in it? Like I said, I think there's probably a solution involving group participation for large-scale cleanup efforts that don't want to trash the front page... Though I'm not entirely convinced it's necessary. BTW: even moderator edits get bumped - mods can merge tags, but normal retagging follows pretty much the same rules as those for normal users. And even mod actions get reviewed... Start merging stuff that shouldn't be, and you'll be called to account.
    – Shog9 Mod
    Commented Jun 3, 2011 at 23:27
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    65, in fact. The way things are now, we are discouraged from arranging tags properly. That's also a problem, and I'd say it's graver than the problem you're mentioning. But you have more experience than me.
    – Yuval Filmus
    Commented Jun 3, 2011 at 23:36
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    @Yuval: The best suggestion I have at present is to organize a little retagging event with other users on Meta. Get folks working together, and get it over quickly. If this becomes common practice, we could conceivably develop tools to make it less disruptive to the site.
    – Shog9 Mod
    Commented Jun 3, 2011 at 23:52

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