# Synonymize various tags for reference requests

Something's been bothering me (and it may just be me) about one category of our tags. When someone asks for references for a particular topic, their choices for tags seems to be:

books - with synonyms textbooks, textbook, book, video, tutorial

references - with no synonyms

resources - with no synonyms

I would think all of these would be "synonyms" of each other, and the "mother tag" (don't know if it has a term) should be the most general, say references or (as in the Math.SE) reference-request. I have noted that the "general vs. specific" debate has been brought up here before, but I think generality makes more sense in this situation.

FYI, This appears to be the post where books was chosen as the "mother" of the synonyms listed above.

Again, this just may be me who's bothered by this.

• I think references and books are quite separate - books is a subcategory of references, but not synonymous. It appears that books is now a synonym for references on the main site, and that sits pretty oddly with questions like this: stats.stackexchange.com/questions/41726/… Nov 2, 2012 at 5:08