# Tag management 2016 [duplicate]

Since it is a new year and the old Tag Management question has already over 70 answers, it is time for a new Tag Management thread.

Rules of the game are basically the same:

• A particularly bad tag (a rule of thumb: «if I can't imagine a person classifying a tag as either interesting or ignored, I'm getting rid of it»),
• A tag that should be a synonym of an existing one,
• A tag that used for two or more completely unrelated things,
• A need to create a new tag;
• Wait a couple of days before implementing a suggestion.
• After the problem described in an answer is resolved, please edit it to say so.

Also, note that one may use [tag:calculus] for , i.e. tags on the main site, and [meta-tag:discussion] for , i.e. for tags on the meta site.

• I like how this is a game, but you didn't explain the points system. – Simply Beautiful Art Sep 20 '16 at 23:59
• Maybe it's time to start a new thread, and the first answer there should encompass the still-open issues from this thread? – Asaf Karagila Jan 15 '17 at 8:38
• @AsafKaragila Should I copy all the still-open answers onto the new thread in multiple different answers? – suomynonA Jan 17 '17 at 1:36
• @suomynonA: One answer with links should suffice. Thanks! – Asaf Karagila Jan 17 '17 at 4:09
• @AsafKaragila Take a look here, looks good? – suomynonA Jan 17 '17 at 4:51

Resolved: The tag is now deleted

I think should be removed.

It has barely a relationship with math. Also, the tag is being abused for general questions about math and the Java programming language or questions about math and the JavaScript programming language.

Resolved: The synonym is approved.

should be a synonym of . Link to the suggestion.

The double factorial can easily be expressed in terms of factorials. In fact most questions currently tagged involve some rewriting to factorials and then using properties of the factorial. Also, currently, 7 out of 9 questions that use also use .

• Previous discussoins of this can be found here and here. (It seems that the proposal was mostly supported in thos posts.) – Martin Sleziak Jan 5 '16 at 14:20

Resolved: The tag is now deleted

There is tag with 90 questions. There is no usage guidance for the tag. The questions to which it's applied are mostly real analysis questions, with occasional topology and functional analysis mixed in. A sample:

• How to show “ If A and B connected, is A∪B connected”?
• Is there a bijective map from the open interval (0,1) to $\mathbb{R}^2$?
• Banach Fixed Point Theorem Incomplete Conditions
• A curious proof of L'Hospital's rule

I don't see how these 90 questions are more "classical" than the typical question with tag.

I propose to eliminate the tag by retagging these 90 questions.

• For some context, modern-analysis was deleted too. – Najib Idrissi Jan 5 '16 at 18:02
• I support getting rid of it. Which way is better? Make classical-analysis a synonym of real-analysis, or retag with a choice of DE/calculus/real-analysis whichever looks best? – Jyrki Lahtonen Jan 10 '16 at 19:53
• @JyrkiLahtonen Since the tag is unclear (different people have different ideas for what it "classical", same with "modern"), it requires manual retag, based on the content of answers. I'm working on it, a few questions per day. Down to 72 questions now. – user147263 Jan 10 '16 at 20:09
• Ok. I will join in the battle. At a moderate pace, of course. – Jyrki Lahtonen Jan 10 '16 at 20:11

Resolved: Synonym approved, tags merged.

We have in addition to .

I'm not kidding.

Synonym suggested here, but chances are that it's easier to retag the 21 questions with "properties" than to get 4 votes on the synonym.

• Apparently BLAZE is the one to thank for that. (Again.) – Najib Idrissi Jan 10 '16 at 8:39

Resolved: The tag is now deleted

I think should be removed.

Out of the 9 questions, I think there are only 2 or 3 with the right tag. Most of the other questions use when or neither should be used. I think this will need some manual retagging.

Resolved: manually removed from all questions.

The tag is entirely useless. It gives nothing that searching "Bourbaki" doesn't already do.

Resolved: manually removed from all questions.

(antipodal) seems too specific and unused to be worth having.

Resolved: manually removed from all questions.

I think that is probably worth deleting.

• Agree. The questions in the tag look like they're either reference-request, should be on academia.se, or are opinion-based. – user296602 Jan 21 '16 at 22:38
• – Asaf Karagila Jan 21 '16 at 23:25
• This tag does not belong here, I agree. This content belongs on MO (+1) – user311151 Apr 9 '16 at 2:12
• Okay, I removed it from all questions, but in order to auto-delete I think it may have to have its "tag info" blurb removed. Am I correct? – 6005 Jul 24 '16 at 20:10
• @6005: If my memory serves right, no, the tag info disappears on its own. – Asaf Karagila Jul 24 '16 at 20:17
• @6005 to confirm there is no need to delete the tag-info. The tag-info of deleted tags is preserved (moderators only) but does not prevent auto-deletion. – quid Jul 24 '16 at 23:43

Status: Removed from all questions

Is the tag really useful? There are way too many things that can fall under this tag. From elementary embeddings in set theory, in model theory, to embedding of topological spaces, and to many other fields.

