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I had suggested a tag synonym for a tag that was likely created due to a typo a few months ago, but it seems that the queue is not monitored. I also had a few more suggestions to clean up some redundant tags, so I decided to make a post. I believe most of these are very straightforward, but please let me know if any of them requires a separate discussion.

Tag Suggested Synonym Comments Decision
is already a synonym of . See here. and combined with
Only one question, can alternatively be retagged.
The tag info for explicitly mentions Facebook as an example.
Twitter is another social media site, and probably does not need its own separate tag.
See here. Questions tagged retagged
Alternatively, should be disambiguated. Some discussion here. Questions tagged retagged
Suggested by Tripartio. 29 out of 44 questions are also tagged , and there seems to be no clear difference in the usage of the two.

Suggestions from answers:

Tag Suggested Synonym Comments Decision
See here. Unchanged, for now
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  • 3
    Thanks for doing this. But we gotta find a way to pump your rep.
    – Buffy
    Nov 3, 2021 at 20:14
  • 1
    The non voted suggestions are all good as well.
    – Buffy
    Nov 3, 2021 at 20:18
  • Do we vote on the "vote" tags by upvoting the respective answer or by leaving a comment?
    – Sursula
    Nov 4, 2021 at 11:37
  • @Sursula By voting, but check the answer to see what "upvote" means for each, all the three answers propose alternative options to synonymization.
    – GoodDeeds
    Nov 4, 2021 at 11:41
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    Marking this entire post as "completed" since the original 8 have been resolved and it's not clear we'll find a solution for the withdraw tag that is better than the status quo (though we can continue the conversation, maybe we'll think of something).
    – cag51 Mod
    Nov 5, 2021 at 23:33

6 Answers 6

Reset to default
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Thanks for bringing this up! Indeed, it seems like the "canonical" process of waiting for 4 approvals is broken (not enough reviewers), so time to bring out the mod hammers. Some quick thoughts.

I approved and merged your suggestion about / .

To me, the , , and examples seem similarly straightforward; barring any uproar here, I would suggest adding those and we'll hammer them through.

There are only 4 questions (and yet a ton of question posted here are about mistakes); my suggestion would be that we retag those questions rather than creating a synonym.

The other three (, , and ) seem more significant/complicated -- I suspect your suggestion is the right thing, but I would want to study more carefully and/or let others comment before taking any action on these ones.

There is also an old suggestion about making a synonym of ; this one is a bit complicated because "withdraw" is also used for withdrawing from studies (not just withdrawing a paper from consideration). This tag seems quite bimodal; we should think about ways to improve it (ideally, without having to retag most of its 116 questions).

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  • 4
    I think the issue is not the lack of reviewers, but the lack of any notification when there are any pending items in the queue, unlike the post review queues.
    – GoodDeeds
    Oct 30, 2021 at 19:10
  • Agree -- it is this lack of notification that leads to lack of reviewers.
    – cag51 Mod
    Oct 30, 2021 at 19:12
  • To me, [bullying] is also straightforward since [bully] is already a synonym, and if this is not made a synonym, then I think [bully] should be desynonymized from [personal-misconduct] and made a synonym of [bullying] instead.
    – GoodDeeds
    Oct 30, 2021 at 19:15
  • I had considered [withdraw] and [retraction] too, but I think that they are not synonyms for another reason — many questions under [withdraw] talk about withdrawal during the review process, while retraction refers exclusively to content that has already been published.
    – GoodDeeds
    Oct 30, 2021 at 19:16
  • Yeah, those were my initial thoughts as well -- but as a wise ent once said, "let us not be hasty." :-)
    – cag51 Mod
    Oct 30, 2021 at 19:17
  • And for the question of retagging vs synonymization, I have no strong preference, but my understanding was that synonymization would help prevent the tag from being created again, which is why typos like [autorship] and [etiquitte] are synoynms of their correct spellings.
    – GoodDeeds
    Oct 30, 2021 at 19:20
  • Well, my concern with mistakes is that there are mistakes that won't lead to an erratum, so it could lead to some mistagging. And only 4 people have used the "mistake" tag in the past 10 years, so it doesn't seem like a huge problem we need to solve.
    – cag51 Mod
    Oct 30, 2021 at 19:22
  • Now that I think of it, [errors-erratum] is a highly unusual tag, in that it combines two related concepts that do not necessarily always overlap (and also uses the singular form, "erratum", which is different from most other tags). I don't think there is any other tag like that on this site. I wonder why it was created that way. Two separate tags, [mistakes] and [errata], might make more sense.
    – GoodDeeds
    Oct 31, 2021 at 1:50
  • @GoodDeeds Probably because corrections are usually called "erratum" because they are published one at a time.
    – Azor Ahai -him-
    Nov 1, 2021 at 18:58
  • @AzorAhai-him- The same could be said about publications, books, etc.
    – GoodDeeds
    Nov 1, 2021 at 18:59
  • @GoodDeeds Not really
    – Azor Ahai -him-
    Nov 1, 2021 at 19:00
  • @AzorAhai-him- Okay, then maybe I did not understand your original comment.
    – GoodDeeds
    Nov 1, 2021 at 20:10
  • @GoodDeeds - looks like there is a consensus here. If you want to add collaborator, facebook, twitter, and review-process, I will hammer them. The withdraw one (which did not come from you), I will hammer "declined." The other three, I will post separate answers for and see if they get any significant upvotes / downvotes / comments.
    – cag51 Mod
    Nov 3, 2021 at 1:26
  • I can't, unfortunately, because I don't have the required score of 5 in those tags. And the suggestion for [review-process] in already in the queue, from Tripartio.
    – GoodDeeds
    Nov 3, 2021 at 11:56
  • oh, I see. OK, I will take care of it sometime soon.
    – cag51 Mod
    Nov 3, 2021 at 17:30
5

-->

I think a "mistakes" tag should not exist at all; virtually anything (e.g., sexual misconduct) could be framed as "mistake." So, I suggest retagging those questions (there are only 4) and not creating a synonym.

