6
$\begingroup$

In my opinion the tag has become problematic.

This tag has become (or always has been) one of the most misused tags we have. People are adding this tag to new questions simply because it mentions rendering and not because it relates to the actual render engine. I have this as one of my watched tags so I edit the tag out as the questions come in or leave a comment when it is unclear, but it is being misused nearly every day and sometimes more:

(Note: These are just my edits of the tag, I don't know if there are more by other users.)

Feb 2nd:

Feb 3rd:

Feb 4th:

Feb 5th:

Feb 7th:

Feb 9th:

Feb 10th:

Feb 11th:

The tag was actually renamed from to because originally it was being misused. You can see the discussion here. I don't know how badly it was being misused at the time, but it's pretty bad at the minute. It was brought up at the time (in the comments, by David) that this could turn out to be a problem, and I think I can safely say that it has.

I don't entirely know what the solution is - whether changing it back to 'blender-internal' would at least reduce incorrect tagging, I don't know. I don't entirely like this option as the official name is 'Blender-Render', but I don't know what it could be renamed to. Even if we decided that this is a special case where it should have 'engine' in the tag (), new users would probably still misuse it, thinking it refers to all render engines in Blender.

Regardless, I think we need to discuss what could be done to reduce its misuse.

$\endgroup$
11
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ The problem seems to stem from the fact that the name uses very generic and common terms, like "Blender" and "Render". Bewildered new users often resort that tag when they know no better. Sacrificing accuracy and naming it something like [internal-render] or [internal-render-engine] would probably help reduce false positives by making the tag suggestion pop up less often. $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Commented Feb 11, 2020 at 23:47
  • $\begingroup$ @DuarteFarrajotaRamos I have a slight preference for 'blender-internal' because that is at least it's unofficial name (again, I don't know quite how badly it was being misused originally, but it's hard to imagine it was worse than this). $\endgroup$
    – Ray Mairlot
    Commented Feb 12, 2020 at 16:16
  • $\begingroup$ I wonder if you should somehow enforce some form of categorization into our tag names. Something like [render-engine-internal], [render-engine-cycles] [render-engine-EEVEE], [render-engine-luxender] and expando to other areas like [addon-sapling-tree], [addon-animation-nodes], [addon-tissue]. It'd probably help this issue considerably $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Commented Feb 12, 2020 at 16:37
  • $\begingroup$ @DuarteFarrajotaRamos I definitely agree that we should have a standard format (in the form of an answer on the relevant meta questions, which can serve as a reference for new tags). I would probably suggest having either render-engine and add-on as a suffix though, simply because it's slightly more readable. Or is there some use to having it as a prefix? $\endgroup$
    – Ray Mairlot
    Commented Feb 12, 2020 at 16:45
  • $\begingroup$ I suggested a prefix for sorting purposes, when browsing or listing related tags would be bundled together. Downside is of course readability. In terms of search suggestion it seems to make no difference, the engine seems to support fuzzy search and non contiguous matches $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Commented Feb 12, 2020 at 16:50
  • $\begingroup$ Do you think that will be something that will need to be done though? Trying to think of times when that will be of benefit and whether that number is great enough to sacrifice readability. $\endgroup$
    – Ray Mairlot
    Commented Feb 12, 2020 at 16:53
  • $\begingroup$ "Addon" seems to be a recognized word, I'd ditch the hyphen. Could we somehow shorten also "render-engine"? $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Commented Feb 12, 2020 at 16:53
  • $\begingroup$ My main concern was search suggestion, but given how the engine is relatively intelligent suffixes should be fine $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Commented Feb 12, 2020 at 16:56
  • $\begingroup$ 'addon' was renamed to 'add-on' (at my suggestion) because that is the term officially used in Blender. This was unfortunately done through chat a few years ago, so no reference to it on meta. $\endgroup$
    – Ray Mairlot
    Commented Feb 12, 2020 at 16:59
  • $\begingroup$ For readability sake I'd go with just "addon" at least for these just to avoid overly long tags. $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Commented Feb 12, 2020 at 17:02
  • $\begingroup$ Let us continue this discussion in chat. $\endgroup$
    – Ray Mairlot
    Commented Feb 12, 2020 at 17:10

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4
$\begingroup$

As part of the 'Revamping tags 2020' process (partially motivated by this question) the tag has been renamed to .

This has resulted in a dramatic reduction in the misuse of the tag. While it hasn't completely eradicated it, there have only been 5 misuses of the tag* in the week since it has been renamed vs 11 misuses (listed in the question) over the same amount of time prior to renaming.

*I'm only aware of the questions that I retagged - other users might have also retagged questions.

$\endgroup$

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .