8

The wiki currently states - The arrangement of data for storage or display, also used as a term to empty a partition.

This alone gives it two different definitions and indexes, and clicking the tag itself you can see you get results ranging from

SD Card Locked Error on camera

to

How to have Excel recognize date in format MMM YYYY (e.g. Mar 2015)?.

Wildly different subjects yet now married up by this tag.

Should this be split to be clearer? format-storage and format-display, format-layout... or something?

I guess as I started writing out this question, the split is quite tricky as the same word does have two different meanings depending on context. Thoughts?

3
  • 1
    Quite happy to discuss the down vote on this too, whoever popped that on there?
    – Jonno
    Commented Jan 29, 2016 at 19:07
  • I agree, but I'm having trouble thinking of good, intuitive replacement tags.
    – fixer1234
    Commented Jan 29, 2016 at 21:40
  • 1
    I don't know why somebody downvoted you; this is a real concern. Welcome to Meta!
    – Ben N
    Commented Jan 29, 2016 at 23:34

1 Answer 1

8

Each tag should mean exactly one thing, and at the moment, is used for numerous things, including:

  • disk formatting → , according to its summary is exclusively for this, but is often misused to indicate any structure of information
  • date/time formatting → exists, but is only used for 19 questions at the moment; it might just be sufficient to tag questions with or
  • text formatting → exists, and has >150 questions, but it seems to me that how to format text would vary wildly across different programs
  • image formats → exists, but has only 10 questions; the tags for specific image formats (like ) are much more widely used

You're right - is currently providing no useful information. Questions that use it should be retagged to be more specific. Remember, every tag should be able to stand on its own.

1
  • Thanks Ben, for the good explanation and validating my thoughts. I'm still new to meta, how do you progress with this? Retroactively retag 'format' questions, or be aware of it for future use? Will change the wiki definition to clarify the tag should be more specific anyway.
    – Jonno
    Commented Jan 30, 2016 at 14:11

You must log in to answer this question.

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