I just saw a proposed tag for "Facebook" based on (I believe) one question; further, I voted to close that question.
Do we need a tag for "Facebook"? Does having extra tags in the system do any harm?
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13$\begingroup$ I think we can avoid heading down this particular (potentially endless) avenue of tags. $\endgroup$– Glen_bCommented Jan 26, 2014 at 5:28
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$\begingroup$ Hi Peter, do you want to accept one of the answers? This issue is long settled. Thanks! $\endgroup$– amoebaCommented Feb 10, 2017 at 10:57
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3 Answers
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I think it was created after I asked this question, since I didn't see it when I posted my question and someone added it later.
The "facebook" tag is probably overlapped with the "social-network" tag, at least for statistical purposes.
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4$\begingroup$ Yes, I added it because I thought it would be the first question of many that would possibly come up later (regarding facebook statistics). I was not aware about the social-network tag (so facebook could be a synonym of it, imo). And congratulations for your question. I had never seen something like that before on CV (>10K views in less than 2 days). Welcome to Meta. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 25, 2014 at 17:49
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3$\begingroup$ @AndreSilva I think the reason of its popularity is better explained by Groucho Marx: "I know that the title of this book is misleading, but there's more than one way to sell a book or skin a cat". $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 25, 2014 at 19:51
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I believe that for the time being there is no reason to add a facebook specific tag given that the social-network exist.
If questions about social network statistics start gaining momentum we can start differentiating then. As it stands, having a single question using a tag is pointless.
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Not much use in closing the question now; at present, it's 11th most popular, and poised to continue climbing. I shared that initial impulse though, FWIW. I find its popularity useful for redefining the utility of CV as a whole—not that it needed redefining necessarily, but I think I understand it better now, thanks to this question.
As for facebook, one question certainly doesn't make the tag needed. Searching for "facebook" yields 66 hits at present though, so if facebook is going to be useful, it should probably be applied to some of those other questions (of which there are less than 66, because that number includes answers). That being said, those questions may not be about Facebook, so if too few of the questions actually are, the tag seems quite useless from an empirical perspective, for now.
Furthermore, since social-network already exists, has been used 21 times, and has a good, non-redundant wiki and excerpt (facebook's are redundant), the synonym suggestion,
"facebook$\rightarrow$social-network" would naturally find its way to a meta-question like Current tag synonym candidates, by my own hand if no one else's.
Since the preceding answers argue for this synonymity as well, and have received their share of upvotes already, I've submitted an edit to the question in question that replaces facebook with social-network (among some other pretty trivial changes). It got accepted, so I guess that's that? facebook now appears on zero questions! I suggest it be removed entirely...though this will happen automatically if it remains an orphan for six months.
social-network might fit on some of those questions that mention "facebook" though, so there may remain some work to do, depending on whether editing those questions is worth bumping them up in the active questions list. This (and the OP itself) raise a number of related meta-questions:
- What should be rules for making and using tags?
- Note the tentative rule, community consensus prerequired for sitewide retagging
- @AndreSilva, note the proposed rule, "adding new tags by retag should be exceptional"
- Note comments on downvoted rule, automatically kill one-question tags, except w/ high rep
- Is it reasonable to go tag-hunting? [for the sake of retagging where a good tag is missing]
- Current tag synonym candidates
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3$\begingroup$ I think with "I voted to close that question", Peter Flom was referring to a different question (which asked people's opinion about the possibility of creating a more exciting social network than Facebook). Such question seems to have been deleted. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 27, 2014 at 14:58
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2$\begingroup$ As stated in my comment under LessFaceMoreBook's answer I thought I had a good reason to create the tag. If is still possible to make facebook (x0) a synonym of social-network we can handle this issue permanently. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 27, 2014 at 16:53
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$\begingroup$ I think nobody considered the idea of closing the question. That would be plainly irrational. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 27, 2014 at 21:46
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$\begingroup$ Interesting interpretation of the OP. @AndreSilva, I agree you had a good reason; just calling your attention to the proposed rule. You might want to downvote it! :) As for considering closing LessFaceMoreBook's question, think about how many individual examples of basic statistical errors we could find in random articles if that were CV's purview. My initial impulse occurred before considering the popularity of this particular article, and was more of a "slippery slope" concern. I'm certainly glad the question remained open (+1'd it and most answers myself), but even its original phrasing.. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 27, 2014 at 23:46
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$\begingroup$ ...implicitly acknowledged that it might not have appeared to be a statistical question at first. That first line has since been edited out (again, rightly so), but I take it to indicate @LessFaceMoreBook recognized some risk of closure too, maybe even the rationality of some possible arguments for closure. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 27, 2014 at 23:48
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$\begingroup$ I believe the OP refers to the question of having a
facebooktag. You seem to refer to the question about Facebook coming to an end; that is why I wrote that comment. I should have been more explicit so you do not misinterpret what I was talking about. Sorry! (Check @LessFaceMoreBook 's comment also, I think he has the same understanding of the issue as me.) $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 28, 2014 at 1:14 -
$\begingroup$ Sorry, I might still be confused. I responded to your comment as a reference to LessFaceMoreBook's question, and closing that being irrational. If you meant closing @PeterFlom's OP here would be plainly irrational, I'd still disagree, because my answer lists some existing meta-threads and an automatic mechanism for resolving the issue of the particular "facebook" tag. Closing this as duplicative might (or might not!) direct additional attention to those meta-threads, which could always use more. Rational (if incomplete and unimportant) reasons for closing aside, I've +1'd this question too! :) $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 28, 2014 at 1:25