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There's the and tags that appeared recently. Those are a subset of the tag.

Before I (or we) start to re-tag all question with a character tags I would like to discuss this.

First, is that a good idea?

Second, should we use a or ? should we set the other as a synonym?

And what about /

And ////

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  • I created those tags because my question was about them specifically and not Star Wars. I thought it wouldn't really work with just a star-wars tag
    – OghmaOsiris
    Oct 6, 2011 at 4:58
  • I think it was a good idea. The goal of this post is to extend it to the others character questions, and there is a bunch of them. But before doing this, I would like discuss it so they are handled correctly.
    – DavRob60
    Oct 6, 2011 at 11:45

2 Answers 2

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I'm rather against these tags, I don't see much use for them. Tags are useful for two things:

  • For people to subscribe to them or ignore them. For example a Star Wars fan would want to browse every question tagged , and a Star Wars hater would want to ignore these questions. But are you going to ignore questions tagged just because you hate the character? If you're in love with Princess Leia, does that mean you specifically want to read all questions and not other questions?
  • To classify questions in a manner that goes beyond plain text search. A question about The Empire Strikes Back may not contain the text “Star Wars”, yet be relevant to . A question about R2-D2 would contain “R2-D2” or at least “R2D2”, so the tag isn't helping much. A tag could help pinpoint the questions that are specifically about the character, as opposed to mentioning it in passing; but this is rather marginal, especially as a title search should be able to serve the same purpose.

A common litmus test is whether a tag could legitimately be the sole tag of a question. I don't think any Star Wars character fits the bill: what question wouldn't warrant the tag? (I could see character names functioning as tags when they are timeless figures that have transcended their original creator, such as Prometheus or Frankenstein or Superman.)

On a more general note, this site already suffers from too-specific tags: we tend to have lots of tags that are specific to little-known authors or works, and few other ways to classify questions. We should be aiming for broader tags.

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  • So, should we un-tag those questions?
    – DavRob60
    Oct 7, 2011 at 1:52
  • 2
    @DavRob60 I vote for tagging them simply [star-wars]
    – Jeff Atwood
    Oct 7, 2011 at 2:21
  • To answer your first bullet, Yes I would do exactly those things.
    – OghmaOsiris
    Oct 7, 2011 at 5:10
  • 2
    @OghmaOsiris So you'd ignore the question “Is there a fan version of Star Wars with the Jar-Jar scenes removed?” (tagged jar-jar, of course).
    – user56
    Oct 7, 2011 at 6:57
  • @JeffAtwood I (now) agree, I just wonder if we should remove the [CharacterName] tags (of course, we keep the [Star-wars] tag).
    – DavRob60
    Oct 7, 2011 at 11:50
  • @Gilles Its a situational thing. I couldn't give you a difinitive answer for every permutation of events that could happen. It the same as asking someone who hates DR Who and ignored the tag and ask them if they would ignore a question like, "Is there a sci-fi show like Dr Who that isn't cheesy?" which was tagged Dr Who.
    – OghmaOsiris
    Oct 7, 2011 at 13:31
  • It's also a question of volume. Since we now have sightly more than an hundred of star-wars question, we dont really need a finer filter to "pinpoint the questions that are specifically about the character". Maybe when we will get more star-wars question, and a rather large subset of them on some specific character, the need of character specific Tags would arise. But there is an obvious benefit to define them now, before we get the volume. The question is : would we need them in the future?
    – DavRob60
    Oct 7, 2011 at 14:00
  • 3
    @DavRob60 I don't think characters are a useful subdivision of Star Wars. There are more useful subdivisions, such as original trilogy/origins trilogy/other material, and themes (spaceships, the Force, politics, …)
    – user56
    Oct 7, 2011 at 20:32
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I'm uncertain that there will be a great need for them - do these characters really have enough unique questions to warrant their own tags?

For instance, is the subject of a few questions...but isn't he commonly referred to along with his counterpart? Wouldn't something like be better?

How long until we have a question about how to tell the difference between characters in EU works? SW especially is famous for having Loads and Loads of characters (especially in the EU), and I think it could quickly become tiresome to maintain character-specific tags for each one that has a question asked about them.

Perhaps we could create a more generic which we could append to questions which are about specific characters - after all, they'll likely be referenced by name in the question title.

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  • That seam good, but I fear that character-specific would be a meta-tag
    – DavRob60
    Oct 6, 2011 at 18:15
  • @DavRob60: It's a good point, but I feel that character-specific DOES describe the content of the question. I think it's not a meta tag, but I might be wrong.
    – Jeff
    Oct 6, 2011 at 18:28
  • It's what I said, I fear, but I'm not sure. I dont think it could be the only tag on a question because it would be too broad. On the other hand, the meaning of this tag is clear.
    – DavRob60
    Oct 6, 2011 at 19:11
  • For example: scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/939/… This question isn't about Han Solo...yet it's tagged 'han-solo'. I don't think this adds to the question at all. I think the character tags are a flawed idea, they encourage things like this.
    – Jeff
    Oct 6, 2011 at 19:54
  • I'm still not sure if character tags are a flawed idea, but I'm sure the mistagging of this question does not make those tag a flawed idea, .
    – DavRob60
    Oct 6, 2011 at 20:33

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