Should we include 'the' in tag names when the official title starts with 'the'?

Question

As @CreationEdge mentions in this answer, we have many tags where the official title of the work contains the word 'the' in the name but our tag on the site does not. Before the tag character limit was expanded from 25 to 35, these would just take up extra space. But now, we can expand these to the full length. Do we want to include the 'the' and 'a' etc in the tag names?

Some examples of tags that would be affected:

lord-of-the-rings --> the-lord-of-the-rings

wheel-of-time --> the-wheel-of-time

phantom-menace --> the-phantom-menace

fellowship-of-the-ring --> the-fellowship-of-the-ring

butterfly-effect --> the-butterfly-effect¹

heroes-of-olympus --> the-heroes-of-olympus

...and so on. I also see that we have a lot of precedent for including the 'the', such as the-force-awakens, the-hobbit, the-matrix, the-silmarillion, the-walking-dead, etc.

Should we go back and rename tags that don't include the 'the' to include it?

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_{¹Although I'd like to rename this the-butterfly-effect-2004, so that this doesn't get mixed up with the 'butterfly effect' trope...}

Answer 1

Yes, rename them.

There's a lot of precedent for including the 'the' in the tag name, as mentioned in the question. We don't have to worry as much about running out of characters in the tag name. And it's best to a.) be consistent as much as possible b.) use the official name for the work/franchise.

This does not require a flood of the front page or anything - a mod can just rename it easily, so that's not a worry. It also makes sure that if someone starts typing the-wheel-of in the tag box, that the-wheel-of-time comes up, whereas with wheel-of-time typing the-wheel- won't bring up the correct tag.

Answer 2

List of tags to be renamed

• curse-of-the-black-pearl → the-curse-of-the-black-pearl

• heroes-of-olympus → the-heroes-of-olympus

• lord-of-the-rings → the-lord-of-the-rings

• wheel-of-time → the-wheel-of-time

• phantom-menace → the-phantom-menace

• butterfly-effect → the-butterfly-effect

• fellowship-of-the-ring → the-fellowship-of-the-ring

• hitchhikers-guide → the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy

• dark-tower → the-dark-tower

• dark-knight-rises → the-dark-knight-rises

• return-of-the-king → the-return-of-the-king

• day-of-the-doctor → the-day-of-the-doctor

• sword-of-truth → the-sword-of-truth

• twilight-zone → the-twilight-zone

• legend-of-zelda → the-legend-of-zelda

• battle-of-five-armies → the-battle-of-the-five-armies

• sarah-connor-chronicles → the-sarah-connor-chronicles

• fifth-element → the-fifth-element

• maze-runner → the-maze-runner

• orville → the-orville

• add items in the format * [tag:old-tag-name] → [tag:new-tag-name]

Answer 3

No, Keep them the way they are. Rename the ones with "the" in them.

While most of the Mods here have been here for ages, I'm a relative newbie. And I still remember the days before I had the "create new tag" privilege. If you can't create a new tag, you must browse through an onerous list of tags to find the one that most suits your need.

Right now, the list is pretty reasonable. But if you rename everything to "The" the list will become extremely unbalanced by the "T"'s and make newbies' searches far harder.

Libraries, Google and the Dewey Decimal system all ignore "the". So should we.