22

I came across the bad tag on a question in the Close Votes queue and it appears to be a ripe candidate for burnination.

This tag has 115 questions, the first of which dates from March of this year. It has no description.

Looking at the criteria for burnination:

Does it describe the contents of the questions to which it is applied? and is it unambiguous?

There is no usage guidance in the tag wiki for it. The 115 questions in the tag seem to be roughly split three ways between:

  • Posts about foreign languages and linguistics (e.g. dictionary databases, messages in different languages, translations)
  • Posts about programming languages and syntax, or code conversions
  • Posts about language settings in various contexts

And a smattering of questions that don't seem to have any reason for a tag called .

Is the concept described even on-topic for the site?

As there's no guiding concept behind the tag, it can't really be on-topic. Only one question has as its only tag, but that appears to be off-topic.

Does the tag add any meaningful information to the post?

Searching for seems unlikely to be helpful for anyone because of the varied assortment of questions using the tag. It does have 325 watchers, however, but I would suggest that they must have a wide range of reasons for watching an unclear tag.

Does it mean the same thing in all common contexts?

Clearly not from the above.

5
  • as always t5he tag doesn't hurt, should be better described what falls under it and kept alive
    – nbk
    Jun 13, 2020 at 16:35
  • 3
    @nbk no. There are better tags to describe the subjects. Like locale or programming-language. Where the question didn’t use the tag in a way already covered by existing non-ambiguous tags, the question was invariably off topic. The tag did hurt because it made it harder to define the question subject clearly.
    – Martijn Pieters Mod
    Jun 13, 2020 at 16:42
  • languag for language settings and askin about multilanguage options , is alright and should be kept alive
    – nbk
    Jun 13, 2020 at 16:45
  • 2
    @nbk you seem to confuse wether something is on topic with the tag being useful. For asking about multi language options, use locale or internationalisation. Those terms are much clearer and unambiguous. You can ask about those subjects but there are better tags for them.
    – Martijn Pieters Mod
    Jun 13, 2020 at 16:48
  • We still have multilingual and other tags that are more than sufficient. There was no telling what this tag meant. Programming language or natural language? It readily violates burninate criteria #1 and #4
    – Machavity Mod
    Jun 13, 2020 at 16:50

1 Answer 1

18

Mumbl.. mumbl.. <inaudible> language cough ambiguous mumbl.

Mumbl.. closed some mumbl. <inaudible> deleted others mumbl retagged mumbl.

Tag’s gone.

4
  • 8
    Fastest burninate ever
    – Machavity Mod
    Jun 13, 2020 at 16:45
  • 5
    @Machavity it was just 115 posts; it was, at most a slight-raise-in-temperaturation.
    – Martijn Pieters Mod
    Jun 13, 2020 at 16:54
  • 1
    That is 0.000585% (5.85 ppm) of the questions. Jun 14, 2020 at 19:13
  • Can't believe stuff like this still get a higher score than most other answers :,).
    – mime
    Jun 16, 2020 at 5:22

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