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I stumbled across a review of the "post" tag edit which appears to be driven by this post and voted to reject it as lacking usage instructions, but while the definition appeared to be one accurate assessment, 2 more completely unrelated definitions leaped to mind immediately.

My gut reaction is that the tag should be binned as it is likely to be misused if it's used at all. What are your thoughts? Do we need the "post" tag on askubuntu and if so why?

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  • I can see a use for a posts tag, but not really a tag simply called post...
    – Seth
    Sep 1, 2015 at 23:13
  • 2
    A 'post' tag makes no sense to me.
    – Ron
    Sep 2, 2015 at 14:31
  • @Seth Could you elaborate? I see 15,281 results when searching for posts but there doesn't seem to be a common thread at first glance. Perhaps I'm missing something?
    – Elder Geek
    Sep 3, 2015 at 0:55
  • @ElderGeek Who are you addressing? I don't think I understand your comment in any context.. Both Ron and I were agreeing with your overall sentiment here.
    – Seth
    Sep 3, 2015 at 1:15
  • @Seth, I was asking if you could elaborate on a use for the posts tag you mentioned a use for. Sorry I guess that's a bit off-topic in this question, but I was curious as to how the plural would be more useful than the singular.
    – Elder Geek
    Sep 3, 2015 at 1:19
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    @ElderGeek Oops, I meant to say "I can maybe see..". I'm not really sold on posts and definitely not "post".
    – Seth
    Sep 3, 2015 at 1:40

2 Answers 2

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No!

We don't want or need a post tag.

Why?

The term is clearly ambiguous and in my opinion unlikely to be a favourite. As it seems to me that tags are used to locate questions within ones area of expertise and there doesn't appear to be a common thread linking any of the questions utilizing the word post or any of it's derivatives I think that tag and anything similar to it is just providing an opportunity to dilute the usefulness of the tagging system (which I am against for reasons that are likely abundantly clear to those who use tags for their intended purpose).

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I think that the confusion exist because the "post" tag does not have meaning or the possible meanings are misleading : are we talking about the act "to post" or the content ?

If we are talking about the act, a tag "posting" should be better and yes the question you mentioned fits in. It can be helpful to have a tag like this one.

If we are talking about the content then it automatically includes "Questions" and "Answers" tags (and their derivative) and lead to possible confusion and the post you stated does not fit in. As mentioned in comments a "posts" tag is then more accurate. However I don't think that kind of tag should exist due to the fact that the mere structure of this website avoids that kind of situation : questions are questions and answers are answers, we cannot have a situation that mix both or, if it's the case, does not rely on the content but other thing like style, formatting, ...

For me, in order to simplify :

  • We should change the "post" tag to "posting" : the unique question linked to this tag is about posting.
  • We must not use a "posts" tag because such situation cannot exist and the tag will turn into a garbage tag in order to not make the effort to use the other tags like "Questions", "Answers", "Formatting", ...

Right now there is 350 results on the posting term ...

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  • Can you provide a link to a question regarding posting that isn't clearly the result of failing to read the "how to ask" page? askubuntu.com/help/how-to-ask or the "how to answer" page? askubuntu.com/help/how-to-answer
    – Elder Geek
    Sep 8, 2015 at 22:22
  • Quite hard I agree. How about this bug : meta.askubuntu.com/questions/11868/… Sep 10, 2015 at 6:21
  • Is it your opinion that a post tag would make that question easier to find and/or more likely to generate answers? IMHO the "bug" tag works famously in that instance and I don't see how an additional "post" tag would help.
    – Elder Geek
    Sep 10, 2015 at 12:22
  • Yes, by the simple fact that any content that we want to be found easily must be tagged by at least 3 tags. Because it's quite subjective I'll use a more concrete example that is out of context in ask ubuntu : For instance, in a photo of you doing tennis you'll tag it tennis but you can also add the tag "me" and "sport".That way you'll able to find this photo and others that answer to one of those tags (or a combination of them). My point is that this bug post and maybe other posts shall be found more easily by adding a tag posting. By the way: I'm against "post" itself because it's misleading Sep 11, 2015 at 17:41
  • Yes Antoine, we are agreed that the post tag is misleading and that seems to be the consensus thus far. Perhaps you misunderstood my question (which was indeed about the post tag)? I'll leave it to you to start a different discussion regarding the posting tag if you feel that will be helpful for those who are squashing bugs here. FWIW I've seen numerous examples on meta that didn't have 3 tags and was completely unaware that that was a requirement. Can you cite your source? Thank you!
    – Elder Geek
    Sep 11, 2015 at 17:59
  • Sadly the tag thing is what I've learned through experience with ECM deployment like alfresco and SEO and is not a requirement but more an enhancement. 1 tag helps you to give you the main theme of the content but is not enough to make the content easy to find. 2 tags has also this trouble plus the fact that it's perceived per the user as a bother like "we must add one more ...". 3 tags is the limit where things become to be interesting because you have covered the 3 major themes of the content plus is almost a quantity that you can obtain of a content. Sep 11, 2015 at 19:40
  • This post can have also the tag "tags" and "post" because it's talking about the post tag. I've came to read here because of it's popularity. But when things go cooler your discussion shall be mixed with the other 2431 other posts that the discussion tag has. Having more tags (the most possible) is always a good thing. I'll post a new discussion when I find more post about posting because that one was already hard to find. Sep 11, 2015 at 19:43
  • I don't think there's any harm in adding what you perceive to be a relevant tag to a post if you think it will make it easier to find. I've often done this myself. I'll add the tags tag to it as you suggest as that seems to fit. I wont be using the ambiguous post tag which it seems no one can find a reason to support thus far.
    – Elder Geek
    Sep 11, 2015 at 21:28

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