Seems like a recipe for a messy and useless tag.

Edit, with +9 and no downvotes, should we remove the tag entirely? It amassed some 30 questions and a follower.

• I guess the tag should be replaced by more specific embedding tags and those few questions retagged before it gets it of hand. – Heimdall May 20 '16 at 7:49
• I removed the tag from 7 questions; pausing now to protect the main page. Any time someone wants to remove a few more, go for it. We should be close to getting rid of it. – 6005 Aug 21 '16 at 10:30
• As for a replacement tag, if anyone really things topological-embedding or other specific tags are useful, they can create them, but worrying about re-tagging these under 30 questions is not worth it IMO, we should just remove the offending tag. – 6005 Aug 21 '16 at 10:32

Resolved The tag is now ; a tag was also created

The tag is "[f]or questions about adjoints, in the category-theoretic or inner-product-space sense, as well as about adjugate matrices", which certainly falls under "two or more completely unrelated things".

If it's needed, a separate tag adjoint-functors/adjunctions can be created, and this one can be renamed to something less vague, eg. adjoint-operators and/or -matrices.

• Well they're not "completely unrelated", it's apparently possible to make a 2-category of e.g. Hilbert spaces where adjunction of 1-morphisms is really adjunction of operators (cf. q-alg/9609018). But I agree that it would be better to have two different tags. – Najib Idrissi Jan 11 '16 at 8:23
• BTW what is better in this kind of situation? Batch-editing large numbers of questions at once (thus flooding the front page but only a few times), editing a few questions now and then (less impact on the front page but many more times over a longer period), something else? – Najib Idrissi Jan 11 '16 at 9:14
• @NajibIdrissi: Sure, there's even a nice question on their relation, such as it is. Insert "for tagging purposes" in the post above. Anyway, it's unfortunate if the edits can't be done silently; 95 of the questions are in the category-theory tag. – user54748 Jan 11 '16 at 10:07
• At the very least the "adjugate matrix" use should be discarded. – quid Jan 11 '16 at 13:00
• Since no one objected, this answer received 4 upvotes, and if we wait the problem will just grow worse by the day, I took the liberty of editing the tag info and started retagging category-theoretical questions with adjoint-functors. There are still questions that need editing, and ideally the tag needs to be renamed (the most efficient way is probably for a moderator to do it, I think). (It's unfortunate that the English Wikipedia doesn't have a dedicated article on adjoint operators...) – Najib Idrissi Jan 13 '16 at 9:09
• Do we want a tag for adjugate (sometimes called adjoint) matrix questions? – quid Jan 13 '16 at 13:19
• I don't think that's necessary. Only 7 questions are tagged (adjoint) and contain the word "adjugate". (They probably need retagging too now.) – Najib Idrissi Jan 13 '16 at 15:51
• Phew! All questions that were in category-theory and adjoint have been retagged (except one which was about the relationship between adjoint functors and adjoint operators). Now all is left is renaming the tag. – Najib Idrissi Jan 17 '16 at 11:42

Resolved: The two tags are now synonyms.

Perhaps the chaos-theory and chaotic-systems tags should be merged? The second has no official description but I can hardly imagine what the difference should be.

• As somebody active in these tags and working in this field, I approve of this. – Wrzlprmft Jun 12 '17 at 7:39

Resolved: The tag has been removed from all questions.

What on Earth is the tag for? It seems to me that questions containing at least one equal sign get randomly tagged with it, including questions that have nothing to do with algebra. The tag excerpt (there's no tag wiki) mentions "algebraic structures", which I guess includes identities in general groups, rings... But from my limited understanding, algebra is already all about identities anyway; besides the tag is clearly used mostly for something else.

I don't really see what good this tag is, and I propose to remove it.

• Only 7 questions use this tag as their only tag. – Najib Idrissi Jan 14 '16 at 10:16
• I have pinged the (probable) tag-creator. – Martin Sleziak Jan 16 '16 at 8:07
• – Najib Idrissi Jan 17 '16 at 10:15
• @MartinSleziak I must have overlooked your ping, because I didn't notice this until just now. Actually, I am not the tag creator, though I did apply it to my Hall-Witt question after seeing it somewhere else (and added a simple tag wiki because it didn't have one). Now that I'm thinking about it again, it is a pretty useless tag. – Alexander Gruber Jun 18 '16 at 16:44
• (Also, yes, my activity has been strictly limited to behind the scenes mod stuff since starting grad school, which consumes all of my math-doing energy.) – Alexander Gruber Jun 18 '16 at 16:45

Resolved: Synonym $\to$ has been created.

The tag has been created recently. It is still listed among new tags. At the moment there are 4 questions in that tag.

