Tag-Management? Conventions for editing and re-tagging?

When to retag

• always replace with sth. more general, if Tag is way to specific that anytime soon anyone else will use the same Tag.
  Often, these sort of tags are half-sentence-tags which can easily be divided up into more general Topics.

always remove or replace, if Tag is nothing but a number or words like 'do', 'be', 'go', 'but' etc..
Those can be anything and nothing and are unfit to be tags.
add '-operator' or '-loop' etc for keywords ('as-operator', 'and-operator', 'for-loop', 'switch-case')

try to replace, if Tag is used very SELDOM (3x, 2x, 1x).
But don't force it. Some might have their merit.

add more specified Tag, if Tag is used very OFTEN (~80 and upwards).
Add a co-tag, that will specify the topic further. (for now! until tag-search with && and || - operators is implemented)
e.g.: if there's a Tag "switch", look at the Question and add respectively "switch-case", "switch scenes" or "switch objects".
This way, if someone searches for "some switch" he will find all of them, but then he can refine his search with great ease

always replace with sth. more specific, if Tag is HYPERUSED. (>400)
e.g. "unity". EVERYTHING here is (should be) about unity!
e.g. "scripting". 70-95% of the questions are - one way or another - about scripting.
Since we currently don't have a propper tag-search with &&- and ||-Operators yet
and the 'scripting'-Tag is not consistently used (so that a search would catch all and the exceptions would pop out)
and it probably never will be used consistently because of the (very appropriate!) limit of 5 Tags per Question
... tags like that are ultimately useless

Greetz, Ky.

What is the use of the tag " Unity"? I would expect that it is appropriate at each question so isn't it better to delete it everywhere and don't allow users to use it?

'sweetspot'-amount of elements for a Tag: 20-100

NOTE: This obviously only applies until we get a tag-search-option with &&- and ||-operators!

100 elements are about the maximum to sift through manually before turning to on-site- or google-search
(One of the major merit of Tags, opposed to search, is the option to 'sort by most voted')

Comment when I re-tag and/or change the headline?

• pro: people are educated to properly tag themselves.
• pro: new users will be irritated if their Headline suddenly changed. (I know I was very confused and agitated when that happened to me once in the very beginning... so on the one hand, I was happy about the explanation)
• con: the poor guy will get his hopes up, that he got an answer to his question and is both disappointed AND (somewhat) suffers a snub. (that's also the way I felt then.)
• con: depending on his settings, the re-tagger might be spammed with notifications of topics he merely re-tagged.
• major con: age-old topics will show up in the 'active' page even now that we have a 'non-activation-retag'

So short answer:

• Comment when retagging a question 'last-activation < 48h'

• Never comment when mass-retagging old questions

Karma-hurdle: 200

I am ab-so-fragg-o-lutely pro hurdle!
We currently have over 8100 Tags! That's not healthy...

Don't make it insanely difficult though. Around 200 Karma. That would currently enable 400 Users to create new tags.

(Edited my estimation of sensible karma-hurdle for new tags)

Greetz, Ky.

How to retag

what content should the tags reflect?

When the question is opened and the OP does a good job, the tags will reflect the question at first.

If someone finds a poorly-tagged good or new question (something to upvote or age<48h) without good answers, he should support the OP and add Tags that reflect the question.

Older and/or well-answered questions, tag the content of the answers rather than the question.
Usually content of question and answer should be so close that it doesn't matter. (But for bad questions it CAN differ quite much).

Why?
The question is probably abandoned or solved and no longer needs to attract new answers so desperately.
The OP is no longer the primary 'help-target'.
Instead, people searching for similar problems should be supported.

So no matter how stupid or bad or hard to decipher a question may be - if it has a good answer, tag it that people looking for this answer can find it.

Greetz, Ky.

How deal with bad questions

Tags we currently have to deal with this:

• not-a-question
  

• not-unity-related
  

• off-topic

• lost-in-translation
  

• not-answers-material
  

• not-enough-information

• spam
  

• write-my-code
  

• fix-my-script
  

• syntax-error

• flagged-for-delete

• flagged-for-close

• duplicated-question

Awful lot, don't you agree? (please comment if I missed any)

Can we reduce them? How do we use them?

• I think 'not-a-question', 'not-unity-related' and 'off-topic' should be merged into 'not-answers-material' (it's a neutral, catch-all term).
  I'm a bit torn about what to do with lost-in-translation. for the occasional question in portogese or swedish or the request for dutch tutorials... Is UnityAnswers an 'english only' platform per definition so we can catch those with 'not-answers-material' as well? Or does it have to stay?

• 'not-enough-information' Note: this should only be applied if OP has abandoned the question (not active for >7 days)

• I think 'spam' should not be a tag. Report it and tag it 'flagged-for-delete'

• As annoying as 'write-my-code'-questions are, they sometimes get really cool answers.
  Don't let these efforts go to waste by tagging the question with a shun-tag.
  If the question is old and has no answer, then it's a case for 'flagged-for-delete' else tag it according to answer

• 'fix-my-script'... either apply the same rules as 'write-my-code' or it's a 'syntax-error'

• when it's a syntax-error also add the appropriate error-code as tag (if OP posted it)

When to apply a 'shun'-tag?

If lastActivity > 1 month and no good answer, the above tags REPLACE all other taggs. We want useless questions to show up on the search as little as possible, so we should not leave any content-related tags.

Double-post, no answers: replace all tags wit 'duplicated-question' and 'flagged-for-delete', close or delete, if you can.
Double-post, good answer: add 'duplicated-question' and 'flagged-for-close' or close if you can
asked-a-million-times, new and/or answer: add 'duplicated-question' and 'flagged-for-close' or close if you can; add link
asked-a-million-times, old, no-answer: replace all tags with 'flagged-for-delete'

Greetz, Ky.