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When editing tag wikis, the excerpt is limited when compared to the tag's wiki in that:

  1. Markdown formatting does not occur, as a result links are not formatted as links, as an example
  2. We are limited to the number of characters we can use

A tool or technology is often (not always) described best by its maintainers, especially if you are not a subject-matter expert in that area. While I understand it's best to provide original text when possible, sometimes I come across a main tag for a given technology whose tag wiki is empty and provides no excerpt or wiki content guiding usage.

If one such as myself comes across an empty tag wiki and suggests an edit, is it acceptable for:

  1. The excerpt to be a description provided by official documentation; while also making sure to
  2. Provide attribution of the excerpt in the tag wiki itself, perhaps with a few characters in the excerpt stating to "(see tag wiki for attribution)"?

This is mostly for the case of coming across an empty tag wiki, but also may come into play if plagiarism without attribution is found in existing tag wiki excerpts, where attribution may be contributed to the description rather than simply removing/rolling back the tag wiki excerpt or trying to smoosh in attribution with a hyperlink where it's not designed to be used.

However, excerpts and descriptions are shown in different contexts and not always shown together, so I'm not sure whether such attribution would suffice in the description alone.

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    Remember that the excerpt and wiki are not an advertisement. Specially the excerpt needs to describe which questions should be tagged with the tag in the scope of Stack Overflow. I doubt the official documentation will have that verbatim as a description so the need for attribution in the excerpt seems highly unlikely.
    – rene
    Commented May 28, 2022 at 20:52
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    Ideally, yes, but a description of the topic is better than nothing, is it not? An SME would be best to edit the tag wiki for sure, but at least a description can prevent some misuse of a tag.
    – codewario
    Commented May 28, 2022 at 20:58
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    I doubt it. It is not that you scan the tags first and then go: Hmmm, what interesting question can I ask about [tag] after reading the excerpt ...
    – rene
    Commented May 28, 2022 at 21:20
  • I would, personally, suggest that the excerpt should be original text; you can't out a quote block and link to the original source in a tag's excerpt as well as you can it's full description, where you can use text like "X is a product by Y, which is described by them as {insert quote} {citation}"
    – Thom A
    Commented May 28, 2022 at 22:17
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    Re "A tool or technology is often (not always) described best by its maintainers": I would argue that maintainers are in most cases lousy at describing their own thing. They already know too much and assume everybody else are mind-readers (the curse of knowledge bias). The corresponding Wikipedia article is often much better (though Wikipedia can't keep up with the increased rate of technology creation). Commented May 29, 2022 at 9:50

1 Answer 1

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No

Tag wiki excerpts, despite their name, should be providing usage guidance

It is highly unlikely that text copied from elsewhere on the web provides a useful description of how to use a tag. Great excerpts describe just enough to identify the subject of the tag, and then describe related tags that should be used in some situations, information for the question to contain, and/or specific things within the tag's subject that are on/off-topic. Only text written specifically for Stack Overflow will have this.

Tag wikis and tag wiki excerpts, despite their names, are functionally separate

The excerpts appear in places where the main wiki text does not, and generally requires multiple clicks to get to the main wiki text (once on the tag, and again on "Learn more..."). Much as we wouldn't allow people to put attribution for quotes their answers behind a link, in their profile, etc., we shouldn't allow it here, either.

Edits to tag wikis and excerpts are reviewed separately

It is not guaranteed an update to the excerpt and the corresponding wiki update adding attribution will receive the same review result. If one is approved and the other is denied, there will either be unattributed quoted material, or attribution for a quote that does not exist. While 20k users can avoid this by editing both simultaneously, that will still be a problem for anyone who wants to suggest changes to them afterward.

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