As far as I can say, questions about trigonometric equations have been tagged so far. And also and are synonyms for trigonometry. To me, it seems logical to treat trigonometric equations in the same way.

So I propose either removing or creating a synonym $\to$ . (I prefer the latter, since the synonym prevents creating the same tag again.)

Downvote this post if you think that should stay as a separate tag. Upvote this post if you think that the tag can be synonymized (or removed).

EDIT: Since this post received some support (7 upvotes at the moment), I have suggested a synonym. Users with sufficient reputation in tag can vote on this suggestion here.

• As you said aboce, creating a synonym seems better. – paf Aug 15 '16 at 18:32

Status: This tag is currently empty

The tag has been created recently. (It is still listed among new tags.) At the moment there are only three questions having this tag.

I do not think that a separate tag is needed. The tag explicitly mentions in the tag-info that it should serve also for questions about components.

So I propose to create a synonym $\to$ .

• Alternatively, just manually retag these questions. If it is gone, it doesn't have to be recreated necessarily in the future. I imagine that this synonym would be hard to create without moderator intervention. – wythagoras Aug 7 '16 at 7:43
• @user21820 As mentioned in the tag-info, the tag connectedness is for both meaning (general topology and graph theory). – Martin Sleziak Aug 9 '16 at 8:26
• Oh okay sorry I should stop assuming things. – user21820 Aug 9 '16 at 8:29

Resolved: Both tags have been manually removed.

I recently noticed two new tags and . AFAICT both were first used in August 2016 in this post.

Currently there are about 20 questions carrying either tag. Neither has a tag wiki nor a follower. The topics of the questions with the lower-bound tag range from number theory to real analysis to random graphs to quadratic programming.

In my opinion, due to the random range of topics they can be added to, these tags are not useful at all. I suggest that we get rid of them. What do you think?

• The probable creator has been notified. – Jyrki Lahtonen Oct 17 '16 at 17:31
• I think it is a good idea to get rid of these. Also, a lot probably could use the inequality, which is used on only four questions with these tags (two with lower-bound, two with upper-bound. Also, it probably gives nothing searching for upper bound or lower bound already does. – wythagoras Oct 17 '16 at 18:22
• Yes, these seem entirely useless tags, as far as tags go. Kill them with fire, I say! – Asaf Karagila Oct 17 '16 at 21:19
• A the creator of the tags, I found them useful, because they identify questions (no matter from which of the mentioned subjects) that are related to upper or lower bounds. My vision was that similar techniques or insights common in solving problems containing upper/lower bounds could be retrieved and organized in an easier way by these tags. But if in your community, a tag must be very specific to a single topic only, then you could perhaps consider them "entirely useless". – user25004 Oct 17 '16 at 22:22
• @user25004: It's not that a tag should be very specific. It's just that tags should serve a purpose. But the main purpose is to ease searching and navigating. I don't see how searching for "upper bound" or "lower bound" is any different from having the tag in place. True, there are secondary uses for tags, but I don't see them come into fruition here either. – Asaf Karagila Oct 18 '16 at 13:39
• Maybe it is worth mentioning that a new (upper-lower-bounds) tag was created. I am not sure whether to start a new post on meta about this new tag, or whether it is sufficiently similar to the tags discussed in this post and should be handled in the sam way. – Martin Sleziak Apr 30 '17 at 20:28
• Here is a post in the new tag-management thread related to my previous comment: math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/25694/tag-management-2017/… – Martin Sleziak Jun 6 '17 at 3:39

Resolved: Synonym $\to$ has been approved.

I propose creating the tag synonym $\to$ . (Of course, this also includes creating the tag .)

The tag-info for the tag roots explicitly mentions that this tag is for roots in the sense of zeroes of a function, not for square roots, cube roots etc. And that (radicals) should be used for the latter.

However, some users do not pay enough attention to the tag-excerpt, which is displayed to them when adding a tag. When I try to search for [roots] sqrt is:q I get 337 questions. Of course, not all of these questions are tagged incorrectly, but I'd say that maybe half of the questions on the first two pages currently shown among search results should be tagged instead of .

As questions about square roots are the most likely appear, this synonym might somewhat reduce mistakes of this type. If we create a synonym and somebody starts typing "roots" in the tag field, they will be shown radicals/square-roots as one of the possibilities. This increases the chance that they will notice the difference between the tags (roots) and (radicals).

EDIT: Since this proposal gained some support, I have suggested the synonym.

• Sounds like a... radical idea. – Asaf Karagila Jun 24 '16 at 14:50
• Yes, make it a synonym. – Bart Michels Jul 22 '16 at 21:12
• @barto I saw that you have created (square-roots) tag, so I have suggested the synonym. – Martin Sleziak Jul 23 '16 at 4:28

Status: Tag cleaned up by retagging the questions that don't belong.

