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Despite the fact that the tag has already been discussed here and here, it seems that the discussion about this probably deserves a separate thread.

At the moment there is , which was made synonym of . (As a result of this discussion.)

Later two new tags and were created. Already the creation of the new tags, despite the fact that already existed, may suggest that some users were not satisfied with the fact that was made a synonym of . At least some users voiced this opinion in comments. Both these tags are suggested synonyms for divisibility. I recall seeing some downvotes there. (IIRC when I first saw that page, the total score was -1, meaning that there was at least one downvote.)

I think that the tags , and should be dealt with in the same way. Having several tags for the same thing seems rather messy. The problem with these tags was also pointed out recently in chat.

So it seems that we have two possibilities:

  • Make again a tag separate from , i.e., cancel the synonym. (I am not sure, what happens with the questions currently tagged as in this case.)
  • Make the other two tags synonyms of , too.

What do you think? Should be kept separate from ? Or would it be better to make all g.c.d.-related tags synonyms?

I suggest that until some kind of consensus is reached, we should use both and questions about g.c.d. This will make things easier if we later want to separate the tags - less posts will be needing retagging.

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    $\begingroup$ Do we also need to add (highest-common-factor) and (hcf)? In the off chance that someone from England may happen into our group... $\endgroup$
    – GEdgar
    Jun 3, 2015 at 13:55

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I propose a tag to be created into which gcd, lcm, greatest- common-divisor etc. are mapped.

On the one hand, the notion of GCD (and related) is relevant and wide-spread enough to merit a tag beyond the very general . On the other hand, the notions GCD and LCM are very closely related, and it makes sense to have a shared tag.

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    $\begingroup$ Is the word "and" in gcd-and-lcm strictly necessary? I just realized there's some inconsistency regarding that in tag naming, because eg supremum-and-infimum has "and" in it, but homology-cohomology doesn't. $\endgroup$
    – Najib Idrissi
    Jun 1, 2015 at 16:00
  • $\begingroup$ I certainly do not insist on the "and." It might be easier to parse with the end, and mainly I thought it was the local standard. There is also sequences-and-series. The one time I created such a tag, on MO, I did not use an "and" but called it "divisors-multiples" but regretted it when somebody did not get the intent that this is about "divisors and multiples" but rather thought it is an obscure modification of "divisors" $\endgroup$
    – quid Mod
    Jun 1, 2015 at 16:18
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Some partial steps today, at least partially related.

  1. was made a synonym of the tag.
  2. The ⇒ synonym has been removed. Unfortunately, when I created this synonym (Why did I do that? I was young and dumb then, I guess. Now, I'm older.) I also merged the tags, so this completely removed the tag from the system. (Even those questions tagged only when the mergonym was done are currently tagged only .)
  3. Suggested synonyms ⇒ and ⇒ have been unceremoniously quashed.
  4. For good measure a ⇒ has been introduced.
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    $\begingroup$ Thanks, that is definitely a step in the right direction. $\endgroup$
    – Bill Dubuque
    Jul 8, 2015 at 5:02

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