91

Comments on this meta question made me realize there's a dedicated info/wiki page for each tag (e.g. the JavaScript tag wiki). I feel a little sheepish not knowing about it — I've been on SO for almost 5 years, and my search / browsing habits have never led me to this useful feature.

I suspect most new users, who are generally also new to whichever subject brought them to SO, also don't know about this feature. It seems like making them aware could help prevent many 'too broad' and 'off topic' questions like "what are good books on x?" and "how do I learn basic concept?" Most of them aren't trained on how to ask questions, although (it turns out!) there are links to the wikis when adding tags on the Ask a Question page.

Screenshot of circle-I button on tag popup

Now that I know to look for it, I see many places to find links to the wiki page. One can either search the tag (manually or via bookmark), which I don't often do (and arguably, new users never do):

search tag from search bar URL of search

which gives a tag banner at the top of the results, with an unobtrusive link:

Or, one can hover over a tag (which had also never occurred to me) and look for the info link - which, again, doesn't jump out as "wiki and tutorial page" to me:


However, many users — especially new users who most need the wiki feature — do not use the site in any of the ways above. Personally, I am often looking for very specific information and not general education or tutorials, as those are specifically discouraged as not on topic, and have always viewed tags as "a way to filter results" rather than "a way to browse or find broad education materials."

So, should more attention be drawn to this feature, and if so, how? Perhaps a section on tags in the Help > Tour? Giving the links a more descriptive name or more prominent placement?

12
  • 20
    "close as answered in tag wiki"
    – djechlin
    May 25, 2016 at 18:42
  • 1
    Related Meta.SE post: Be proud of tag wikis!
    – Floern
    May 25, 2016 at 18:46
  • 17
    Wait, in 4 years, you never hovered over a tag?
    – Mr Lister
    May 25, 2016 at 18:48
  • 9
    @MrLister I've brushed the occasional tag and gone "oh hey, a popup full of small print telling me what the tag means", but typically when I look at the tags on a question, I already know what the topic means because I arrived there by searching for that topic. I've never read the dialog in it's entirety - certainly haven't browsed all the links at the bottom. "I'm in too much of a hurry to do <task> to learn anything right now."
    – brichins
    May 25, 2016 at 18:54
  • 3
    One option would be to show the tag wiki instead of a list of posts when you click a tag on a question. That should make the wikis definitely more visible.
    – Floern
    May 25, 2016 at 18:59
  • 6
    Here's another new one for you: you can enter [tag:javascript] and Markdown will put in the tag formatting, which links to the tag's page. :) May 25, 2016 at 19:29
  • @MikeMcCaughan: In comments, it links to the question filter. But yeah, I often type See the [tag:x86] tag wiki in answer markdown. May 26, 2016 at 0:06
  • Wouldn't it be interesting that if someone asks a question, somewhere on that screens the tag wiki's are already more prominently placed? Right now the only way I see to go to a tag wiki from the "Ask Question" page is by hovering over the tag and clicking on the "(i)" symbol at the top right corner. We already suggest other questions when the user is typing the title, why not suggest the tag wikis when the user is providing the tags? May 26, 2016 at 9:57
  • @djechlin The heady realm of close voting is above my grade, but that sounds like a useful close reason. Maybe even just adding a wiki link in the "closed" banner or a mention of the wikis on the closed questions help page would help, rather than adding a new close (sub)category - which I suspect would have a lot more interia to overcome before getting implemented.
    – brichins
    May 26, 2016 at 16:25
  • 13
    I'm a relatively high rep user. Tag wikis? New to me. That popup hovery tag thing has always just been an annoyance to me. Besides,the info link on it seems superfluous because the popup already contains "info". The whole web is "info", so a link that just says "info" on a popup that I'd like to dismiss altogether isn't all that shiny.
    – spender
    May 26, 2016 at 21:00
  • 1
    They could start by standardising on a more meaningful name than "wiki". It's just another jargon word that non english speakers need to learn. Believe it or not, not everyone knows what "wiki" means. If you half know it, it suggests insiders sharing information between themselves. And crucially, it describes HOW information is shared, not WHAT information is available. If your question is "What is X?" the word "wiki" is not likely to signal to you that your answer lies behind the link. It's just too broad and vague. May 27, 2016 at 6:17
  • 1
    Wow, I also just knew that it can hold so many information. I thought it's just a short description of a tag.
    – justhalf
    May 27, 2016 at 8:20

5 Answers 5

45

A lack of tag wiki exposure is very problematic. I strongly believe that users who find the tag wikis would avoid asking frequently asked questions and common pitfalls. Many topics addressed in the wikis, especially for highly active tags, are the broad solutions and guidance that common questions are looking for.

There are links in there for recommended reading material, tutorials, frequently asked Stack Overflow questions, canonical posts (which can be rather difficult to locate), a general overview of the technology, and references for trusted documentation.