There is a tag .

Naturally, it's used for all sorts of questions about multiplying things. They don't even have to be complex numbers; as long as it's something complicated=complex, the name seems to fit perfectly.

Yet, the tag excerpt says

The theory of elliptic curves with large endomorphism rings. For questions on multiplication of complex numbers, use (complex-numbers) instead.

Well, there's a difference between theory and reality. A tag with this name cannot possibly remain focused on the theory of elliptic curves.

If we are to keep this tag, it needs a new name. (And a major cleanup.)

• I think the tag is not really needed. A possible new name would be CM-curves. – quid Feb 11 '16 at 19:56
• The use of this tag is awful. Do we want a new tag CM-curves? Elliptic curves currently has only 974 questions, so searching for CM-related material within that tag is not too difficult. I propose to simply retag those 16 questions appropriately, and get rid of complex-multiplication.altogether. – Jyrki Lahtonen Feb 15 '16 at 8:58
• Thankfully only a couple of horribly misapplied uses of the tag - those questions now deleted or closed. The rest seem ok. I'm ok with letting the matter rest and re-evaluating the need for this tag later. I'm still not sure it is needed, but the remaining questions with this tag use it appropriately. – Jyrki Lahtonen Feb 16 '16 at 11:45
• @JyrkiLahtonen it is my fault. I copied it over from MO without knowing anything about how tags work. I won't need it any more. – Will Jagy Apr 1 '16 at 20:57
• I retagged two more misuses. Renaming should avoid further such cases. Note that there's also mordell-curves, a subtag of elliptic-curves. – Bart Michels Jul 22 '16 at 21:02

I saw this question about birthdays and my initial thought was: "It's easy, just use Dirichlet's principle." Of course, the question was answered already, but I saw it was tagged as , which I haven't heard of before, but found out (just as I suspected) it's just a different name for the same thing, and both names are used.

So I would suggest as a synonym for or changing the so that it would contain the word "dirichlet".

I am not a native English speaker, and in my language (Slovene) this is known as "Dirichletov princip" (literally "Dirichlet's principle"). I may not be the only one more familiar with the name "Dirichlet's principle" than "pigeonhole principle", and if I hadn't stumbled upon the birthday question before deciding to ask a question relating to Dirichlet's principle myself, I could end up tagging it as or or not at all, making it not related to .

Either of my proposed solutions would solve this problem: if you start typing "dirich..." when asked for tags, the correct tag (either synonym or renamed tag, e.g. ) would be suggested, which doesn't happen at the moment.

• If you suspect that these tags describe the same thing (I wouldn't know if they do), then the correct action would be that a high rep user crates a tag synonym. – gebruiker May 10 '16 at 10:17
• @gebruiker They do describe the same thing. But "Dirichlet's principle" also refers to the minimum principle for harmonic functions. – Heimdall May 10 '16 at 10:42
• Actually for that reason there should be no tag called dirichlet-principle, but dirichlet-box-principle or dirichlet-pigeonhole-principle should be either a synonym or the latter should be a replacement for pigeonhole-principle. – Heimdall May 11 '16 at 9:06
• This must be the first time I see some principle/theorem/... called by the name of a French mathematician outside of France but not in France. Usually it's the reverse (apparently we like to attribute stuff to French people). – Najib Idrissi May 20 '16 at 7:17
• @Heimdall Unfortunately, dirichlet-pigeonhole-principle is 30 characters, while the max is 25. dirichlet-box-principle seems a good idea – Bart Michels Jul 22 '16 at 21:10

Resolved: made a synonym of an merged into .

I think should be removed.

It seems it's abbreviation of fast Fourier transform. Only 4 questions has been asked with this tag. 2 of them need manual retagging.

• Based on this it seems that it was created in this post. – Martin Sleziak Jan 7 '16 at 6:55
• Personally, I think that FFT is important enough topic to have a separate tag. But creating a synonym with (fast-fourier-transform) might be useful. – Martin Sleziak Jan 7 '16 at 6:56
• Since the above comment received 12 upvotes I have created (fast-fourier-transform). Perhaps mods could create a synonym. – Martin Sleziak Mar 13 '16 at 7:26
• I created the synonym, and furthermore merged (fft) into (fast-fourier-transform), because that is a better name for this tag. – Alexander Gruber Jun 18 '16 at 17:06

Should we change the name of in order to avoid the confusion with basic arithmetic questions?

This suggestion comes after posting the message below, because I discovered the existence of a tag which is used also for divisibility questions.

I would like to create a tag (or or something like that) for questions like this: How can I find the presentation of the hyperplane in a linear system?

It would be about "linear systems of divisors" in algebraic geometry (I added "divisors" in the name in order to avoid confusion with linear systems of equations in linear algebra).

The search for "divisors" in the tag gives 104 pages. For "linear systems", we have 19 pages.

