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On a site that deals with series and franchises that are constantly being updated, such as Science Fiction and Fantasy, there are a lot of unreleased works for which the title may not be known, but a great deal of information about the work might be. For example, the title of the next Fantastic Beasts film has not yet been revealed, but we know where it will take place. The eighth and ninth Star Wars films are still untitled, but we know which cast members are planned to return. Some unnamed works, such as the latter two ( and ), have their own tags.

On the one hand, such provisional tags allow cataloging and following potentially answerable questions about popular works that are currently untitled. On the other hand, many such questions are likely to be future works, and may need to be renamed by moderators when the work acquires a title.

Should we make provisional tags for works that don’t have a title?

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  • Are there specific cases you can think of now or in the past where a franchise or possibly author tag would not do the trick?
    – user31178
    Jan 3, 2017 at 6:13
  • @CreationEdge - I’m not necessarily saying we should have these tags. I’m asking the question because such tags have been created, which suggests there might be a purpose for them.
    – Adamant
    Jan 3, 2017 at 6:35
  • So are those the only two examples at present? Anyone have more? Do we have questions about untitled works or works that weren't completed (like publicly announced sequels that were dropped)? Wondering if we have anything else to work from for making a case either way.
    – user31178
    Jan 3, 2017 at 6:43
  • Oh, wow. Apparently we have sequel and it was even used to ask about The Force Awakens before the title was announced. For anyone looking to answer, be aware that franchise/work/author + [sequel] seems to be how we're doing it now (and I doubt most those questions are being retroactively updated)
    – user31178
    Jan 3, 2017 at 6:53
  • @CreationEdge - Ah, see, there is even another option that I hadn’t thought of.
    – Adamant
    Jan 3, 2017 at 7:03
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    Create the tag, then rename it after it comes out?
    – Mithical
    Jan 3, 2017 at 9:09
  • @Mithrandir - I don't see why not. It's trivially simple (ten keystrokes and two button clicks) to create a new tag and then just merge them (two more clicks).
    – Valorum
    Jan 3, 2017 at 9:39

2 Answers 2

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Yes, then rename them to the proper name.

This way, people can tag things with or and then the tag can be renamed to , or merged if someone created the tag before it was renamed.

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    Worth noting that the title of "Star Wars Rogue One" changed to "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" after the name was officially announced.
    – Valorum
    Jan 3, 2017 at 9:49
  • I've just created a new tag for the-last-jedi. Now we can merge or synonymise the two.
    – Valorum
    Jan 23, 2017 at 22:10
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Yes, but only when there are on-topic questions for the tag to relate to.

Given that tag merging is a trivially simple task for moderators, I see no good reason not to create a sequel tag at the point when on-topic (e.g. non-speculative) questions start being asked about an upcoming sequel. Sure, we might want to change the name a little closer to the release date but that's hardly onerous.

I certainly don't think we should go quite as far as IMDB and start making tags for speculative works, but nor do I think a tag is going to cause issues since the film is already in early production.

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  • Much agree, wow, very accept, +one!
    – Möoz
    Jan 3, 2017 at 21:11
  • I don't understand the downvotes on this. Are people saying "No, don't create them at all." or are the objecting to waiting until there's valid questions for them and wanting to do it IMDb style? (That doesn't make sense to me, since you need to have a question to create the tag)
    – user31178
    Jan 4, 2017 at 1:19
  • @CreationEdge - I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure. I thought this would be a thoroughly uncontroversial viewpoint, yes to creating them once they can be applied to a film, no to creating them speculatively and yes to renaming them when the formal name is announced.
    – Valorum
    Jan 4, 2017 at 10:00
  • The alternate viewpoint (which hasn’t been discussed in any answers here, yet) would be to simply use the franchise tag and add a movie tag (if appropriate) when the title is revealed. I suspect that’s the position of the downvoters, but I can’t be sure.
    – Adamant
    Jan 4, 2017 at 23:37
  • @Adamant - You also have to take into account the 'Valorum factor' where all of my meta posts must receive multiple immediate downvotes without explanation.
    – Valorum
    Jan 4, 2017 at 23:41

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