This high quality material is carefully maintained and yet no one seems to view it.

  • Increase linking and traffic to the wiki to increase its visibility and page rank (the more pages linking and being clicked to a resource the higher it ranks)
  • Simplify its URL to more strongly weight its page rank (i.e stackoverflow.com/jquery as opposed to stackoverflow.com/tags/jquery/info)
  • Rename and standardize the path to reaching the wiki
  • Expand the available space that the wiki snippets can fill
  • Explain the use and availability of the tag wikis in the help center and in guidance material
  • Suggest visiting the tag wiki any time a dupehammer is used for the tag used
7
  • 4
    I find myself typing "see the x86 tag wiki for more info" in more than half my comments and answers to new-user assembly-language questions. Esp. now that I've added a (still rough) FAQ section to try to collect some canonical answers. New users have never ever said "oh, I already saw that". I literally have the tag wiki open in a browser tab most of the time just so I can ^L / ^C / tab back / ^V paste. (I should make a keyboard shortcut or something). May 25, 2016 at 21:14
  • 3
    SO should focus more on directing new users to searching instead of posting, with tag-specific heuristics that people with high scores in that tag can tune. So instead of directly answering questions, we could spend some of our time turning SO into an expert system that e.g. tells asm newbies that they need to use a debugger for their question not to be a waste of everyone's time. May 25, 2016 at 21:18
  • 1
    @PeterCordes - Well at least someone is linking to it :)
    – Travis J
    May 25, 2016 at 21:18
  • 1
    @PeterCordes the problem is the prominent "Ask question" on all pages... we want you to ask questions :/
    – Braiam
    May 26, 2016 at 18:08
  • It's very generous of you to assume that the source of most of the low-quality crap is a user base who'd read first, then ask. I'm afraid I'm less optimistic. People who would make use of tag-wiki FAQs already find most of the information via google before asking. If we had a huge blinking popup informing askers about the tags and typical questions for them, the users would still find the little "x" button and carry on asking their mindless question. (Obviously this all only applies to useless askers, not the ones we'd like to have around.) May 27, 2016 at 12:07
  • 1
    AndrasDeak - There are experienced users, who would read, who don't even know about this feature. It is also practically impossible to reach via google. As a result, it may as well be hidden. While this may or may not assist users who ask low quality questions (which even high reputation users do I would add), it would just help everyone in general to have this material more in the open.
    – Travis J
    May 27, 2016 at 18:23
  • I think part of the problem is some wiki information for tags is pretty poor, but some wikis for tags are wonderful. I spend a lot of time fixing tags on questions that the OP could have done right if the OP used tags appropriately. Example: A lot of Oracle database questions have the SQLPlus tag, because they used SQLPlus to enter the SQL statement! May 27, 2016 at 18:34
25

In the current system, tags, and their excerpts/wikis are like second class citizens:

  • You can't vote on them
  • You can't close as a duplicate of them
  • They do not appear as results in SO's search
  • You get maybe +2 rep for contributing content
  • There are no systems preventing abuse of tag creation
  • We haven't been able to prevent plagiarized content from appearing in the wiki

It should be no wonder that they aren't given the priority they need by either new users, search engines, or even OLD users.

The other problem with tag wikis is that anyone can create a tag at 1,500 rep, but they can only suggest the tag wiki until they reach a much higher reputation. I'm not sure why the system is like this. (If you know, feel free to explain to me.)

The solution, in my opinion, is to bring the model for tags closer to the regular Q&A model we all know and love. It would require some work, and I have only a rough idea so far:

  • It would be similar to normal Q&A, but the UI would make it seem somewhat distinct
    • It would also have different rep requirements than normal Q&A
  • The tag would be the "question": What is X? How do I use ?
    • Votes would indicate its usefulness as a tag. This would help curate the process for burnination, too.
  • Closing as a duplicate would create a tag synonym
  • The "answer" would be the excerpt and wiki contents.
    • Votes would indicate its usefulness

I plan to flesh out this idea later, but I want feedback on what I've thought of so far.

5
  • 7
    I think you just described half of what the docs beta is trying to achieve!
    – DavidG
    May 26, 2016 at 21:03
  • @DavidG I'm not in the private beta, unfortunately. It says it will be in private beta for at least a few more days... Does anyone know when it's coming out?
    – Laurel
    May 26, 2016 at 22:18
  • 3
    Careful now. Part of the reason tag descriptions are useful is that they tend to be short and to the point. If too many rewards are offered, people will flesh them out with half-relevant stuff, which other people will then delete...and so on. I agree that they need to be made more prominent but NO extra unicorn points, badges etc, please May 27, 2016 at 6:21
  • 3
    The top #1 problem I see with tag wikis: No comments/chats/whatever for discussion of their contents.
    – Bergi
    May 27, 2016 at 10:02
  • 4
    @DavidG - exactly, in fact Docs does all of these things listed here, and there's an initial "Hello world" topic which is a lot like the tag wiki, and can be voted on, has a fancy versioning / editing / reputation from upvotes and so on. There have also been ideas to merge the tag wiki into docs, closing as duplicate of docs as well as showing results from docs in the search results, so perhaps it could replace the tag wiki at some point? It still seems like it'll be 6-8 weeks though.. May 27, 2016 at 10:19
3

They should, but not for humans.

