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Has anyone ever broached the idea of putting tags on answers in addition to questions? There are a lot of questions that don't have accurate tags since the OP doesn't know what series/TV show/comic book they're looking for.

If we could tag answers as well, it would make it far easier to find content. For example, many questions have an "Amazing Stories" episode as the answer, but that fact isn't reflected in the question tags, or even the question itself (since it's unknown at that time).

From a purely usability standpoint, it would be nice if clicking a tag called "Amazing-Stories" showed you not only all questions tagged that way, but also any questions where an answer is tagged that way.

Note: Using "Amazing Stories" as an example, I see them fairly often. Here's two I came across just today:

I am looking for a science fiction story were three guys plot to kill an old drunk in a bar for insurance but the old man can't be killed

TV show where goo brings images to life

Both questions are currently tagged with just "story-identification".

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If the tags on a question are wrong, then the correct solution is to change those tags. That's one of the things that community editors are expected to deal with when cleaning up a question.

IMO, if you're writing an answer where the tags would be different from the ones on the question, either the question needs to be fixed, or you're writing a bad answer.


With questions, I admit there's a bit of fuzziness there. @phantom42 mentions this question:

Should we tag (solved) story identification questions with the name of the author / property?

which addresses the issue of editing tags into story-id questions. But, IMO, those tags are unlikely to be helpful. My reasoning here is:

  • People looking for story-id help won't know which tags to look for, since they don't know the story.
  • People looking for questions about a given tag probably don't want to see story-id questions, since those questions rarely have anything interesting to say about the work. They are mostly "this is the story you're looking for" answers.
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  • This is most likely the correct answer, and is what I initially thought myself. I figured it was worth asking, though.
    – Omegacron
    Mar 9, 2015 at 20:04
  • I'll give it a day or two, but I have a feeling this will be the accepted answer.
    – Omegacron
    Mar 9, 2015 at 21:23

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