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:
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).
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:
- Editing the tags systematically and avoiding multiple and
unneccessary revisions;
- User will be focused on only one tag and his mind will not be
crowded with many definitions of multiple tags;
- 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:
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?
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.
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).