Apparently, were SO following its own rules, allowing no forum-like questions, there were the little need in tag wikis at all: the knowledge would have been already properly gathered and organized in the form of the questions.

But we have what we have - a forum that is spammed with millions of garbage questions where no serach engine is able find a reliable and up-to-date answer.

So you can tell that Stack Overflow is trying to sit on the two chairs at once,

  • to serve programmers, who are using google to find an answer for their question
  • and to serve enthusiasts, who are looking for a forum to fix a typo in their code

Apparently, a tag wiki is of any use only for the former. Therefore, it should be better exposed for the search engines, but there is little use to push it for anyone who is asking a question. If they didn't bother to search beforehand, if they didn't bother to click similar questions - it's very naive to think that a link to the tag wiki will be clicked.

Personally, (after trying to create and maintain one for a long time) I found tag wikis the worst method of organizing and sharing the knowledge (you can't even give a link to the particular section!). As a result I abandoned the idea and started a dedicated site, which proved to be way more reliable and secure for sharing my experience.

In a way, tag wikis is yet another example of the mutual exclusivity of the site rules. We don't allow multiple-answer reference questions (I were forced to delete one of my own), yet a tag wiki is but such a multiple-answer reference question, unreliable when it comes to the matter of answering the particular question. Making "Answered in a tag wiki" closure reason unusable.
Which makes tag wikis again not for those who ask but for those who search, and therefore not for humans but for the robots.

1
  • I thought the Code Review site was spun off (in part) to cover the second bullet. Haven't spent a lot of time there, maybe they only want working code...?
    – brichins
    May 31, 2016 at 15:52
2

I suspect most new users, who are generally also new to whichever subject brought them to SO, also don't know about this feature. It seems like making them aware could help prevent many 'too broad' and 'off topic' questions like "what are good books on x?" and "how do I learn basic concept?" Most of them aren't trained on how to ask questions, although (it turns out!) there are links to the wikis when adding tags on the Ask a Question page.

I don't think so. People that do not take time to google their question first before posting won't bother reading a wiki either :/

Doesn't mean it doesn't need more exposure, though.

-5

I suspect most new users, who are generally also new to whichever subject brought them to SO, also don't know about this feature. It seems like making them aware could help prevent many 'too broad' and 'off topic' questions like "what are good books on x?" and "how do I learn basic concept?"

Well, the more problematic aspect seems that we need to have more exposure and highlighting when adding the required tags.

But the general experience is that new users (LOL regarding your state of that) don't read any popups, warnings or any other hints, when they want to put their questions through all the engine's already existing filters and throttles though.

May be, we should have big blinking banners like

Check every relevant information you see here, before applying that tag to your question please.

7
  • 2
    I don't know that the actual tagging of questions needs to change, that actually seems to do pretty well as a short summary. I'm focusing specifically on awareness that the wiki exists - showing the wiki link while adding question tags may be a good place to do it.
    – brichins
    May 25, 2016 at 20:19
  • 7
    Laugh all you want, this is a real issue and your brushing it aside doesn't really add any value to the situation. Many users are not aware of these tag wikis, or "info" as the link says which barely conveys any meaning to what resides there. This answer seems to tangentially address adding tags as opposed to increasing tag wiki exposure.
    – Travis J
    May 25, 2016 at 20:35
  • 1
    @brichins I would disagree. There are plenty of tags that start off with DO NOT USE THIS TAG but they get used every day. Something does need to change when users are adding tags to questions. May 25, 2016 at 23:54
  • @NathanOliver If they're not supposed to be used, is there a reason these tags aren't locked for use on new questions / new users? "Don't push the big red button" is a stereotype of a useless warning for a reason. :) I was commenting on the aspect of "tag subject" as it relates to wiki link awareness, rather than the appropriateness of selecting a specific tag. Sounds like perhaps a separate conversation needs to happen about tag permissions?
    – brichins
    May 26, 2016 at 15:53
  • @brichins Black listing cannot be done by regular users, it might require a Community manager. I don't think it can be done while there are still Q's tagged with the tag. To get you started, here are ~45k Q's tagged with API: stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/api
    – Laurel
    May 27, 2016 at 0:00
  • @Laurel Blacklisting requires a community manager. Mergers require a moderator. Synonyms can be performed by members of the community.
    – Zizouz212
    May 27, 2016 at 0:48
  • I liked the bold part. :) May 27, 2016 at 20:05

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