What is the purpose of tag wiki excerpts?

Question

The guide for writing tag wiki excerpts states:

The usage guidance, or tag wiki excerpt, is a short blurb that describes when and why a tag should be used on this site specifically.

And the guide for writing the full tag wiki states:

The full tag wiki is a detailed introduction to the topic, suitable as a destination for those curious about it.

Now looking at some of the most common tags here, the python tag has an excerpt:

Python is an object-oriented programming language. In Blender, it is used as a general purpose scripting language and to create add-ons to extend Blender's functionality.

It does not mention "when and why a tag should be used" but rather goes into explaining what python is and what it means to blender, which seems pretty similar to what the full tag wiki should have.

And the modeling tag:

Modeling refers to the process of creating 3D objects or entities using a 3D modeling application. This tag is used for anything related to modeling including techniques, tools and tips.

It also explains what modeling is even before explaining the "when and why".

My question is, when writing the wikis for a tag, should I follow the guidelines or follow the same convention as most of the wikis on the site? I also want to know if they are generally accepted or do they require updating to match the guidelines?

Answer 1

This is a somewhat tentative topic as we have been very lax in curating our tags. We have a quite a bit, people get the privilege to add new random ones and there are not many people willing or able to police these and occasionally we have to delete one or two here or there so the quality is very inconsistent as you have noted.

Those tags are also in our first 10 tags created, no strict rule was ever enforced when creating tags except that they should ideally define usage and give a short description and provide links where possible (notice most of these have the "this tag is used for...").

To answer your question, we'd love if users could follow the general SE guideline but this requires effort and from what I've noticed the excerpt is good enough for most cases as people readily just look for the keyword and plop it on their post. The blender manual is a much better introduction to said topics and as we are a visual learning type of site, cramming gifs, introductory material and steps into a full tag wiki takes time and a link to the manual I'd argue would suffice just as well as is done in the python tag.

So to conclude, the excerpt is good enough as a quick intro while detailing usage. In the full tag wiki, maybe a small introduction quoted from the manual and a link to the appropriate page.

There is also a small +2 for improving wikis. hint hint :)