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The tag has 121 questions, almost half of which have zero upvotes and only one of which has a score >10. There is no tag wiki or usage guidance.

A substantial proportion of statistical questions involve some sort of comparison, so this vague tag doesn't seem to serve much purpose. A quick skim through some of the tagged questions also suggests that they would be better served by more specific tags.

Shall we delete this? And is this something that the mods can do at the site level, or does it involve manually removing the tag from each of the questions?

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    $\begingroup$ I am not aware of any method to destroy a tag wholesale, but it is possible to create synonyms (which preserves the tag but links everything to a different tag and tag wiki) and to merge tags (which destroys the tag, replacing it with the target). $\endgroup$
    – whuber Mod
    Commented Jul 30, 2022 at 15:12
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    $\begingroup$ comparison is akin to hypothesis-testing, and that is the tag with which it co-occurs most frequently. So we could first remove it from posts having notthing to do woth h-t, and then declare synonym? $\endgroup$
    – kjetil b halvorsen Mod
    Commented Jul 30, 2022 at 18:36
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    $\begingroup$ @kjetilbhalvorsen Sounds good to me. I would be happy to help with that. $\endgroup$
    – mkt
    Commented Jul 30, 2022 at 18:40
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    $\begingroup$ @mkt: But let us wait a bit and see if others chime in. $\endgroup$
    – kjetil b halvorsen Mod
    Commented Jul 30, 2022 at 21:50
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    $\begingroup$ @whuber, there's 1 more step: after the merge has completed, you need to delete the mapping. Then the tag is completely gone. I used to do it every so often. $\endgroup$
    – gung - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jul 31, 2022 at 11:38
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    $\begingroup$ @gung I'm not sure that deleting the mapping is what we want. By retaining it, we have a system that handles future attempts to apply the deprecated tag. Re hypothesis-testing: that's such a specific form of "comparison" that I would hesitate and do more research before replacing one by the other. $\endgroup$
    – whuber Mod
    Commented Jul 31, 2022 at 12:21
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    $\begingroup$ @kjetilbhalvorsen I have not looked at the tagged questions but I think comparison is potentially broader than h-t. For instance: distance measures, correlation, ... I agree those are extended uses of comparison but we are, perhaps, not typical users. $\endgroup$
    – mdewey
    Commented Jul 31, 2022 at 12:33
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    $\begingroup$ @whuber, if that's what you want, but it isn't really "deleting" the tag. I agree w/ mdewey that comparison is not really the same as h-t, & w/ mkt that it's mostly pretty useless here--almost like the proverbial 'statistics' tag. I would just get rid of it. $\endgroup$
    – gung - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jul 31, 2022 at 17:43
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    $\begingroup$ @gung The problem (I believe) with a full deletion is that it does not prevent someone from recreating the tag any time. It's always difficult to determine what might happen on this site because often there is no reliable harmless way to test an operation beforehand. $\endgroup$
    – whuber Mod
    Commented Aug 1, 2022 at 11:58
  • $\begingroup$ My experience is that irrelevant tags do little harm. But I've often edited out a useless tag e.g. mathematical-statistics on things that really don't deserve or benefit from the invocation. I would see comparison as just as useless. (As another example, it's often argued that statistical graphics is about comparison, even if the comparison is by implication.) $\endgroup$
    – Nick Cox
    Commented Aug 1, 2022 at 12:04
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    $\begingroup$ @whuber, that's true. There is no guarantee that it won't be created again. FWIW, the tag wasn't created until 2018--I'm just less concerned about that. $\endgroup$
    – gung - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Aug 1, 2022 at 13:45
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    $\begingroup$ @Nick I have come to see mathematical-statistics as being informative: either it is obviously applicable or it indicates the OP is paying no attention at all. The latter posts tend to be poor ones ;-). $\endgroup$
    – whuber Mod
    Commented Aug 1, 2022 at 16:30
  • $\begingroup$ @whuber I agree that many posts with that tag are poor. $\endgroup$
    – Nick Cox
    Commented Aug 1, 2022 at 16:41
  • $\begingroup$ @kjetilbhalvorsen Checking in about this - how would you like to proceed? Not an urgent issue, but I can help with editing out the tag from most (maybe all?) questions, if that's the best way forward. $\endgroup$
    – mkt
    Commented Aug 16, 2022 at 19:55
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    $\begingroup$ @mkt: I think the best way is to start removing the tag completely, but in each case see if some other tags should replace it. I will try to write an answer tomorrow. $\endgroup$
    – kjetil b halvorsen Mod
    Commented Aug 20, 2022 at 2:54

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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As the discussion in comments pointed to, there is no good synonym, so we should just start to eliminate little by little. There are many other tags with comparison in name, like , so try to find good replacement tags when eliminating.

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    $\begingroup$ Done, thanks. You can now merge+delete the mapping as gung suggested, if you feel that's appropriate. It sounds worthwhile to me, to avoid having to revisit this every so often. $\endgroup$
    – mkt
    Commented Aug 21, 2022 at 15:44

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