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After reviewing some questions in the tag during burnination, I ran across tag, and wondered how relevant it is for SO. It has 882 questions at the time of writing this post about wildly different topics, some of them off-topic.

It has a tag wiki ambiguous per itself, as it refers to multiple concepts at once (currency values, a metaphoric context, and what actually is better referred as algorithmic costs in programming).

It is also a close friend to the burninated tag.

Looking at the Burnination Criteria:

Does it describe the contents of the questions to which it is applied? and is it unambiguous?

It is about questions somehow related to prices. It can refer to multiple types of problems and questions:

Is the concept described even on-topic for the site?

Prices on their own are off-topic since they do not relate to programming whatsoever.

  • Asking about what is the price for something or which price to set for a good is certainly off-topic.
  • Asking about how to display a price means really asking about displaying a value (not necessarily a price, can also be for example an account balance).
  • Asking about how to calculate a price is on-topic, but the tag on it doesn't add many meaningful information since the problem will most likely be related with the algorithm, formula, working with floating point values, or something else.
  • I don't think there can be any domain experts in the abstract concept of a price (there may be for stock prices, currency formats, etc, but we have more specific tags for these).

Does the tag add any meaningful information to the post?

Not really. It describes that the question contains something about a price, but the problem will usually not be the price itself, rather managing to display/calculate/change it.

Does it mean the same thing in all common contexts?

The tag wiki is very good at telling it is not the case:

  • Usually an amount of currency paid in exchange for a product or service.
  • Sometimes "the price to pay" is meant metaphorically.
  • In programming context, the price for a change to a program refers to an increased amount of memory consumption, execution duration, latency, worst case behaviour or any other undesirable attribute of the program afterwards.

But there two main different meanings found searching in the questions, and while they are similar, I don't think there is enough overlap between them:

  • the price for commercial goods
  • prices in a trading context

Somebody expert in calculating the price of a cart might not really know about sending trading orders, and vice versa.

Is it causing harm?

While most of the questions are indeed programming questions somehow related to prices, the tag is also a hook for asking questions about prices of programs and commercial support inquiries that are off topic for this site (example 1, example 2).

Should we burninate this tag?

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  • 22
    Burninate it with fire
    – MC Emperor
    Commented Jan 13, 2023 at 19:31

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
8

has been burninated.

trogdor

Thanks to everyone who participated.

Observations/Retag Guidance:

  • Most of the questions are about various forms of prices, with the majority being in e-commerce.
    • Questions about orders in e-commerce can be tagged with
    • Questions just about scraping, calculating, otherwise determining, or predicting the price of a thing should just have the tag removed, and have relevant technology tags added (if not already present)
  • Questions about currency formatting tagged with and/or instead (preferably the latter)

Progress:

The tag is in the process of being burninated. You can help out by reviewing the questions with this tag, and...

  • editing questions to improve the question and remove the tag (retag-only edits are best left to users with full edit privileges; i.e. > 2k reputation),
  • flagging/voting to close questions that are duplicates/off-topic/unclear/too broad/opinion-based (users with < 3k reputation can help quite a bit by flagging questions for closure, which helps keep the Close Vote Review Queue full),
  • filtering for questions with this tag in the Close Vote Queue,
  • voting on questions with this tag,
  • voting to delete the questions with this tag (after they have been closed, and only if the entire Q&A contains nothing of value). However, keep in mind that at the end of the burnination process all closed questions containing this tag will be deleted semi-automatically. Thus, there's rarely a need to vote to delete these questions.

Here are some quick links to get you started:

Track the progress of burnination

Remember that burnination is a clean-up effort!

Salvage whatever possible by editing and re-tagging.

We don't want to destroy value, so salvaging a post should be your first priority. If a question can be saved, please edit it. Your edit should improve all problems with the question and remove the tag, possibly replacing it with another tag, as described above in "Observations/Retag Guidance". (Edits, specially re-tags, are best left to users with full edit privileges)

Unsalvageable questions should just be flagged/voted for closure. They don't need to be retagged.

If the question is not appropriate for this site, then don't worry about removing the tag—just flag/vote to close the question.

At the end of the burnination process, all questions which still have the tag should have been closed. These will be mass-deleted, which will remove the tag from the system automatically, with minimal disruption.

Ask for help if you need it.

If you have any questions about specific questions you come across, or the process in general, please feel free to leave a comment on this post. You can also drop into the SOCVR chat room for real-time advice and discussion.

