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Motivated by I could see what part of the exam paper another student seemed to be focusing on, now I'm worried I was cheating

For anyone who is interested in posting a question or answer, or reading previous questions, about Section 504 Accommodation Plans and the accommodations that one might receive under such a plan, it would be very helpful to have at least one such tag.

Anxiety would be a good tag to have too. There are lots of levels of anxiety. We see tons of questions that related to non-clinical levels of anxiety (e.g. https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/58600/pgre-score-reporting-time-no-longer-pending-but-no-scores-available). I think it's helpful for an OP to recognize that there is anxiety. Also hopefully those who answer will make sure to respond with humanity when they see the anxiety tag.

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  • Do you want a tag for a US-specific law (if it's a law)? Could you please restate your proposal to make it more general? Nov 22, 2015 at 1:52
  • @MassimoOrtolano - 504 is indeed a law in the U.S. I will pose a question to try to find out how to generalize. It may take a few days, though. Nov 22, 2015 at 1:54

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Generally, when creating a new tag, there are a few key considerations (keeping in mind that a question can only have 5 tags):

  • New users should be able to easily find the right tags for their question. Tag proliferation (having many highly specific tags) makes this difficult for them.
  • If all of the questions that could possibly have a certain tag are already described well by another tag, then the new tag is probably not necessary. (Unless that "other tag" is extremely broad and has a huge number of questions in it.)
  • Tags should help with "findability" - we try to use common words for things so that people can find tags easily. If people might search for something with a different name, instead of adding another tag for that name, we add a tag synonym which points to the other name. That way, all questions about that thing can be found under one tag.
  • Tags are used for grouping questions, so in most cases a new tag should be applicable to at least a handful of existing questions.

Also, tags should describe what a question is about, not what it merely relates to. (By "what a question is about" I mean "what the OP asked us to answer" - even if you believe it's necessary to address something else in an answer, it shouldn't be used for tagging the question.) For example, we only tag a question with a country-specific tag if the question is about the conventions specific to academia in that country. We don't tag a question with just because an incident described in the question took place there.

Regarding the specific proposals:

In the case of this question, the question does not ask about accommodations (whether under Section 504 or not - we don't even know if this person is in the US), so those seem to be inappropriate tags for the question. In general, any question that could be asked about and is already covered by . This tag has only 30 questions, so it doesn't seem necessary to further subdivide it. I can see how people might search for "accommodations", so you might propose a tag synonym for "accommodations" that points to .

In the case of this question, the question is about what a particular exam scoring status message means, not about the OP's anxiety, so would not be an appropriate tag for the question (regardless of the appropriateness of the tag in general.) In general, we have which includes anxiety, discouragement, guilt, jealousy, etc. (See this meta discussion in which we came up with the name for this tag.) (This tag is for questions which specifically ask about dealing with an emotion, not questions that mention an emotion for context.) Given that there are fewer than 30 questions tagged , subdividing into individual emotions does not seem necessary to me. Again, you might propose tag synonyms for individual emotions if you feel it is necessary. (It would certainly help with findability.)

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  • I'll think about your tag synonym idea for disability and 504 or accommodation. // Meanwhile, if you have time to look at either the article or the video about the history of 504, please let us know if that changes your own opinion about my proposal. Nov 22, 2015 at 2:24
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    @aparente001 I don't see how the history of 504 rebuts any of the issues I have raised in this post.
    – ff524
    Nov 22, 2015 at 2:26
  • I just found it influential for my own thinking. Maybe it will be for you too. Nov 22, 2015 at 2:28

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