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  • How do you determine when a tag is bad?
  • How are tags removed?
  • Is there other cleanup work that should be done first?
  • Why are so few tags blacklisted after they are removed?
  • Who should do the burnination after it is approved?
  • What is actually being asked for when someone requests burnination on a tag?
  • Why go to all this trouble of cleaning up tags anyway?
  • When can I actually start with the burnination? When is it 'approved'?
  • Why is it important to fix other issues with a question when removing a tag?
  • With the size of the close vote queue, how should we handle questions that need to be closed?

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Motivation for this post

Tag burnination requests often involve thousands of tagged questions, suggesting that there's some sort of automated mechanism that moderators can use to destroy tags wholesale. A mechanism like that does exist, but it's only available to the community managers, and they only use it very rarely, with some conditions (questions with bad tags are often candidates for closure or other cleanup).

Given that the principle mechanism for wholesale destruction of tags is essentially unavailable to the community, what is actually being asked for when someone requests burnination on a tag? Does such a person really expect the community to sift through thousands of records on a tag that arguably is doing little damage by its mere existence?

If you need an example to chew on, here's one: We [like] to clean up bad tags

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How to determine when a tag is bad?

  • When a tag implies no clearly defined meaning (this could either be in its name, or in its tag wiki). Something like "a generic term", as is the case with , is usually a bad sign. This could perhaps be considered synonymous to a tag having vastly differing possible meanings - a MERGE keyword in SQL and a merge in SVN are both generically involve 'merging', but you can't list too many similarities between the two.

  • When a tag has a clearly defined meaning, but is still misused often. In this case it might be more appropriate to have the questions containing this tag be retagged to contain tags less susceptible to misuse. Let's say the tag's wiki were to have indicated that it related to merging on SVN, but then a lot of questions related to the SQL MERGE keyword also used this tag (which already has a tag). Then it might have been appropriate to retag to .

  • When a tag can be replaced with a combination of more generic tags (which have clearly defined meanings) without loss of generality. This would typically be something like , where and already exists. C++ and a linked-list both have clearly defined meanings.

Some argue that one needs to be able to find experts in a tag for that tag to be good. I disagree with this, as I think , for example, is a perfectly valid tag, although I doubt anyone would be able to answer a linked-list question in absolutely any language (or even most languages). Similarly, I doubt anyone would be able to answer absolutely any question for a given language (which might be the definition of an expert by some), and we can extend this to just about any tag, so, by a similar argument, we should have no tags, or only very, very, very specific ones.

Most of the above is fairly open to interpretation - some will argue that in certain cases a tag is not useful, and others will argue that it is - unfortunately that's the way it is. Borderline cases will need to be handled on a case-by-case basis.

Also note that the above are my opinions. You may not agree that is a bad tag, or that is useful, but do try to look past that and instead see the point I was trying to make.

How are tags removed?
Is there other cleanup work that should be done first?

There isn't and shouldn't be a tool for this usable by the general public. This is a manual process which involves going to each individual question and editing it to remove the tag, along with fixing any other issues with each question.

There is an automated process available to developers and maybe Community Managers (reference), but this is dangerous (related post) and it would likely be preferred to handle the questions manually so we don't lose the additional attention required on a per-question basis.

There is a tool that automatically removes some chosen tags when you open a question, but I don't really approve of it, as it encourages not fixing any other problems with the post (as such, I don't have a link on hand and won't go looking for it).

Why are so few tags blacklisted after they are removed?

Burnination can be done by anyone, blacklisting can only be done (and undone) by the developers - a simple reduction in the number of parties able to do something can account for the difference in how often it's done, and blacklisting is usually considered pretty serious (perhaps incorrectly so), and only done for tags that keep showing up, or, possibly, even after significant effort, can't be cleared faster than it's getting added to questions. There is also a bit of a concern regarding confusion resulting from trying to edit a question and being hit with an error saying you can't add the tag, even if you didn't touch the tags, but minor changes in functionality should make this a non-issue.

There have been a few requests to extend blacklisting or similar functionality to more users:

So far, none of them have been implemented.

Since you need 1500 reputation to (re)create tags, it's assumed (or hoped) that most users will be experienced enough to not (re)create bad tags too often, which is perhaps the underlying reason why nothing has been done about this (yet?).

What is actually being asked for when someone requests burnination on a tag? Does such a person really expect the community to sift through thousands of records on a tag that arguably is doing little damage by its mere existence?

First off, you should not go about burninating a tag without an upvoted Meta discussion about it, because you should first get community approval to make sure what you're planning to do won't be considered a bad thing by most.