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    @LoicTheAztec creating a new tag and adding it to 181 questions when a related tag is already being burninated without any discussion with the community doesn't sound great to me. It would have been better if you discussed first...
    – Abdul Aziz Barkat
    Commented May 24 at 6:30
  • 5
    @LoicTheAztec Also all the questions you've tagged that are about WooCommerce, specifically about dealing with product prices with it. Do we really need a generic [product-price] tag in that case rather than depending on the woocommerce tag or adding a new specific tag like woocommerce-product-price? Many of the reasons the price tag can be considered off-topic stand for this new tag as well.
    – Abdul Aziz Barkat
    Commented May 24 at 6:41
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    @LoicTheAztec this question was featured before the decision for burnination was finalized (which is done for all burninations). I do understand that's not a direct communication to you and easily missed, but burninations are generally a community effort and with the scale of Stack Overflow it is difficult to get all relevant people involved. Maybe there's a better way these can be communicated, feel free to post a question on Meta to discuss this.
    – Abdul Aziz Barkat
    Commented May 24 at 7:10
  • @LoicTheAztec Also, my comment there was really to start off the discussion on whether that tag is needed. Although this discussion should probably be a Q&A pair so that it is more visible and can get more input from people though.
    – Abdul Aziz Barkat
    Commented May 24 at 7:11
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    @AbdulAzizBarkat The minimal behavior when a tag starts a burnination process, should be to inform/message the 5 top user of the tag, which is never done, unfortunately. This is not the first time that I face that lack of communication, It's the 3rd time. So I think that it should be nice, first to revise Stack burnination process, trying to include the related tag top users from the beginning. don't you think?
    – LoicTheAztec
    Commented May 24 at 7:25
  • 1
    @LoicTheAztec Could you start a new meta question for this? You've raised a good point, but it's something that needs to be discussed, and the comments section of one particular burnination is not somewhere where that discussion can really result in process changes.
    – Ryan M Mod
    Commented May 24 at 7:44
  • @RyanM I'm really not a Meta guy as you can see, so I am not really good at writing/asking on Meta… I posted the question here: Why is the tag burnination process doesn't try include the tag top users?. If you can help on improve my question, you are welcome.
    – LoicTheAztec
    Commented May 24 at 8:38
  • @RyanM I would like to delete my question as this is a real nightmare… I was afraid of this before publishing it. I am really not a Meta guy, and I will never post again any question on Meta. I'm completely disgusted, this seems to be a pastime for some die-hard regulars. I have tried.
    – LoicTheAztec
    Commented May 24 at 10:25
  • 2
    @LoicTheAztec For the reasons already mentioned, the tag is bad and has the exact same problems price has. I'm in the process of reverting all your edits adding it to questions. You need to stop creating tags immediately, and familiarise yourself both with the burnination process and the tag creation criteria before making another tag. Far too many of the tags you've created are bad and need to be burned, which adds a huge load on the already backlogged burn process
    – Zoe - Save the data dump Mod
    Commented May 24 at 13:00
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    This influx needs to stop. Moreover, while editing, you disregarded the many bad questions on the tag that needed to be closed, or questions with other issues that could be solved with editing. Again, see the burnination process before you edit for a burnination
    – Zoe - Save the data dump Mod
    Commented May 24 at 13:00
  • why is my feed filled with edited questions? Is there an update war? I feel like edited questions shouldn't appear in interesting at this point since it's pushing down other NEW questions instead.
    – magicianiam
    Commented May 24 at 13:29
  • 4
    @magicianiam there's a filter specifically for new questions. Use it. Active is for everything that changes dates.
    – Braiam
    Commented May 25 at 12:26
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Due to a single user's unilateral actions, we now also have with the same issues.
It currently has 181 questions, it's just as ambiguous as , and should be removed as well.

The tag wiki is just a list of types of pricing:

Related exclusively to product price in an e-commerce context:

  • product price with or without taxes
  • product active price
  • product regular price
  • product sale price
  • product variations prices
  • custom product prices
  • product price calculations
  • product calculated price as cart item
  • product calculated price as order item

The tag description doesn't indicate that this a programming-related subject, at all, and contains metacommentary about this burnination:

To be used in e-commerce context for product price. Replace burninated [price] tag, on e-commerce product related questions.

So, this is quite the rabbit hole. It seems this user has created more similarly ambiguous tags:

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    I've seen that, @LoicTheAztec. The fact that you missed this burnination process that's started on January 8th, doesn't give you the right to unilaterally decide how the tag should work.
    – Cerbrus
    Commented May 24 at 9:26
  • 2
    @LoicTheAztec The post is featured so it's visible on the main site…
    – cafce25
    Commented May 24 at 9:33
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    Le sigh... We're adding this tag to the burn then. I'll edit the FAQ
    – Zoe - Save the data dump Mod
    Commented May 24 at 12:32
  • Actually, disregard that. I'm reverting all the edits. Multi-tag burn filters are messy and setting them up is annoying
    – Zoe - Save the data dump Mod
    Commented May 24 at 12:46
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    Rollbacks done - please keep an eye on it until it's fully deleted though, so nothing new gets added to it
    – Zoe - Save the data dump Mod
    Commented May 24 at 13:17
  • so that's why my feed is filled with edited.
    – magicianiam
    Commented May 24 at 13:33
-4

Looking through the questions, this might be better as a disambiguation.

E-commerce

More than half of the questions with the tag are about E-commerce. In these cases, seems to be a useful taxonomy. Developers looking for answers involving E-commerce system price fields, calculations, cart-totals, etc. are naturally going to search on the word "price" (as well as, apparently, tag it as such).