• According to the tag-info the tag (divisors) is for questions involving divisors, invertible sheaves and/or line bundles on varieties and schemes. So if it used for questions about divisibility of integers, those questions are tagged incorrectly. Renaming of the tag has previously been suggested here. – Martin Sleziak Aug 15 '16 at 17:49
• I wasn't aware of your previous suggestion. Thanks. – paf Aug 15 '16 at 17:57
• @MartinSleziak Considering the audience for elementary number theory is much larger than for algebraic geometry, would it be a good plan to create a new tag (divisors-algebr-geometry) or some such, retag the AG questions with (divisors) and then make plain (divisors) a synonym of (divisibility)? – Daniel Fischer Aug 15 '16 at 18:30
• Kudos for actually going through the procedure, and not just skipping it and creating the tags. – Asaf Karagila Aug 15 '16 at 22:11
• Yes, change the name of divisors! Maybe edit the question to make the proposed solution more noticeable. – Bart Michels Sep 17 '16 at 16:56
• Changing the name of divisors needs to happen. At most 50% of the questions recently tagged with divisors are using the tag as intended. – pjs36 Jan 1 '17 at 22:26

Resolved: Now the two tags mentioned below are synonyms of the (fixed-point-theorems) tag.

There are tags and .

I suggest to make them both as synonyms of . (This tag exists already for a long time and it should probably be a master tag.)

I think it is probably better not to have too many tags on the same topics or topics which are very close to each other.

EDIT: Since this question reached score 6 (+7/-1), I considered this to be a sufficient positive feedback to create synonym suggestion. So now here users with score at least 5 in can upvote or downvote these two suggested synonyms.

• Any update to this? – user99914 Sep 5 '16 at 5:48

A new tag has been created by a new user. Currently the tag is used by only 7 questions - all written by the tag creator.

All this is typical of a well-meaning user who is not experienced enough about either math in general, or tagging on our site in particular, or both. My instinct is to get rid of it, but this is not as clear cut a case as some earlier ones. However, the volume of good questions needing this tag just isn't there. Soliciting more opinions before doing anything.

• I have pinged the probable tag-creator - I considered it could be a good idea to let them know. – Martin Sleziak Jul 3 '16 at 8:49
• Thanks @Martin. FWIW the system flagged the creator's string of edits (just adding this tag) as possible vandalism. That was certainly a wrong diagnosis, because we can safely exclude the possibility of any malicious intent. Yet such a system flag may affect my attitude. Also, if I had the power I would completely forbid the creation of new tags without discussing them here (or the annual predecessors/successors of this thread). And that should apply to veterans and newbies alike. – Jyrki Lahtonen Jul 3 '16 at 8:56
• This thread was never made aware to me in any page or circumstance. As for whether the tag should exist because there are no questions, is an issue of the fact that it is a new tag. I just haven't tagged other questions yet. – user64742 Jul 3 '16 at 15:06
• @MartinSleziak there are a lot of questions. Piecewise notation questions (they are a big candidate as there is no tag for them), floor questions about jump discontinuity, etc. it appears there are a large number of them. It's just a matter of tagging them. See my recent edits for a few I found very easily be searching "piecewise". All of them count as candidates. – user64742 Jul 3 '16 at 17:48
• I think we ought to nuke the tag; it's far too localized, and doesn't help to classify the content of a question. After all, I do not view "piecewise continuity" as a subject one can be an expert on, so I doubt that there will be many people (aside from the creator...) who find this a useful classification. To @TheGreatDuck: Please refrain from editing questions to include your tag while this is still being discussed on meta. Especially when you're just finding any several-year-old question that has the word "piecewise" in it. – user296602 Jul 3 '16 at 18:29
• @T-Bongers I am being careful about the ones I choose. They were asking about piecewise notation and the properties of those types of graphs. That would be a question for that tag. After all, there is no "piecewise notation" tag and "piecewise continuous" is piecewise notated graphs primarily. I am not at all being arbitrary about what I am choosing. – user64742 Jul 3 '16 at 20:13
• @TheGreatDuck My main objection is that the issue is still under discussion, and you're editing years old questions with nothing other than a retag - if the decision ends up being that the tag is not good (as I'm really inclined to believe), then that just expands the cleanup that will be necessary. As far as the fit of the questions: In several of them, continuity was not at all important to the question, so I don't see the relevance of the tag - in general, it's too narrow. (Also, pinging doesn't work if you have a hyphen in my name like that.) – user296602 Jul 3 '16 at 20:32
• @T.Bongers the person complaining said there were no tagged questions. That implies we need to tag neccessary posts. – user64742 Jul 3 '16 at 23:34
• @TheGreatDuck The person who posted the answer here didn't say that. They said that the only questions tagged with that are your questions. And while it could imply that we need to tag more posts, it could also mean that it's a bad tag and shouldn't be used at all. (And apologies to Jyrki for the excessive pings...). – user296602 Jul 4 '16 at 0:06
• @T.Bongers His complaint is assuming that the only taggable questions are mine. Im simply establishing that it is not true and that many questions could use the tag. – user64742 Jul 4 '16 at 0:39
• @TheGreatDuck: No. The main complaint is that you created this tag in the first place - without checking first here that experienced users find the tag helpful. I agree with T.Bongers that we don't need this tag. Mind you, I have seen worse suggestions for new tags, but that does not mean that I would approve of your tag, – Jyrki Lahtonen Jul 4 '16 at 4:16
• Basically, I would like to hear a powerful reason not to remove this tag. – Jyrki Lahtonen Jul 4 '16 at 4:20
• @JyrkiLahtonen i would like to see where this thread is made apparent to users making tags. Also, it is a pretty branch of functions. There are many possible posts it could be used in conjuction with (that specifically ask about it!). There are five or six individual concepts all of which only make sense within the context of piecewise continuity. As for t. Bongers remark about "being an expert at piecewise continuity", id argue that you cannot be an expert in continuity, and many other tags that exist. Yet, they exist. Please reply in chat if there are more questions. – user64742 Jul 4 '16 at 5:07
• The thread is not really publicized - no fault there, @TheGreatDuck. It is just that for a longest time I have felt that the site has matured to the point that we very rarely need new tags. If it makes you feel better I think that I should not be allowed to create a new tag alone myself. At least the rep limit for the privilege should be raised quite a bit IMHO. – Jyrki Lahtonen Jul 4 '16 at 5:11
• @TheGreatDuck I did not propose the name change to (jump-discontinuity). And if something I said in chat makes the impression that this is what I suggest, then I should have expressed myself more clearly. – Martin Sleziak Jul 5 '16 at 23:23

