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Can we have the tag with and as synonyms?

Excerpt:

Questions related to using game controllers like gamepads and joysticks with Ubuntu.

I tried looking around on gaming.stackexchange.com, U&L and SuperUser, but there isn't much more than organizing that can be done currently. The joystick tag has no wiki page on U&L and SU (1, 2).

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But which one is the master tag?

  • Both "joystick" and "gamepad" describe the hardware format.
  • The systems in Ubuntu as a type of joystick (/dev/input/jsn devices, jstest, jscal, etc). Older users will probably preference "joystick". Console users will probably preference "controller".
  • Nobody has seen fit to tag something as a game-controller to date. It's not a natural expression.
  • Hardcore sim users wouldn't call a joystick a game controller.

We can discount the last group but I still don't know whether we use Ubuntu's classic convention or what is most commonly used. Is picking something else ("game-controller") better than something that's already used?

Opinions?

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  • Sorry if I got it backwards, I meant that game-controller should be the master tag for almost all input devices primarily used for gaming/simulation. While my dualshock 4 and my arcade fightstick are detected as /dev/input/jsN I wouldn't prefer to tag questions about these as joystick, even if the latter almost qualifies as such (users in forums of fighter games might disagree and want to differentiate). Controller seems to be neutral, adding gaming to it avoids confusion with something else and is actually used on SU, where joystick is almost ignored.
    – LiveWireBT
    Mar 19, 2015 at 13:25
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    No, that's my fault for not mentioning it. I've edited. I'm not against it but adding a new tag to replace what has already organically been used suggests we're probably being overly politically correct. Just going with the numbers (with "gamepad") might make more sense than munging the terms we actually use into something nobody uses organically.
    – Oli Mod
    Mar 19, 2015 at 13:59
  • Just a thought - when people start getting steam-boxes we might have more gamepad/game-controller questions. Mar 22, 2015 at 3:43

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