26

As we know, the tag was regarded to be obsolete and was on its way to be removed from questions. I had been editing a fair amount of them into shape and flagged some for deletion when appropriate. The number of them slowly but steadily dropped down over time. Then I noticed that all of a sudden the tag was gone. An update and lock on the canonical post reveals that the tag has been removed completely.

Given the lock I can't ask for an explanation there, but I would like to know what the motivation was for killing the tag like that. Having it around after all did provide us with a nice collection of posts that might require some additional attention. And though it did attract new questions with that particular tag, those were so few (from what I saw) that those were easily dealt with.

So even though I certainly won't miss that tag (good riddance), why was it nuked?

  • Cleanup too slow maybe? (There were still ~10k questions left when the tag got nuked.) – Mat Apr 13 '13 at 7:51
  • 1
    @Mat Yeah, I was wondering about that. It was surely not a fast-paced cleanup. But then again, it did not do a whole lot of harm still having it around, I think. (Perhaps I'm missing some insight there though) – Bart Apr 13 '13 at 7:52
  • I seem to recall a discussion about blacklisting the tag and the problems that would cause if it still existed on questions but I can't find it right now. – Flexo Apr 13 '13 at 8:00
  • I thought this was always the plan. The canonical post kind of suggested it, in the "How can I help?" section (and Jeff's answer). – ughoavgfhw Apr 15 '13 at 18:33
  • @ughoavgfhw Question then becomes if that was indeed determined to be the case. Was the mess sufficiently cleaned up to have the tag removed from the rest. I have my doubts, but I'd love to hear it if that was the rationale. – Bart Apr 15 '13 at 18:36
  • And if you're still up for question chomping and retagging, there are plenty of variables questions to go around – Aza Apr 16 '13 at 7:41
  • @Telthien No worries, I still have my eyes on a fair amount of content. ;) – Bart Apr 16 '13 at 7:42
11

The answer is in the question you linked:

Try to remove the worst of the worst, then we can remove the tag from the rest en masse.

After 7 months, most of the really bad stuff was gone. Tim Post and I each took a final pass, removing a few hundred questions that'd been overlooked. That done, the tag was burned and blacklisted.

Since you brought it up, I'd like to take this opportunity to again thank everyone who participated in this cleanup effort - homework was the Augean stables of SO, and without y'all we'd still be scrubbing at it with a toothbrush.

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