I think that creating a new tag (or some similar name) on meta (not main) could be useful. I would appreciate to hear opinions of other users on creating such tag.

Maybe the tag could be a bit more general (to include papers), if you have better suggestions for tag name, plese, post them in comments.

We had many discussions on meta about questions related to books. In particular, there is a lot of posts related to s. But also some other topics have been discussed. Some of these posts on meta ask whether some specific type of questions is on-topic here. Or whether

I will list some examples below. The number of the posts and also similarity among them suggests that it is quite probable that some similar questions will be asked again. In such case, having possibility to easily find older discussions on the topic could be quite useful. And correct tagging might help with this.

Of course, if you think that there is need of a longer discussion for this, I can remove this post and ask this as a separate question.

Examples of posts which might fall under the suggested tag:

Related to book recommendations

The list is ordered by id:

The list is ordered by id:

• @user21820 As can be seen from the examples above, the questions are typically not about a specific book. (I will remind that I am proposing a tag on meta not on the main site.) – Martin Sleziak Aug 9 '16 at 8:19
• Sorry about that; hope you don't mind my edit. =) – user21820 Aug 9 '16 at 8:43

Resolved (for now): The synonym suggestion has been deleted after reaching score -2.

A synonym $\to$ has been suggested.

I think that the two tags are different enough to stay separate. (So upvotes on this post means that you are against the synonym and downvotes mean that you are for the synonym.)

The main reason I brought it up is that I think that changes to large tags like these (one of them has 3k questions, the other one has 800 questions) should not be made without previous discussion on meta.)

• I have also notified the user who suggested the tag synonym, – Martin Sleziak Oct 22 '16 at 15:05
• I voted for both the proposition that the tags remain separate, and for the remark about meta discussions on these sort of things. – Asaf Karagila Oct 22 '16 at 15:57
• I downvoted the synomym to -2, so it is gone now. (Meta issue: Should I have waited with downvoting until consensus was reached here?) – wythagoras Oct 22 '16 at 16:51
• @wythagoras I think that if consensus is to create the tag synonym, it can be suggested again. (We can even ping the user who originally suggested it, so that they can get synonymizer badge.) But so far the voting seems to be against the synonym. – Martin Sleziak Oct 22 '16 at 16:54

The tag has been removed.

The tag was created recently. The tag-wiki is empty, but based on the only question currently having this tag it seems that the intention is that this tag is to be used for questions related to mathematical jokes and questions asking for explanations of such jokes.

I can imagine that we have a few questions asking for na explanation of an xkcd strip or some math-related joke. Still I am not sure whether this topic is important enough to have a separate tag.

The first question is whether to keep this tag.

If this tag is going to be kept, then we definitely have to created tag-excerpt with some guidance. The tag-info should clearly say that this site this is not place for simply posting jokes. (And also include explanation for what kind of questions the tag is intended.)

Simply having the tag called (without more details in the tag-info) might lead some users to think that posting jokes on this site is ok.

