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I think and should be synonyms.

"Settings" is a more general term that applies to driver settings, program settings, system settings, etc. "Preferences" is a term that usually refers to program settings; for example, the GUIs of most programs in Ubuntu call the program's settings "preferences". Nonetheless, many people still call those "settings" rather than "preferences". So if we want separate tags based on this distinction, they would need to have more descriptive names like .

Since "preferences" is a subset of "settings", I think should be a synonym of .

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  • Both tags are bad... we should be removing them.
    – Braiam
    Commented Feb 8, 2014 at 13:49
  • @Braiam What about questions about settings? Cerran - Settings is probably more relevant... so if anything, preferences should be a synonym to settings.
    – Wilf
    Commented Feb 8, 2014 at 13:54
  • 1
    @wilf That's fine. My point is that "settings" and "preferences" are often used to describe the same thing, so why have two separate tags? Because of this ambiguity, there are even several questions with both tags. If they are different, then they need to be obviously different. Making preferences a synonym of settings is fine by me.
    – Cerran
    Commented Feb 8, 2014 at 13:58
  • @wilf Settings/preferences of what!? Of unity? We have a tag. Of apache? we have a tag. Of firefox? We already have the firefox tag. Settings could be anything the same as preferences, both tag needs to be removed out our system.
    – Braiam
    Commented Feb 8, 2014 at 14:00
  • Of course, then you start having problems with other tags - e.g. system-settings. @Braiam - still relevant - more relavant than gnome-settings-daemon
    – Wilf
    Commented Feb 8, 2014 at 14:01
  • 1
    @Braiam I don't have enough experience here to make that call. If they need to be removed, so be it. But as long as they're here, they should be synonyms. I'm not arguing for their existence.
    – Cerran
    Commented Feb 8, 2014 at 14:02
  • Synonyms are for tags that hold some value. Those tags were possibly created for people writing system<space>settings. They were meant to create system-settings tag but failed due how the tag are created. There are a bunch of tags created that way that the only action is removing.
    – Braiam
    Commented Feb 8, 2014 at 14:05
  • @Braiam - currently there are 376 settings tags, but there are only 125 system-settings tags...
    – Wilf
    Commented Feb 8, 2014 at 14:07
  • @wilf Updated the question, although it may be that Braiam has a point: namely, that we should just have more specific tags instead of these general ones.
    – Cerran
    Commented Feb 8, 2014 at 14:29
  • @wilf is obvious, since the system suggest "settings" tag to anything that you write with settings. System Settings is an obscure name of something that most people just call Settings (somewhat) or the thing were you change your preferences.
    – Braiam
    Commented Feb 8, 2014 at 14:36
  • Alright... Alright... There just tags y'know
    – Wilf
    Commented Feb 8, 2014 at 14:37
  • @Braiam I disagree (unless I misunderstood your point). "System Settings" are the options that can be accessed via power cog > System Settings. I wouldn't call Firefox settings, driver settings, or any other settings not found in the "System Settings" menu "system settings". "Settings" is a much broader term than "system settings", and this is obvious if you look at the types of questions tagged with each of those tags.
    – Cerran
    Commented Feb 8, 2014 at 14:42
  • "The Ubuntu system-settings is often referred to the GNOME system settings. Use this tag if you have trouble using the System Settings in Ubuntu." there's already a tag for that preference. Whatelse? Settings by itself doesn't help to categorize a bunch of questions within a common topic. If you check the tag relationship you will see that the first 4 tags are version specific and version specific tags are reserved mostly for hardware problems.
    – Braiam
    Commented Feb 8, 2014 at 14:45
  • @Braiam Right. I think we're saying the same thing, so I guess I did indeed misunderstand your previous comment.
    – Cerran
    Commented Feb 8, 2014 at 14:50

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