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The more recent edits to the .net tag for instance, has a lot of information copy, presumably from questions that were closed. I don't think this is a good idea.

First of all Stack Overflow isn't Wikipedia. And I don't think Stack Overflow tries to compete with Wikipedia on the same turf. But right now it looks like a badly maintained Wikipedia page.

What's the purpose of a tag wiki? Isn't a tag wiki just supposed to explain the tag?

If you read the revisions from bottom to top, it's like watching a reasonable man slowly go insane with information overload.

There is also meta-discussion, which I don't think belongs there:

As such, questions like "How do I do file I/O in C#?" should really be "How do I do file I/O with .NET?". Because such a question concerns the file I/O libraries provided by the .NET Framework, it should be tagged with both the .net tag, and with the c# tag, to indicate that you'd like the answer to be written in the C# programming language.

That section sounds like a moderator talking to himself. I don't think average site users will read that and go "Oh! OK. I'll make sure to do that."

I personally liked the original edit:

Questions relating to Microsoft's .net framework.
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Peter why are you trying to make me sound more careful than I am? –  bobobobo Feb 22 '12 at 23:48

2 Answers 2

up vote 8 down vote accepted

Tag Wikis are aptly named; they are wikis for a tag. They serve a number of purposes:

  1. They describe the concept the tag represents
  2. They describe what the tag is for, i.e. how it should be used.
  3. They are outposts for commonly-asked questions.

But right now it looks like a badly maintained wikipedia page. If you read the revisions from bottom to top, it's like watching a reasonable man slowly go insane with information overload

So improve it. But try and preserve the spirit of what's there, which is to act as an index for the more commonly-asked questions.

There is also meta-discussion...

That describes how the tag should be used.

I don't think average site users will read that and go "Oh! Ok. I'll make sure to do that."

Maybe not, but a properly-maintained tag wiki gives you something to point to when the user is mis-using a tag.

People who don't read should not be an excuse to forego maintenance on a tag wiki. Maybe if they were better maintained, people would read them, eh?

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What's the purpose of a tag wiki? Isn't a tag wiki just supposed to explain the tag?

As the description at the side of each wiki when editing states

The full tag wiki is a detailed introduction to the topic, suitable as a destination for those curious about it:
► what questions should have this tag?
► some basic definitions
► brief introduction to the subject
► important links for learning more
► one reasonably sized page

A tag excerpt explains what the tag represents.

I agree it looks a bit like information overload but the wiki is being properly used here, if not the description of the wiki (quoted above) should be changed.

The meta-discussion you referred to has been there since revision 3 and it is not a mod who added it, so I'm not sure how complaining about it now that there has been a recent information dump changes anything.

If you realized no one has edited that meta-discussion section in over a year and a half so either users are okay with it or they don't care. Nothing is stopping one from editing out that section, so why haven't you tried to edit it out if you don't think it belongs?

So your problem (ignoring the meta-discussion which has nothing to do with your title) is what tag wikis, not excerpts should be used for, and I think it is an important definition to be clear about as different users here seem to have various opinions on it. Though, seeing that there is actually a definition on each tag wiki page edit, I think it needs to either change to those who don't agree with it or be more prominent.

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