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It would be nice to see what tags are most popular and how popular they are relative to other tags without reading "this tag has 2000 usages". Perhaps a word cloud of tags (already numbered) cloud be helpful.

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So There are a lot of nice visualizations: Why is the "TAGS" tab so basic? Surely at least a link to some of these great visualizations should be available under "TAGS."

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  • $\begingroup$ I might add that the descriptions underneath each tag on the TAGS page is useful, but probably unnecessary to display: I found them distracting. A hover-over popup would be much nicer. $\endgroup$
    – User3910
    Commented Jul 21, 2013 at 19:32
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    $\begingroup$ Sorry, but I don't know what a word cloud is :-) I do support the cause of making (new) posters of questions actually read the tag descriptions. Some tags are horribly misused. A typical scenario is a new poster, who asks something about division, starts typing div..., sees a suggestion division-algebras, and clicks that happily without checking. Thus the said poster has inadvertently jumped from high school level straight to graduate school. Would your suggestion help reduce this problem? Would it actually make people read the tag description before grabbing the first familiar word? $\endgroup$
    – Jyrki Lahtonen
    Commented Jul 21, 2013 at 20:13
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    $\begingroup$ ... and of course there's nothing wrong in making tags easier to use. +1 to your thread, but we need to first determine, what the real problem(s) with the current tag system is(are)? $\endgroup$
    – Jyrki Lahtonen
    Commented Jul 21, 2013 at 20:16
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    $\begingroup$ @JyrkiLahtonen The real problems with the current tag system is noobs. $\endgroup$
    – User3910
    Commented Jul 21, 2013 at 20:17
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    $\begingroup$ Related (to some extent): A Graph Map of Math.SE $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Commented Jul 22, 2013 at 5:02

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Some SE users, including myself, like experiment with the data in the SE system, looking for patterns, visualizing trends and so on. The data explorer is a fantastic tool, which allows users with little (or no) knowledge of SQL to obtain desired information from the system, download it, present it graphically, etc.

That said, I do not think that SE developers should be charged with building data visualization into the site's user interface. Some of us like word clouds, some like pie charts, some like multi-colored 3D stacked columns and whatnot. Each of us can download the data, put into the favorite visualization software, and enjoy the result.

For example, I happen to be interested in Unanswered questions, so I find this chart more useful to me right now than any cloud: top 50 tags by the number of questions, with the unanswered in red.

count

Source: Unanswered Questions by Tag. Also ordered by the % of unanswered questions:

percentage

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    $\begingroup$ I am very pleased with the given stats of the logic and set theoy tags. $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Commented Jul 22, 2013 at 2:28
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    $\begingroup$ @AsafKaragila Then you should branch out into answering optimization and statistics questions... $\endgroup$
    – 40 votes
    Commented Jul 22, 2013 at 2:36

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