Even if you deem yourself experienced enough to judge when tags are and aren't appropriate, you should still post on Meta (with the or tag on it), as what people agree with carries a fair amount of weight (and you can't be sure most will agree with you), even when something can objectively be determined to not be good for the site (in these cases, moderators and/or SE staff can of course override community agreement, but they shouldn't do so lightly - regular users, even high-reputation ones, don't have this right though).

Finding a problem is part of the process of fixing it and is indeed helpful. I see it more as a "Here's a problem" post, rather than a "Please fix this for me". Anyone who wants to help make Stack Overflow a better place can then spend some time tending to these requests.

I have a long list of burnination / retag / cleanup requests that I haven't gotten to yet, and possibly never will. Them sitting as bookmarks in my browser isn't helping anyone. If I were just to post it on Meta, I could similarly tend to it myself if I get some time, or someone else could tend to it before then or if that doesn't happen.

Why go to all this trouble of cleaning up tags anyway?

Tags make questions more easily searchable:

  • They are used in the tag suggestion system, so newer questions are accurately tagged.
  • They prominently get included when indexing is done by search engines.
  • They presumably link questions together, making finding duplicates or related posts easier.
  • They make finding a specific question / a question about a specific topic easier.

Less useful tags in favour of more useful ones tends to hinder the searchability of posts.

With regard to tags that don't mean much, the broken windows theory comes to mind (if nothing else):

The broken windows theory is a criminological theory of the norm-setting and signalling effect of urban disorder and vandalism on additional crime and anti-social behavior. The theory states that maintaining and monitoring urban environments in a well-ordered condition may stop further vandalism and escalation into more serious crime.

When can I actually start with the burnination? When is it 'approved'?

This should be decided on a case-to-case basis. You should take into account the popularity of the tag, how long ago the Meta discussion was posted, the post score (preferably break this down into the number of upvotes and the number of downvotes, not just the resulting score) and comments or answers giving convincing reasons one way or the other, especially those by high-reputation users and moderators.

Popular tags should be given more time and/or a higher score before deciding to proceed with burnination.

Comments by high-reputation users and moderators saying that they don't agree with the burnination (presumably with good reason) should increase the threshold on the score or time a bit. Comments in themselves shouldn't decide requests if the score isn't in line with them.

Very controversial requests (ones with many upvotes and downvotes) should preferably be given some time to settle down to a convincingly either high or low score.

See also: What is the process for tag removal (burnination)?

Who should do the burnination after it is approved?

Burnination can be done by anyone in the community, regardless of reputation.

However, burnination should not be done by everyone. You should have:

  • Good judgement
  • Decent English skills (to fix other issues, including spelling and grammar)
  • Patience or a love of burnination
  • Extensive knowledge of what's appropriate for the site (to know what should be closed, whether, on an individual question, a tag should simply be removed or perhaps replaced with something else, and what other issues you should fix in the post)

See also: What is the process for tag removal (burnination)?

Why is it important to fix other issues with a question when removing a tag?

Firstly, a list of questions with potential problems (when someone uses a tag that isn't useful and gets burninated eventually, chances are there are a few other problems in their post as well) is useful. If we simply wipe the tag automatically or without looking at each question, we'd be throwing this list away.

Sometimes these questions may need to get closed, or the tag to be burninated should be replaced by another tag, not simply removed. While simply fixing other issues while editing posts isn't synonymous to doing either of these, if you're in the habit of giving this added attention to each post, you should notice these issues and deal with them appropriately.

Perhaps more importantly, if you edit an old question, it gets sent to the front page. As to prevent posts from constantly being on the front page due to repeated edits fixing minor issues, either accidentally, or on purpose, we should always try to fix all issues with an (older) post when editing it.

Additionally, if you have below 2000 reputation, it's especially important to fix all other issues with a post, as there's some work involved in actually getting your edit approved, and it may get rejected if it doesn't fix all issues.

With the size of the close vote queue, how should we handle questions that need to be closed?

The ideal sequence of events is: vote or flag to close a question, remove the tag, the question gets sent to the close vote review queue, where it gets closed before the votes or flags age away.

Now, given the size of the close vote queue, the votes or flags can age away before the question gets sufficient attention, causing the question to fade into the void. So, because of this, it's important to notify other users so they can cast their votes on these questions they think should be closed.

You can notify other users either by posting an answer to your burninate request post, or editing it. It can also be useful to post a direct URL to the close vote queue, which needs to be in this format:

https://stackoverflow.com/review/close?filter-tags=tag-name

(Related post)

Preferably only remove the tags from questions you're sure are okay, and flag or vote to close those you're sure aren't okay, and leave the rest for someone else.

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