Should we update the books tag wiki guidance?

Question

This is what books reads as:

Use this tag only to differentiate the book from the movie or other media. For questions about a specific book, use the author's name as a tag (plus the series or book title for popular authors). If applicable, use a more specific tag instead (novel, short-stories, comics).

This guidance is not only at conflict with our existing policies, but it's not really how the tag is used anyway.

• We no longer add author's name as a matter of course when a single work tag should do
• Only 180 of the 730 books questions are not used with story-identification
  • Of those 180 questions:
  • 17 use no other tag
  • 9 also use novel
  • 23 also include a 2nd media tag besides novel, which defeats the "differentiate" portion of the guidance

Now, there are other issues that still exist with how we use media tags, but this is the only one that specifies usages that aren't accurate/helpful and now actually encourages tagging against policy.

At a minimum, should we update the guidance to be more in line with the rest of the media tags, so that it reflects actual usage, or at least doesn't encourage creation of more authors tags? If yes, what should our new excerpt be?

If not, why? What should we do instead?

---

Retagging/tagging discussions around this tag and media tags are varied, and we've hit a bit of a standstill, but that doesn't mean we can at least improve this as a separate issue.

Answer 1

The books tag wiki excerpt has recently been edited (by you) to the following:

Use this tag to indicate the question is about the book version or adaptation of a work. If applicable, use a more specific tag instead (novel, short-stories, comics). For differences between the book and other versions, such as a movie, use "adaptation-comparison".

This is better, but there are a couple of issues still remaining:

• story-identification. Assuming we're OK with media tags being used on ID questions (which current practice at least suggests we are), we should mention this in the tag wiki excerpt. I suggest something along the lines of "Use this tag either for [story-identification] questions asking for identification of a book, or (in cases where the other tags don't make this clear) to indicate that the question is specifically about the book version or adaptation of a work." (The parenthetical proviso is added because, for instance, the a-song-of-ice-and-fire tag refers only to a book series, so these 7 questions don't need the books tag.)

• More specific book-related tags. If we have a books tag, do we also need novel and short-stories tags? Conversely, if we have those tags, do we still need a books tag? (This is a large problem, involving many questions, and unlikely to be resolved fast, but we should at least acknowledge it.)

---

On a more optimistic note: I and one or two others have gone through the specific lists of inappropriately-tagged books questions which you raised. There are now no more questions tagged books and nothing else, nor any non-ID questions tagged with both books and any of novel, movie, tv, comics, webcomics, anime. The problem is shrinking!