For which tags (if any) do we want tag warnings?

Question

Introduction

In another discussion, a Stack Exchange employee indicated that we might get so-called tag warnings, if we want them.

These warnings are meant to provide users with just-in-time information to help them avoid common mistakes in the tag they’re using (e.g. SQL questions should mention the engine they use).

Here’s what they look like:

(More information on this here, from which the above text and image were taken.)

Question

For which tags, if any, do we want such tag alerts? I suggest following this procedure:

If you want a tag to have such a warning, post an answer to this question containing the tag, the corresponding warning and a rationale. Upvote suggestions you agree with, downvote suggestions you disagree with. Post one answer per warning.

General ideas and inspiration

• The whole suggestion came up during the discussion: How can we encourage posters to mention their country of study/work? So, a hot candidate would be tags used for questions where we often have to ask for the country, such as graduate-admissions.

• Relatedly, we can remind users to state their field for questions where answers are often field-specific.

• You can use this query to obtain the tags for which we have most closed questions, i.e., possible problem tags. Note that this excludes deleted questions and thus certain tags may be misrepresented (depending on the ratio of closed question that are deleted). Also remember that some tags are just misused. The current leaders in this query are phd, graduate-admissions and publications.

• We could use tag warnings to prevent the misuse of rather general tags such as research, phd or thesis. Even if you regard this as overkill, consider it for tags where you want a warning for other reasons.

Answer 1

graduate-admissions

Before asking your question on graduate admissions, please consider the following:

• We cannot predict the success of your application and answer questions like: “Can I get into [program] with [prerequisites]?”. This question may help you though.

• We do not know details of procedures – such as deadlines, required formats and handling times – any better than you. Probably only the admissions office or similar can answer you such questions.

• Please state country and field as answers may strongly depend on this.

This tag has a very high number of closed questions, absolutely and relatively, (146 closed questions with 1222 questions in total) and that despite the tag not being prone to spurious use and that I would guess that a high number of questions fall victim to the roomba deletion bot.

The linked question was explicitly created as a master duplicate for a certain type of question. As of now, it is the duplicate of 49 questions.

Questions for details on procedures are one of the main reasons for the following close reason (at least in my understanding):

The answer to this question strongly depends on individual factors such as a certain person’s preferences, a given institution’s regulations, the exact contents of your work or your personal values. Thus only someone familiar can answer this question and it cannot be generalised to apply to others.

Answer 2

TL;DR

Equip tags that are frequently used for off-topic questions about the contents of an academic discipline with warnings that inform askers about the nature of this site and where such off-topic questions should be asked instead.

General

some-academic-field

If you have a {{field}} question, please do not ask it here – ask it on {{field.se}} and please check {{their guidelines}} before asking.

If your questions is about academic standards, conventions and life specific to the academic field of {{field}}, however, you are at the right place.

For example:

If you have a physics question, please do not ask it here – ask it on Physics SE instead and please check their guidelines before asking.

If your questions is about academic standards, conventions and life specific to the academic field of physics, however, you are at the right place.

We get a lot of blatantly off-topic questions that are about the teachings or contents of an academic field instead of academia. Many of these questions are tagged with the respective field’s tag. A tag warning could prevent some of those questions from being asked in the first place and direct the asker to the right place (and make them read the guidelines before asking).

Specific

The above scheme can be straightforwardly applied to the following tags:

• biology,
• chemistry,
• computer-science,
• economics,
• engineering,
• electrical-engineering,
• law,
• linguistics,
• mathematics,
• medicine (Health SE),
• philosophy,
• physics,
• political-science (Politics SE),
• psychology (Cognitive Sciences SE),
• statistics (Cross Validated),

Note that I explicitly do not link to Math Overflow and Theoretical Computer Science, as they are limited to research-level questions and very unlikely to help somebody. Also, I refrained from referencing more specific sites such as Math Educators or Computational Science as well as other sites such as Stack Overflow that are the right place for some questions misposted under one of the about tags as they are mentioned on the on-topic helps of the sites directly corresponding to the tags, which give a much better guidance than what we can fit into a tag warning.

The following tags require slight changes:

• social-science

  This tag is for questions about the academic standards, conventions and life specific to the social sciences.

  Note that questions on the contents or teachings of a social science are off-topic here (unless academia is targeted as a research subject). They may be on-topic on Economics SE, Politics SE, History SE, History of Science and Mathematics SE, Law SE or Linguistics SE. Please check their guidelines before asking.

• science

  If you have a science question, please do not ask it here – ask it on the respective field’s site and please check their guidelines before asking.

  If your questions is about academic standards, conventions and life specific to the sciences, however, you are at the right place.

• programming

  If you have a programming question, please do not ask it here – ask it on Stack Overflow or one of the other programming-specific Stack Exchange sites. Please see this Meta post to find the appropriate site.

  If your question is on the interplay between programming and academic research, teaching or learning, however, you are at the right place.

• code

  This tag is for questions on the licensing, ownership, sharing, distribution, and formatting of source code in an academic context.

  Programming questions are off-topic here. They may be on-topic on Stack Overflow or one of the other programming-specific Stack Exchange sites. Please see this Meta post to find the appropriate site.

Answer 3

For "copyright" and "plagiarism," could we please have a message like:

Questions which are primarily about copyright law may be more suited to https://law.stackexchange.com/. Questions about academic integrity customs and plagiarism ethics in academic settings are appropriate for this site.