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I recently found this tag. It now contains 134 questions on Stack Overflow. (If you can't vote to delete, you can focus on the open questions.)

(Update: now - 2011-07-12 13:53 UTC - 106 ones are left, of which 53 are non-closed.)

As one can't create untagged questions (and I doubt anyone puts this tag intentionally on his question), these most likely occur either through migration from other sites (see the migrated questions tool), by expiring seldom-used tags (e.g. these which are used only once, and created more than 6 months ago), or by burninating tags that are not wanted (often after a request here on meta).

Either way, I found that the list of these questions seems to be a good list of questions which could be worked on:

  • quite some are simply off topic (example), and should be closed and/or migrated (but possible tagged first to get them off the list).
  • others are on-topic, but need some editing, and/or only proper tags.

This is not so much a question, but more a call for volunteers: If you have some superfluous time, go through this list and tag/flag/close-vote these questions. (Or answer them, after tagging.)

Of course, proper tags here means normally tags which are already used for other questions, else we have the same problem again after some months.

UPDATE as of today (2nd October) there are still 37 questions. I've [ChrisF] been through them and they're all pretty much off topic so I've cast votes as appropriate. I've also cast delete votes on the ones that are already closed.

Update as of now (UTC 2011-10-03 11:22) there are zero questions. I've [AakashM] been through them and votes close / delete as possible, and retagged them all (even the closed ones, because hey, I'm a programmer, and there are either zero or not-zero such questions in the system :)

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  • 2
    Well, I'm out of close votes for the day now!
    – jscs
    Jul 12, 2011 at 1:43
  • Yeh, I cleaned up all the ones on boardgames and you're right they all needed more cleanup. Jul 12, 2011 at 3:14
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    Questions are tagged with untagged also when they used a tag that was just used in a single question, and that has been automatically deleted.
    – apaderno
    Jul 12, 2011 at 3:14
  • Cleaning those up gives you a lot of flag opportunities. Jul 12, 2011 at 3:21
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    Ah, another quest. I retagged a handful that were on-topic; I'd be happy to see the rest closed and deleted.
    – Brad Mace
    Jul 12, 2011 at 3:21
  • @Lance: Agreed. Are there any other tags out there begging for cleanup like this one? Jul 12, 2011 at 3:21
  • @Andrew, there's always plenty of cleanup to be done, but the untagged one is the most obvious. You already know every question with that tag needs cleaning up before you even go into it. Jul 12, 2011 at 3:25
  • @kiamlaluno, if the sole question has been deleted, then how would there be any questions with that tag? but they do run a sole-tag deletion script, and that will eliminate the tag but leave the question. Jul 12, 2011 at 3:28
  • @Lance Roberts The "and that has been automatically deleted" part is referred to the tag. Tags used from a single question are automatically deleted. When the tag is automatically deleted, if the question was tagged only with that tag, the question will be retagged with untagged.
    – apaderno
    Jul 12, 2011 at 4:00
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    For those lazy like me, here's a query that hides the already closed questions: stackoverflow.com/search?q=%5Buntagged%5D+closed%3A0 Jul 12, 2011 at 4:12
  • Could this be a black-listed tag please?
    – M. Tibbits
    Jul 12, 2011 at 4:20
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    @MTib - I'm assuming it's an automatically-applied tag when a question's other tags are mass-deleted.
    – Brad Mace
    Jul 12, 2011 at 4:25
  • @Andrew There's a lot of questions tagged windows and forms which should be winforms. The forms tag says it's for web-based forms, which aren't really the same thing as winforms forms.
    – Troyen
    Jul 12, 2011 at 4:27
  • @kiamlaluno: This was what I meant by "expiring seldomly-used tags". Jul 12, 2011 at 13:14
  • I apologize; I didn't understand that you were already referring to that.
    – apaderno
    Jul 12, 2011 at 13:46

1 Answer 1

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I went through and voted to close until I ran out of votes. It looks like programmers.stackexchange is about to get an influx of old untagged questions. A moderator should go in and delete alot of those questions too. I flagged a few myself.

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    Reminder to everyone: Don't migrate crap, even if it would theoretically be on-topic. When in doubt, just close as off-topic without migrating.
    – Brad Mace
    Jul 12, 2011 at 4:26
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    You should not migrate bad questions or extremely old questions to other sites. Just vote to close as "off topic". That's what it's there for. You can close a question as off-topic without migrating it. You're just creating extra work for moderators to delete the questions you've improperly migrated, and they don't need any extra work. Jul 12, 2011 at 4:34
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    +1, thanks for doing something! You've put time and energy into something to help people...(but also reminder of moving crap)... Jul 12, 2011 at 4:48
  • @Cody Gray ok next time i wont help
    – bkaid
    Jul 12, 2011 at 5:18
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    @OffBySome As a Stack Overflow user I appreciate you going through the untagged questions, but as a Programmers moderator I'd like to second what bemace and Cody have said. Please don't migrate questions that don't deserve to stay open. Everybody's happy that way. :)
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Jul 12, 2011 at 14:41

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