Some meta discussion related to math jokes:

• My first reaction after seeing this tag was to simply remove it. But since I saw that it was created by a rather experienced user, I decided to ask on meta first. – Martin Sleziak Oct 15 '16 at 16:50
• I vote for removing it. With its current name, it's an open invitation to garbage. It might be useful to have a tag called something like "joke-explanation" or so, but even a tag wiki [nobody reads those] wouldn't save its current name. – Daniel Fischer Oct 15 '16 at 18:34
• Re: Nobody read do. I do. Typically when I am in doubt whether some tag applies to a question at hand or not. (And I think if some tag was not discussed on meta, then the tag-wiki is typically what decides which questions belong there and which not. Of course, in many situations it is a judgement call, but at least the tag-wiki gives some kind of guidance.) – Martin Sleziak Oct 15 '16 at 18:44
• Regulars of this thread don't count ;) Of course you and Asaf and Najib, and probably a dozen or two others read tag wikis. I sometimes do, too. But in the grand scheme of things, we are nobody - a small village of Gauls trying to keep the multitudes of the Roman legions in check. But without a magic potion. – Daniel Fischer Oct 15 '16 at 18:55
• I definitely agree that most of the users probably ignore the tag-wikis and tag-excerpts (despite the fact that they are shown when the tag is being added). But I still think that it is better if information about correct usage is in the tag wiki, than when it not given anywhere. At least I have some link which I can mention in comment or edit summary to give some explanation why the questions had to be retagged. We digressed from the original topic of this post - if needed, we can continue the discussion in chat. – Martin Sleziak Oct 15 '16 at 19:00
• Of course, a bad(ly named) tag with tag-wiki is better than one without. No doubt about that. But a name that is less likely to be misinterpreted is still better. – Daniel Fischer Oct 15 '16 at 19:20
• I definitely agree with @Daniel, this tag has no actual place on this site. – Asaf Karagila Oct 15 '16 at 22:51
• Also, @Daniel, youtube.com/watch?v=XbI-fDzUJXI – Asaf Karagila Oct 15 '16 at 22:51
• I've pinged the tag creator, who is an experienced user, to hopefully weigh in. – Asaf Karagila Oct 18 '16 at 13:40
• @AsafKaragila, thanks for the notice. I created the tag because, from the Related/Linked questions and some searches, it was clear that "math joke" postings exist on the site in some appreciable number. Although the number is tiny as a fraction of traffic, it seemed like a special and distinct enough category to make it searchable with a tag. I would have preferred (math-humor) as the name of the tag but chose (math-jokes) as more recognizable. – zyx Oct 18 '16 at 14:52
• Another argument to keep a humor tag: given the current climate of the main site, I think that without a tag for joke/humor related questions, they will have high probability to be closed as "not about mathematics". – zyx Oct 18 '16 at 14:56
• @zyx: Even with the existence of the tag I posit that math-jokes questions should be closed. To this end I've added a feed to the C.R.U.D.E. chat room to specifically point users to these questions. So thanks. – user642796 Oct 18 '16 at 16:08
• @arjafi Just to clarify - the questions about math jokes (which are asking for an explanation and have some mathematical content) are perfectly ok. A post which simply posts a joke or asks for collection of jokes etc. is off-topic. This is (as far as I can say) precisely the conclusion of the two meta discussions I have linked in my answer. – Martin Sleziak Oct 18 '16 at 19:18
• @arjafi, the questions I have seen that ask for math joke explanations were interesting, answerable, and got good answers. Why close them? – zyx Oct 18 '16 at 19:32

Removed manually

The tag has been created recently. (The list of new tags says that (variables) was created Sep 5 at 9:04. So most likely in this question.)

At the moment, there are 6 questions with this tag. The tag-info is empty and I have difficulties to imagine consistent usage of this tag. So I suggest to remove the tag. (At least unless somebody is able to come up with a reasonable usage guidance and tag-info.)

Now I see that this tag has also been discussed in one of the previous threads. The post is now deleted (which might be the reason why I missed it), 10k+ users can see it here. The post is from 2012, it reached score +4 and the tag was removed after about a week. So the result of this past discussion is one more argument that the tag should be removed.

• It could be made a synonym of functions... But that tag is already so misused I'd rather not guide any more traffic in its direction. – Bart Michels Sep 17 '16 at 16:59
• @barto I do not like idea of the synonym (variables) $\to$ (functions). They are two different things. And we would put two tags with rather unclear usage together. – Martin Sleziak Dec 11 '16 at 7:59
• There are 25 questions right now. I suggest we kill this tag. We should kill it good. So when it's dead, it stays dead. – Asaf Karagila Dec 11 '16 at 10:08

Currently two separate tags (tag-excerpt, empty tag-wiki) and (tag-excerpt, tag-wiki) exist.

