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Are questions related to the specification or implementation of data exchange or file formats on topic? For example, "How do I determine the endianness of a SEG-Y file?"

If so, how should they be tagged? By organization, format name, or more generally?

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Yes.

Broadly, I'd argue that there is no science apart from guidance on the practice of it. Thus questions regarding the practice of the science (including standards for how data is exchanged) are on topic.

Personally, I'm a software developer, not a scientist. I hope that I can participate in the site where software applied to earth science is concerned. Anecdotally, when I was developing a SEG-Y reader there was not a good StackExchange site suited to ask questions on. So, I believe there is a gap.

I would think these questions should primarily be tagged by the subfield of earth science (e.g. geophysics) that they relate to. However if someone wants to ignore such questions there could be a tag like data-format for them to ignore.

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    $\begingroup$ Couldn't agree more. As both a scientist and a developer, I think that this is a reasonable platform to fill that void. While some might say "data is data", I have come across many problems that required an understanding of the context behind the issue. $\endgroup$
    – malonso
    Commented Apr 22, 2014 at 22:07
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    $\begingroup$ Definitely... it might be the only place on the Internet to get a decent answer to questions like this. $\endgroup$
    – kwinkunks
    Commented Apr 25, 2014 at 11:31
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I think that questions about data formats, algorithms and discussions about software applications are relevant. These topics would actually get active professionals contributing to the site.

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