What is the policy on creating/adding to tag wikis? I think this is of great importance, that we get some of the fundamental tags defined, such as Geology, Geophysics, and Geochemistry.
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$\begingroup$ possible duplicate of Subdiscipline tag convention $\endgroup$– 410 goneCommented Apr 16, 2014 at 17:20
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$\begingroup$ I don't really know what the question is here. All of those tags already exist - geology, geophysics, geochemistry. For other missing tags, why not just create the tags (assuming there are questions for the tags)? $\endgroup$– naught101Commented Apr 22, 2014 at 4:44
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$\begingroup$ i meant the wiki summary. $\endgroup$– NeoCommented Apr 22, 2014 at 4:46
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$\begingroup$ @Neo Oh, the tag wiki! Retracted my close vote. $\endgroup$– hichris123 ModCommented Apr 23, 2014 at 0:12
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1 Answer
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Most of us know what the subdisciplines mean. But not everyone knows how to use the tags. So the tag wikis (and excerpts) should express how the tag should be used.
Citation of a stackexchange blog:
The excerpt is the elevator pitch for the tag. You only have ~500 plain text characters for the excerpt, so don’t feel obligated to cover everything in it! Save that for the 30,000+ character Markdown tag wiki. The excerpt should define the shared quality of questions containing this tag — boiled down to a few short sentences.
Avoid generically defining the concept behind a tag, unless it is highly specialized. The “email” tag, for example, does not need to explain what email is. I think we can safely assume most internet users know what email is; there’s no value in a boilerplate explanation of email to anyone.
Concentrate on what a tag means to your community. For “email” on Server Fault, mention the server aspects of email including POP3, SMTP, IMAP, and server software. For “email” on Super User, mention desktop email clients and explicitly exclude webmail, as that would be more appropriate for webapps.stackexchange.com.
Provide basic guidance on when to use the tag. In other words, what kinds of questions should have this tag? Tags only exist as ways of organizing questions, so if we don’t provide proper guidance on which questions need this tag, they won’t get tagged at all, rendering the tag excerpt moot. Think of it as a sales pitch: in a room full of tags screaming “pick me!”, what would convince a question asker to select your tag?
Some tags are common knowledge. Most tags require a bit of explanation in the excerpt, even if it’s only 3 or 4 words. But if the tag is common knowledge — that is, if you walked up to any random person on the street and said the tag word to them, and they would know what you were talking about — then don’t bother explaining the tag at all. Stick to usage of the tag within your community in the excerpt.
