Irrelevant tags

Question

Ok, so can anyone help me understand why tags like code are useful and can we get rid of them if not?

I mean, its like going into a cooking class and being "What would you like to learn how to cook" and you respond with "Food".

Additionally, seems there is a rash of question edits adding these irrelevant tags that actually make the tags on the question less relevant, an example would be:

Question has tag: Apex and callout (or similar) and a user adds the tag 'code' which opens the question to a larger bucket

It was my impression that tags are to help define the scope and help when searching as well as narrowing down what the question is about.

I could be completely mistaken though but these tag edits by a few, ahem, one user is getting out of hand. A lot of that effort could be put to better use.

Answer 1

I agree that a [code] tag is about as useful as the infamous [salesforce-crm] tag. True, there are some posts about non-coding issues on this site, but if they are about code, they should be tagged with the specific kind of code ([apex], [lightning], etc.). I've also seen the [class] tag, which I find equally useless.

There are a few other umbrella tags where I am more on the fence. I wonder about [query], [validation], and [formula], for example. I do think they add value, because they are specific enough to make posts more findable. But they are vague enough to cover many different scenarios. For instance, some [validation] posts might be about front end html5 validation. Most [validation-rule] posts are about [validation] and [formula]. Most [soql] posts are also about [query], but so are many [marketing-cloud] questions, for example.

If the tag is also supposed to show who has expertise in a particular area, I think these latter tags are still helpful. But who cares about expertise in [code], or [class]? When I see edits that include these tags, I have no qualms with rejecting them. There is even an Irrelevant Tags rejection reason. However, sometimes they are bundled in with one critically missing tag, in which case I will Improve Edit to remove the irrelevant tags while leaving those that are needed.

In every Stack Exchange forum, useful, consistent tagging is a constant battle. We are community moderated, and the community needs to be very active in the editing process if the forum is to be well curated. We may not all agree on how to correctly tag, but I definitely agree with you here, and the more we all care about it and discuss it, the more useful and consistent our tagging will be, even if we do disagree.