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Basically whenever I ask a question that pertains to any type of installation, it provides the or tags in the suggestions, not the allowed ones and . I have never gotten either one of them recommended, but whenever I click on the tag, it says it is not allowed.

This could be either confusing or in the worst case even discouraging for new users. Why is it that the plain tag is not blacklisted, or when it says that it can not be used, why is it not possible to simply directly click on one of the two for software/system install from the error dialog?

Is that impossible to do with the basic Stack Exchange codebase?

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  • The system just recommends them based on their size. In time installation will get smaller and software-installation and system-installation will get bigger and this problem should fix itself.
    – Seth Mod
    Commented Jul 22, 2014 at 19:49
  • so there is no way they can blacklist it at the moment?
    – sbergeron
    Commented Jul 22, 2014 at 20:09
  • Not that I am aware of.
    – Seth Mod
    Commented Jul 22, 2014 at 20:13
  • so how long approx. do we have to wait> isn't there a way to set up like a bot or something that will use the system installation and software installation tags over and over again?
    – sbergeron
    Commented Jul 22, 2014 at 20:29
  • On the other hand, I suppose it would be good if the system would refrain from suggesting blacklisted tags.
    – Seth Mod
    Commented Jul 23, 2014 at 2:27
  • every time I create a question about basically anything relating to it it pops up and it only says it's not allowed when I click the post button, making it an inconvenience that the average person will not even have on their mind when they are posting a question
    – sbergeron
    Commented Jul 23, 2014 at 2:38
  • What do you mean by getting those tags in suggestions? Can you post a screenshot? I just want to make sure we're on the same page here terminology-wise.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Jul 23, 2014 at 3:52
  • you know how on most of the question forms there is a list below the tags line that you can click them to add? I've never gotten a system/software-installation recommendation, even when the question relates directly to them and even includes the words
    – sbergeron
    Commented Jul 23, 2014 at 14:32
  • instead I get the generic installation tag
    – sbergeron
    Commented Jul 23, 2014 at 14:33

1 Answer 1

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The problem is that those tags are blacklisted. That means they cannot be used for new questions. We typically avoid blacklisting tags with questions in them precisely for this reason - it creates a ton of confusion and not a lot of recourse.

Clicking more suitable tags from the error dialog isn't possible at this time. All that dialog is is a formatted message that was entered when was blacklisted. There is no intelligent parsing done on it and, to a certain degree, there can't be since that message is entirely free-form.

Excluding blacklisted tags from suggestions makes sense to me, but I'm not sure how feasible that is since a blacklist is basically just a regular expression. It's sort of aware of where it needs to belong, but "install" isn't blacklisted, only "installation" is, with "install" being its synonym... This is both complex enough and rare enough (in the grand scheme of things across the network) that my best advice in this case is more along the lines of "y'all gotta disambiguate that tag or cut your losses and merge it all into either system-installation or software-installation".

I realize neither is a great option, and I'll see if we can make the suggester aware of this blacklist, but unfortunately I can't promise much there right now.

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  • thank you, I was just really wondering if it was possible to have a popup to have the person select between the two when they enter the generic installation tag
    – sbergeron
    Commented Jul 23, 2014 at 14:34

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