Since they are basically about the same thing (or at least very closely related), I propose to create a synonym in one direction or another.

The only distinction I can see is that perhaps one of them could be understood about as the tag for finite sums of terms of geometric progression and also other questions about geometric progressions (not necessarily about sums), while the other one seems to be only for infinite sums. But I do not think that such distinction means need for separate tags. Moreover, if we deal with an infinite series, the tag is likely to be present. So other tags added to the question can probably cover this distinction.

Tag removed manually.

What is ? It seems to include some very mixed questions (cryptography and logic, the former is probably "correct").

Do we even need it?

• I do not think we need it. For the crypto use another more telling name would likely be better, like digital-signature. But I don't think we need it. – quid Oct 8 '16 at 16:27

Resolved (a first step, anyway). The tag synonym has been removed.

Problem: I feel that there are quite a number of questions tagged with both general-topology AND algebraic-topology where the former is not really fitting.

My understanding being that General Topology in common usage does not mean "Topology in general" so all of Topology, and neither should the tag.

Examples:

There are plenty; the list is from a couple days from end of May beginning June when I first became aware of this.

Now, this is likely not a major problem and in part inevitable.

Specific problem: But, and this is the point of this post, in all likelihood not all of the usages of the tag are intentional. There is a synonym mapping to that likely causes some of those.

Proposal: Abandon the synonym " to ."

If this is adopted, the fate of would need to be decided. I could imagine to treat it like , i.e., keep it but recommend using a more specific tag, or also to black-list it, as was done for , if I recall correctly.

• Note that there have been 1,101 renames from topology to general-topology since 2011, so that is quite a lot. – wythagoras Jul 30 '16 at 6:40

The tag has now been removed (by merging it with . Later it was made synonym of geometry.

There is relatively new tag . We have previously discussed the tags (or ) and and the consensus was that the tags are not needed: Tags for lines and planes? Should the tag be removed too?

To add more details, the tag was created a few days ago. Since to me it seems rather similar to the tags in the discussion linked above, I went ahead and removed it. Since the tag was created again today, I thought that it might be better to bring this to meta. (To avoid possible edit war.)

• I'm in favor of removal. I saw it earlier and nearly removed it on the spot, but I know there are others more familiar with tagging and history of tags, that would probably know better than me. It's certainly no better than "lines," and if that was nixed... – pjs36 Dec 29 '16 at 19:02
• Since the tag continues to spread, I let the creator know here that there was some discussion on its utility. – pjs36 Jan 1 '17 at 19:32
• It should probably be mentioned that this tag is mostly spreading due to the author editing it in questions containing the words "straight lines", and not so much due to other people using the tag (at least, that is my observation). – sTertooy Jan 3 '17 at 10:43
• I am in favor of getting rid of this tag. Looks like a case of useless badge-hunting to me. – Jyrki Lahtonen Jan 6 '17 at 7:10
• @JyrkiLahtonen I guess score +4 is sufficient to consider it a consensus. (We do not get a lot of votes on tag-related issues.) Will the tag be removed by mods (assuming you and other mods agree that it should be removed), or should it be removed manually? – Martin Sleziak Jan 6 '17 at 7:31
• @MartinSleziak I started removing it manually, but if I figure out /recall how to remove it with a single strike I will :-) – Jyrki Lahtonen Jan 6 '17 at 7:40
• @JyrkiLahtonen I guess that other than merging with another tag - which is probably not good for this tag - mods probably can't do it. Anyway, since this is unrelated to this specific tag, we can move the discussion to chat. (Although I am not sure there is much to be added.) – Martin Sleziak Jan 6 '17 at 7:55
• @JyrkiLahtonen Currently all questions tagged (straight-lines) are also tagged geometry). So I suppose it is possible to remove the tag from the remaining questions without bumping. (IIRC some of the mods mentioned that merging can be done without synonymizing two tags and that it effectively removes the tag.) Anyway, feel free to let me know here or in chat whether manual removal should continue or whether now it can be left to the moderators. – Martin Sleziak Jan 7 '17 at 13:49
• A good idea @MartinSleziak ! I ask other mods first, for they may know something I dont'. – Jyrki Lahtonen Jan 7 '17 at 13:55
• @MartinSleziak: Arthur told me that there should be no ill side-effects. It is now removed. – Jyrki Lahtonen Jan 7 '17 at 14:30
• @JyrkiLahtonen And lo, it is reborn. But I removed it... – pjs36 Jan 21 '17 at 5:03
• Thanks @pjs36. I would have thought that making it a synonym would have been a permanent cure. Either I did something wrong the first time or... I just don't fully understand these features. – Jyrki Lahtonen Jan 21 '17 at 6:25
• @JyrkiLahtonen As arjafi epxlains here merging and sysnonymizing are two different things. (And each of them suitable for different situations.) – Martin Sleziak Jan 21 '17 at 6:30