I'd compare this to , which is also a fairly "generic" word, but has the tag guidance:

USE ONLY for related questions to e-commerce. DO NOT USE in all other cases.

Possible solutions:

  • Recommendation: It seems to me that could and should also be reserved for E-commerce questions. Update the tag guidance as with .

  • Alternative: Having a new, different tag for these questions, such as:

    • ecommerce-price seems likely to be less useful, both in discoverability for use as well as searchability.
    • product-price seems too restrictive in this case, as E-commerce questions also cover cart totals, etc. However, the expertise here is likely similar and doesn't need two separate tags (e.g., cart-total)

Summary: may be the best, appropriate, and useful tag for E-commerce questions.

Currency and formatting related questions

As noted in the burnination request, these should be retagged - and are already well established and convey the concept/categorization far better than does.

Trading / Share Prices

As noted, a smaller subset of the questions use to refer to the price of a traded security or asset. I agree that the expertise here is different than E-commerce and questions with this topic should not share the tag.

Recommendation:

  • Disambiguate these with a new tag such as trade-price
  • Potential synonym - stock-price
  • Point to the disambiguated tag in an updated tag guidance for .

Alternative:

  • Remove from all trade-related questions. Potentially use the same tag as in ...

Pricing calculations and formulas

A number of the remaining questions are about other (non-stock, non-ecommerce) pricing formulas/functions/calculations in other languages, with the largest being Python, along with some Excel.

Recommendation: Disambiguate these with a new tag such as price-calculation (synonym price-formula) and retag. There's probably value in keeping these sub-categorized with a separate tag.

Alternative: Remove from these questions entirely. Make sure any other appropriate tags are in place (e.g., )

Price of software, cloud-services, etc.

For the most part, better tags already exist for the questions I'm seeing in this category. , , are better fits here and questions should be retagged as needed.

Remaining

Of course, some other one-offs may be present - Remove and retag if there's a better option.

And, as with any burnination/disambiguation, VTC questions that are off-topic, lacking details, or have other issues.

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  • 7
    The tags here described as potential replacement, all have the same issues that price have: they are ambiguous in the terms of programming. We don't replace an ambiguous tag with another ambiguous tag, we replace it if we can identify a better way to convey meaning that the current tags don't have.
    – Braiam
    Commented May 8 at 16:46
  • @Braiam Not disagreeing with you, but is there Meta guidance on that? I looked, but didn't see anything. price is a pretty important concept in E-commerce, programming questions. What would you suggest as a replacement? Also, can you be specific on which other tags you think are ambiguous and why?
    – NotTheDr01ds
    Commented May 8 at 17:22
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    There's no meta guidance, because it would rehash the same thing that the help center says: A tag is a word or phrase that describes the topic of the question. Price doesn't describe any concrete topic. It just say that the concept of "price" is touched upon this question. There's a litmus test for this: can anyone look at a question tagged "price" and identify if they would be not able to answer the question?
    – Braiam
    Commented May 8 at 18:40
  • @Braiam I think I get what you are saying, but I think the "litmus test" there is a bit strong. We were specifically directed to retag the burninated connect with (where appropriate database-connection or sockets, and yet these are not things that someone could immediately point to as something they could answer. In this case, tags work in conjunction with the other tags, otherwise it would there would typically only be reason to use one tag per question.
    – NotTheDr01ds
    Commented May 8 at 18:47
  • That's because I wasn't around to offer a counter :)
    – Braiam
    Commented May 8 at 21:26
  • It seems to me that the category of questions under "E-commerce" have no information added to them by this tag. Several of the other categories may have a general category of expertise along the lines of "financial computation", which often works with different rules than normal mathematical computations do. Currency and currency formatting seem appropriate as-is (maybe there's some additional refinement that could be done there, but that's out-of-scope for this).
    – Ryan M Mod
    Commented May 8 at 22:18
  • @RyanM currency formatting is just a subset of localization (which itself is a subset of string formatting, but I digress). Financial computation in the world of programming mostly revolve around analysis, rather than implementations, but most of the questions on SO are about how to deal with the problems that comes from currencies not being infinitely fractional.
    – Braiam
    Commented May 9 at 12:29
  • @Braiam "currency formatting is just a subset of localization" Even if that were entirely true, localization is a broad field (and also, not all currency formatting is necessarily done in the context of localization; financial applications may deal with multiple currencies that are not all generally used in the user's locale). "most of the questions on SO are about how to deal with the problems that comes from currencies not being infinitely fractional" This is generally the issue (and the reason I think it merits a tag), but I'm not sure what the implications would be for tagging.
    – Ryan M Mod
    Commented May 10 at 4:08
  • @RyanM I'm just saying as it is. Currency/money formatting is handled by the same libraries that handle time, date, language rules, etc. As it is a combination of the language/country rules. On the other hand, from the programmers perspective, a currency is just a unit of measure, like centimeters, litters, etc. it doesn't tell you anything. Converting between currencies is usually done with a conversion ratio that rarely depends on the programmer, but on a third-party service. There's nothing inherently special about currency. The standard composite types can deal with them.
    – Braiam
    Commented May 13 at 18:54

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