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  • 1
    Strongly agree.
    – Buffy
    Nov 3, 2021 at 20:08
5

-->

I think this "review" tag should not exist. There are only 3 questions with this tag: one should be , one has to do with "reviewing" for a test, and one has to do with "when a limitation is limitation and when its not" (whatever that might mean). Thus, it seems there is no real historical need for this tag, and if we make it a synonym, people will likely use it on situations that don't involve peer review.

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  • Strongly agree.
    – Buffy
    Nov 3, 2021 at 20:08
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& -->

To me, this is the hardest one. "bully[ing]" is certainly a form of personal misconduct, but it seems like a very distinct subset.

GoodDeeds wrote in the comments:

I think [bully] should be desynonymized from [personal-misconduct] and made a synonym of [bullying] instead.

I suspect this is the best way to go. And, maybe we should make both and a synonym of . It's true that abuse is broader than just bullying (e.g., torturing lab rats is abuse but not bullying), but the vast majority of the questions tagged with are about mistreatment by a supervisor.

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  • I agree that abuse is the proper version, not personal-misconduct.
    – Buffy
    Nov 3, 2021 at 20:07
  • 1
    agree to the abuse solution
    – Sursula
    Nov 4, 2021 at 11:38
2

Update: This is now being discussed in this thread.

While we're at it: let's delete the tag altogether, since it is just a mispronunciation of .

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  • I am not sure, but I think the idea of synonymizing misspellings was to avoid the problem of the tag getting created again. Other misspellings like [autorship] and [etiquitte] are also synonyms of their correct spellings.
    – GoodDeeds
    Nov 4, 2021 at 12:52
  • 2
    According to this discussion, synonyms should not be used for misspellings.
    – cag51 Mod
    Nov 4, 2021 at 15:35
  • @cag51 In that case, I think this deserves a separate thread, there are probably more tags synonymized based on misspellings.
    – GoodDeeds
    Nov 4, 2021 at 15:36
  • @Gooddeeds - OK with me.
    – cag51 Mod
    Nov 4, 2021 at 15:41
  • OK, unless @Sursula wishes to take it up, I will start one after a few days.
    – GoodDeeds
    Nov 4, 2021 at 16:14
  • @GoodDeeds I will do it today or tomorrow
    – Sursula
    Nov 4, 2021 at 17:36
0

-->

For those questions using the withdraw tag in the sense of withdrawing from a program, rather than withdrawing a paper prior to a decision. The quitting tag exists for several question already. This may not be a synonym addition, but just a scan through the questions and tag updates. Painful though. But the tag wiki needs to be clear - even in the short version, though not everyone pays much attention.

Making the necessary tag changes to a number of the 116 questions with the withdraw tag will mess up the active questions list for a while.

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  • Maybe we should rename withdraw --> withdraw-from-studies, which we can then make a synonym of quitting. Then we can create a new tag withdraw-paper, which we can make a synonym of retraction. The advantage of this will be that if someone tries to create a "withdraw" tag, they'll see we already have two withdraw tags and they'll choose the appropriate one, rather than recreating the withdraw tag (or inadvertantly using the quitting tag when they should use the retraction tag).
    – cag51 Mod
    Nov 4, 2021 at 15:38
  • 1
    Though in this case, we should see how many of the withdraw posts are about quitting versus about retraction; this will tell us how much retagging is necessary. Normally we try to do 3-5 a day so we don't flood the home page, but for a large set like this, maybe it is better to do it all at once (manually bumping the questions that occurred right before the deluge), I am not sure.
    – cag51 Mod
    Nov 4, 2021 at 15:40
  • @cag51, quitting is also used for quitting the profession. So it isn't just withdrawing from studies. I updated the wiki for quitting, BTW to reflect that. So, we should also decide if the two "quitting" ideas should have the same tag or not.
    – Buffy
    Nov 4, 2021 at 15:50
  • Offhand, seems like they probably should; for students in particular, quitting "studies" and quitting the field are essentially the same thing. Trying to restrict the "quitting" tag to only post-PhD folks is probably a losing battle (unless we change the name).
    – cag51 Mod
    Nov 4, 2021 at 17:27
  • There also seem to be some questions under the tag about withdrawing from a course / the grade W. Is that appropriate usage?
    – Anyon
    Nov 5, 2021 at 0:02
  • oh, that is a good point. So if we decide to clean this up, we would probably a need third option; withdraw-from-course. What a mess.
    – cag51 Mod
    Nov 5, 2021 at 1:14
  • @cag51, withdraw-from-course doesn't win the game. Besides being too long for the UI - phones especially, a "course" in some places is a complete "program of study" in others. I think UK has that convention. Actually I don't think that course withdraw (us usage) and program withdrawal, really need separate tags. Too many tags can lead to mistagging as this whole thing suggests.
    – Buffy
    Nov 5, 2021 at 16:02
  • agree, three withdraw tags is probably not a good idea. Maybe it's better to just let withdraw remain "overloaded."
    – cag51 Mod
    Nov 5, 2021 at 16:28

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