Suggestions for avoiding disruption when retagging?

Question

There has been general agreement here on meta that our tags are not in great shape, to say the least.

Big tags like phd and graduate-school are beyond the scope of this particular post, and need major discussion on meta before anyone acts on them. But some (very small) tags lend themselves easily to cleanup with just a few retags. I've been working on some of these lately.

Given that mass retags are very disruptive to regular operations on this site, I've been taking any steps I can think of to minimize disruption:

• only bump 5-6 old posts at a time
• only bump old posts when the front page (in 'active' view) doesn't already have a bunch of old posts near the top. (i.e. don't everybody go on tagging sprees at the same time)
• when bumping an old post for retagging (or when someone else bumps an old post), fix everything else that's wrong with the post at the same time: correct typos, remove incorrect tags, etc. This way, we won't have to bump it again to fix something else.
• fix tags on new questions immediately when they're asked.

Does anyone have any other comments or suggestions on how to minimize disruption when cleaning up tags as part of small, focused effort?

Answer 1

I think the best way to minimize disruptions is to make sure the changes to the tags are correct. Removing needed tags or adding unneeded tags is a huge disruption and requires intervention from people. Further, if a particular users edits/efforts are not highly reliable, this can cause other users to want to constantly review the user's edits. This seems hugely disruptive. On that note

when bumping an old post for retagging (or when someone else bumps an old post), fix everything else that's wrong with the post at the same time: correct typos, remove incorrect tags, etc. This way, we won't have to bump it again to fix something else.

While this is laudable, I think it is incredibly hard to fix all the tag issues in one go. In order to do that the editor would need an in depth understanding of the entire tag taxonomy. I think this type of approach leads to more mistakes. I think the cost of these mistakes would easily offset the advantages associated with the decrease in the total number of edits.

only bump 5-6 old posts at a time

I am not sure if bumping 5-6 old posts a couple of times every day (potentially by different users) for weeks on end is more or less disruptive then a single large disruption during a period of low use. A single large disruption would flood the front page, but we would then be fully recovered with a day or so.

The mod only analytics show that our total page views consistently spike early in the week and then drop to the lowest point on Saturday (about 60% of the peak). How the number of questions and answers varies is less clear, but I think the weekends are also the low points.

Proposal Users that want to improve the tagging should chose a problem tag and create an list of questions that need the tag added and a list of questions that need the tag removed. Post this list to meta for some discussion and community agreement and then make the changes in a single session.

Answer 2

After a good discussion went on between some users of the site about the need of having some strategies when we edit the tags, as a clear and working strategy, strongbad suggested that a good strategy to tag edits might be something like the following:

Would it be better choosing a tag you would like to improve and removing it from questions that do not need it and adding it to those that do? That way you only have to keep a good mental representation of one tag at a time. Your approach seems to require you to understand all the tags.

Also, ff524 supported such strategy by

I also think that since many tags are currently not well-defined in scope (see several ongoing meta discussions), it's not even possible to "properly" tag every question right now

To conclude that discussion, the strategy that each user is better to pick a tag and add it to or remove it from the questions seems to be a good strategy, minimizes double works on tag edits and makes the tag edits an efficient and a less time-consuming work.

However, we have no clear job distribution between users. One user may have edited a question and brought it in a good shape but after a while, another user double edits the question and ruins previous revisions.

As stated in the discussion, I suggested having the following approach which makes tag edits more clear;

Isn't it better to make a meta question with a title like "Tags under edit" and each person working on a tag post an answer to the question. So, we will have a list of tags under edit, and a list of off-on topic questions relatively?

By having a meta question in which each user states that s/he is working a particular tag, so another users do not waste their time re-editing the questions with that tag; it is obvious that another user may edit that question for another tag. This way, we solve the problem of multiple works on any tags.

This helps with the problem of multiple users working on tags, since if it's obvious what should be done it's unlikely someone will ruin a good edit; and if it's not obvious, the community should weigh in first anyways

Also, in her/his answer to that question; s/he can edit and ask about on-topic or off-topic questions and after her/his is completed, we have a list of on/off-topic questions in each answer which will be a valuable list, will help users in future to learn more about the off-topic questions and helps them become aware about the site's policies about each tag. Another benefit would be the discussions which can be made in the comments of each answer (each tag) or in a separate chat-room (with similar name) which will improve the user's vision about the tags.

Proposal:

We need following spaces on the Academia website to manage our edits to tags:

1. A question on academia's meta with a title like Tag edits management page in which each user posts an answer to take the responsibility of editing one (or two) tag(s) (no more, when s/he finishes his edit with a tag; the s/he can pick another tag).

2. A chat-room with similar name to that meta question in which users can bring further discussions about question. This way, we will not miss our discussions between normal chats in our main chat-room. Also, we can mention a link to the chat discussion about questions and tags in front of it's answer in the edits-page on meta; so users can easily follow the discussions.

Benefits:

1. Editing the tags systematically and avoiding multiple and unneccessary revisions;
2. User will be focused on only one tag and his mind will not be crowded with many definitions of multiple tags;
3. Concentrated discussion and good archiving to the off-topic and on-topic questions on each tag will help the users of the site become more familiar with the site's proffered policies on each tags and helps the users better choose tags for their questions.

Considerations:

1. We should take care and encourage users, if they want to do any edit to any tags; they post their proposal in a comment to the responsible's answer on the edit's question in meta, so users will be rejecting such edits instantly if their suggestions are irrelevant; however, the comments to each answer will be so crowded after a while; so we should think about the following issue:

   After one round of edits is finished to each tag, what procedure should be proposed to new tag edit? Should we ask users not to edit completed tags or we should ask them send a proposal to each edit they want to make in a separate question in meta?

2. What should we do about the problem of bumping question to the active questions list? We should think about it too, we can announce a period of six month for editing the website's tags. Or even, one day a week for editing the questions' tags. This way, users will not face a list of questions bumped in to the top list every day; Only one day per week we will have the bumping problem which will be completely reasonable. During this period of time, we can apology the users for some inconsistency by showing them a message in the first page; something like: Sorry for inconvenience, the site is in the tag edits period; for a list of newest questions please visit the list of newest questions.

3. Edits suggestions to the excerpt and wiki of each tag may be made as was in the past (suggesting edits in meta in separate questions).