52

Stack Overflow has two tags without usage guidelines:

Should these tags be merged, or should they both be burninated?

9
  • 1
    they should just be explained what they mean. Commented Oct 21, 2017 at 5:06
  • 17
    Hinting appears to apply to sql query optimization and is an [android] and [delphi] thing. Just little soldier tags that provide context to the question and helps a contributor decide whether to take a look. It is well liked, both answers and questions got a lot of votes. Hard to imagine why the tags need to be killed, they sure seem to get the job done from just the voting. Burnination is useful when a [tag] gets abused, these are not. Commented Oct 21, 2017 at 8:29
  • 4
    hint seems to be used like Hans Passant describes. It has little misuse, and is fully on-topic. hints, however, sees a more broad, less on-topic use, and has a lot of questions about showing tooltips/hints to the user. It might be appropriate to burninate that last one, but the first one is fine and could benefit from a tag wiki (I'm not knowledgeable on the subject, but someone should write it). Please go through the burninate criteria for both tags.
    – Erik A
    Commented Oct 21, 2017 at 14:31
  • 2
    @HansPassant I don't think I agree. If the tags have two completely disparate meanings (query hints and whatever the thing Android and Delphi things are), that makes the tag unclear. That meets the "ambiguous" criteria for burnination. If both of those meanings warrant a tag, they should be split up into separate tags. (query-hints already exists; I don't know what tags would fit the other usages.)
    – jpmc26
    Commented Oct 22, 2017 at 1:56
  • 5
    A stack overflow noob (or even a vet) might assume "hint" to be just that… a request for a hint (vs. a fully detailed answer). Or perhaps a request for a "hint" (as in "clue"). This could be esp. true for non-android/Delphi/SQL developers.
    – geowar
    Commented Oct 22, 2017 at 16:43
  • 1
    @HansPassant should be an answer?
    – LangeHaare
    Commented Oct 23, 2017 at 9:44
  • The hints in Delphi tags seems to mean "UI Hints", like the ones that appears when you leave the mouse cursor for few seconds in some button.
    – EMBarbosa
    Commented Oct 23, 2017 at 14:10
  • @EMBarbosa Questions about code hover-hints could possibly be retagged with code-hinting.
    – Stevoisiak
    Commented Oct 23, 2017 at 14:11
  • I don't think so. They probably should be re-tagged tooltip.
    – EMBarbosa
    Commented Oct 23, 2017 at 17:17

4 Answers 4

35

I'd vote to remove them. Unless a tag is VERY self-explanatory it needs usage guidelines. And also, if it is to hard to write usage guidelines for a tag, then the tag is to hard to use.

For these two, I do not see when they should be used. Usage guidelines might change that, but since there aren't any, I think they should be removed.

10

I would propose the following course of actions:

  • create or identify context-specific tags for SQL queries (), Android, Delphi, and other specific usages,
  • retag the questions to use the now context-specific tag which is appropriate instead of /,
  • burninate the pair.

This way:

  • the context-specific tags can have a to-the-point description and usage guidance,
  • the context-specific tags can be used to filter,
  • there is no ambiguous tag remaining which risks being misused for "just asking for a hint, not a full answer".

The number of questions (~325) seems small enough to do this manually.

3
  • What purpose would the new tags serve for? The previous tags doesn't have users actively answering them, what evidence there is that the new tags wouldn't be the same? I prefer not creating tags that would otherwise crowd out the other potential tags.
    – Braiam
    Commented Oct 23, 2017 at 11:20
  • @Braiam: Apparently the tags do serve a purpose in the SQL, Android and Delphi communities (see Hans Passant's answer). For the SQL one at least, there is a more specific tag available (query-hints) with 45 questions. At the very least, SQL questions about hints being tagged with either of 3 tags haphazardly is a sign that some clean-up is required. Commented Oct 23, 2017 at 12:28
  • "Apparently the tags do serve a purpose in the SQL" where is the evidence of that? Remember, tags primary purpose is to connect answerers with questions they can answer. Neither tag serve that purpose is a meaningful way.
    – Braiam
    Commented Oct 23, 2017 at 12:55
4

I'm on the fence about whether has any value itself. If it does, though, the questions about performance hints in SQL queries in these tags should be retagged to it. (If not, we need another burninate request.)

7
  • 7
    As an example, query hints for SQL Server are explicitly defined, and questions about them could have the query-hints tag to refine what the question is about. The tag is not ambiguous in that instance.
    – TT.
    Commented Oct 22, 2017 at 12:37
  • @TT. that's the thing, it shall be unambiguous on all instances, not just one.
    – Braiam
    Commented Oct 23, 2017 at 12:05
  • A query hint is just that: a specification in a query that provides a hint as to the execution of the query. That is pretty universal, I just gave an example for SQL Server. Some RDMS's may define those, and for those that do the definition of query hint is what I gave.
    – TT.
    Commented Oct 23, 2017 at 12:09
  • @TT. yet, it's that useful to have a tag about? Are people answering sql questions not being able to answer those? Is there any critical mass of unanswered questions that would benefit of having these tags? Or putting it more bluntly: if these tags don't exist, would we be worse of?
    – Braiam
    Commented Oct 23, 2017 at 12:56
  • @Braiam Good question, and answers to that question would surely be subjective. I don't think we'd be worse off by much. But IMO it's always good to detail a question subject to a certain degree. Usually, questions are tagged e.g. SQL + SQL Server (language + RDBMS), irrespective of the topic. One extra layer, like query-hints, indexing, for-json, query-performance, order-by and the like, help to categorize a question just a little better. Note that the title does not always cover clearly what is in the tags (e.g. question might have tag indexing while title does not).
    – TT.
    Commented Oct 23, 2017 at 13:36
  • @TT. "help to categorize a question just a little better" with what purpose? Categorization for the sake of it, it's a pretty bad reason to do so. And the flip side is that we may have questions that doesn't have language, libraries or rdbms because the asker presumes that one implies the other (a FR rejected several times because SE wants tags to be flat).
    – Braiam
    Commented Oct 23, 2017 at 20:01
  • @Braiam Well, the reason for categorizing to a certain degree is to make it easier for future readers to find the question and the answers. It's not strictly for categorization sake. Search engines pick up the tags and make answers easier to find. But I do understand what you're saying... there's always the risk of people just tagging with one of the dependent tags and not the broader tags. Point taken. But driving that principle through, we'd need to burninate a whole lot of tags.
    – TT.
    Commented Oct 23, 2017 at 20:07
1

As others have said, thehintandhints tags are ambiguous and confusing. Few people would guess that "hint" in this context refers to an SQL query hint.

So to make it clear, I would replace hint/hints with one of these tags:

  • query-hints
  • sql-hints
  • sql-query-hints
4
  • 3
    You really should explain what are these tags about, I think people are downvoting because there is no explanation Commented Oct 23, 2017 at 8:47
  • OK, I revised the answer. Hopefully it makes sense now :)
    – jkdev
    Commented Oct 23, 2017 at 9:06
  • Both these meanings represent only ~10% of all the questions tagged. Are you sure people are guessing this meaning?
    – Braiam
    Commented Oct 23, 2017 at 12:05
  • @Braiam Only ~10%? What are the other ~90%?
    – jkdev
    Commented Oct 23, 2017 at 15:19

You must log in to answer this question.

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