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We have a tag (16 questions, 4 are closed). It was created in 2011. I saw it prop up again in the active questions feed earlier today.

No question is tagged only with , and it seems to cover all kinds of content where people simply employed JavaScript.

Do we need this tag?

In my opinion is the outlier (one of the biggest tags in the site), we don't need tags for every programming/scripting language out there.

If JavaScript becomes a major language for statistics, it could be reused in the future, but for now we could simply un-tag the questions.

Thoughts?

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    $\begingroup$ It might be good to know that language tags allow the system automatically to markup any code blocks in the question and any answers. For example, this is how various keywords and other lexemes get different colors for R code. $\endgroup$ – whuber♦ Oct 16 '18 at 17:57
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    $\begingroup$ @whuber Had forgotten about syntax highlighting, then it would be simply easier to keep it. A cleanup might be good though. $\endgroup$ – Firebug Oct 16 '18 at 17:59
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    $\begingroup$ Cleanup is always appropriate. I edited the excerpt to include usage instructions based on the [r] tag excerpt. $\endgroup$ – gung - Reinstate Monica♦ Oct 16 '18 at 18:42
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The question seems to be answered in comments by @whuber

It might be good to know that language tags allow the system automatically to markup any code blocks in the question and any answers. For example, this is how various keywords and other lexemes get different colors for R code.

and @gung

Cleanup is always appropriate. I edited the excerpt to include usage instructions based on the tag excerpt.

Tags are helpful for syntax highlighting. There is not much harm in having multiple tags (but we should merge redundant ones), while hunting and deleting tags is time consuming. Creating tags is relatively easy, so we'll never have a perfect tagging system, so better think about it in terms of their utility, i.e. to improve usability of the site (search, syntax highlighting, "followed" tags etc.).

Better alternatives to tag-hunting are:

  • clarifying the tag excerpts and descriptions, so it is clear when the particular tag will or will not be useful,
  • merging tags with their synonyms, to improve search and indexing,
  • re-tagging questions by adding relevant tags and removing the irrelevant ones when possible (abandoned tags are auto-removed by the system).
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