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I recently noticed we have three tags, the existence of which kind of baffles me:

  • According to the tag wiki, this should be a general "magic ring" tag. In practice, of the 81 tagged questions 76 of them are about Lord of the Rings, and the rest are about Green Lantern rings
  • The tag wiki on this was just changed today (which is what got me started on this bend) to clarify its usage to Lord of the Rings-specific rings, which is what 4 of the tagged five questions are about (the last is about the movie The Ring).
  • Currently has no tag wiki, and both of its questions are about Green Lantern rings

This seems like a strange state of affairs, to say the least, and one that could be improved.

As I see it, there are really three works that could get any use out of a "magic rings" tag:

  • Lord of the Rings
  • Green Lantern and his multicoloured brethren
  • The Ring franchise, which is so popular it has two tags and one question.

There might be others, (Ringworld, maybe? but we already have ) but these are the ones that seem to have attracted the current situation.

So here's what I propose:

  • Re-tag questions with , and make it a Tolkien-specific tag. Realistically that's mostly what it's being used for anyway, and I don't think having a tag for Lantern rings really adds value; are people really going to say to themselves "I want to look up Green Lantern info, but only about his ring"?
  • Kill for much the same reason
  • Keep specific to The Ring. There's only one question using the tag for that purpose, but the Ring franchise is on-topic here in my estimation, and it wouldn't be the only film tag with only one question

Thoughts?

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  • Sounds like a good plan to me ;)
    – Often Right
    Jun 21, 2015 at 6:14
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    Knock yourself out. I like @alexwlchan 's plan though.
    – Valorum
    Jun 21, 2015 at 8:13
  • Also see the-one-ring.
    – SQB
    Jun 21, 2015 at 18:04
  • @SQB I think it's worth having two tags; only 9 questions have both [the-one-ring] and [rings-of-power], so they're both clearly getting used for different things
    – Jason Baker
    Jun 22, 2015 at 2:22
  • O, but I didn't mean it had to go, I just meant it as a heads up. Questions could be retagged to either rings-of-power or the-one-ring, depending on the specific question.
    – SQB
    Jun 22, 2015 at 5:23
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    "Power ring" is the correct in-universe nomenclature for a Green Lantern ring. Just saying.
    – Omegacron
    Jun 23, 2015 at 16:27
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    There might be others?? CAPTAIN PLANET MOTHERF—ERS
    – Paul D. Waite
    Jul 1, 2015 at 9:46
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    “There might be others …”  — I realize that this isn’t a very popular topic here, but how about Thomas Covenant and his white gold wedding ring?
    – Peregrine Rook
    Jul 4, 2015 at 5:52

2 Answers 2

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I agree with the general sentiment, I’d just suggest a minor tweak.

We could definitely do a better job disambiguating the ring-related tags. I’d make one change to your proposal.

Rather than using the generic tag for The Ring, I’d create a new tag, , and use that for the franchise. That way, the generic tag goes away, and it’s less likely that people use it on the “wrong” questions (because it won’t be in the suggested tags). It also avoids future confusion about which ring it refers to.

(I assume that the The Ring question is In which year(s) are Ring and Ring 2 set?. When we do the tidy-up, whatever we do, I’d collapse and into a single franchise-related tag, and let the other tag die.)

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  • I can get behind that plan
    – Jason Baker
    Jun 21, 2015 at 19:07
  • Already retagged. Wanted to write a tag wiki, but apparently I can't do that on mobile.
    – SQB
    Jun 21, 2015 at 21:12
  • @SQB I made up a tag wiki, but I don't know a lot about the Japanese Ring franchise. Someone else might want to improve what I wrote
    – Jason Baker
    Jun 22, 2015 at 2:08
  • I think the mods can ban a specific tag ("ring") to prevent re-adding later
    – DVK-on-Ahch-To
    Jun 22, 2015 at 15:47
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Questions about the ring in Lord of the Rings should be retagged to either or , depending on the question.

The single question about the horror movie has already been retagged with , which is the name of the American version. I think that if a question about the Japanese original should come up, it could be tagged , and one could be the synonym of the other.

For the rest, I would like to follow alexwlchan's answer and lose the tag.

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