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We have the tag right now. However, it mostly seems to be a placeholder tag for questions that the asker wasn't sure how to tag. I don't really understand why we would need this tag, since we have a specialized tag for every subfield of psychology: , , , , etc.

I don't think it is a good idea to keep a very vague and 'can-apply-to-almost-any-question-on-the-site' tag around, especially when we have so many more focuses, but still easy to use tags. What do you think?

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  • Good point. You can already start by adding relevant subtags in those cases where only psychology is applied. If you encounter one where you can't think of a subtag, you will have prove it might be useful to keep it around. ;p
    – Steven Jeuris Mod
    Commented Mar 12, 2012 at 14:15
  • @StevenJeuris the only question that has just the psychology tag is your early question. It should probably be tagged [terminology] or something similar, but I will worry about re-tagging when I have more time.
    – Artem Kaznatcheev
    Commented Mar 12, 2012 at 21:31
  • Terminology might be a good idea, it could be our own little way of going against the system. :)
    – Steven Jeuris Mod
    Commented Mar 12, 2012 at 21:39
  • @StevenJeuris it's not really going against that guessing game "guideline" at all, terminology questions are valid and common on many sites including UX. "What is a term for X" is not the same as "What am I remembering?"
    – Zelda
    Commented Apr 29, 2012 at 20:05

2 Answers 2

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No. Cognitive-psychology is already catch-all enough, and I'd prefer it if more specific tags were used instead when possible (memory, attention).

I think cognitive-psychology keeps the fields separate enough with social, developmental and abnormal already out there, and by not having a psychology tag we can at least try and get new users to use one of the more specific tags. I'm (slowly) going through and removing the psych tag from the current questions as it's not the best tag on any of them.

The tag has been removed and will be auto-deleted eventually. Please tag questions with more specific fields of psychology.

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One thing to consider about a generic [psychology] tag is keeping the site accessible to new users. If I were new to CogSci and were interested in questions on psychology, what's the first thing I'd type into the search engine? Yep. Psychology. Just food for thought. :)

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    from my experience of tag editing, it seems that new users like to make their question seem more sciency and often chose cognitive-psychology as a tag even when it doesn't apply. This is partially because if you type any word upto 'psycholog' (without the final y) all the tag suggestions are more specialized forms of psychology and cognitive-psychology leads the pack because it has so many tagged questions already.
    – Artem Kaznatcheev
    Commented Apr 29, 2012 at 7:07
  • @ArtemKaznatcheev - That makes sense. My only other question would be do new users know to put the dash in between related words? If the search engine doesn't need the dash to return results, then there's no problem.
    – Catharsis
    Commented Apr 29, 2012 at 7:16
  • I don't understand your question. When a user selects the tag field a little FAQ pops up on the left, one of the points on it is: "combine multiple words into single-words with dashes"
    – Artem Kaznatcheev
    Commented Apr 29, 2012 at 7:27
  • My question was: Do new users know that a dash is required between individual words? However, if the tag list self-populates or auto-completes, there is no reason to be concerned whether a newbie knows that a dash between words is the norm for tags. You've addressed my questions.
    – Catharsis
    Commented Apr 29, 2012 at 9:54

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