@OliverSalzburg Someone should write a bot script to automate the removal of tags. Ask on stackapps.com.

@damryfbfnetsi We were actually thinking about that. But not too seriously. The thing is… instead of just editing a question to remove one tag, ideally people would also fix other problems with a post, or flag off-topic questions. That doesn't always happen, but at least we should try.

@slhck Yeah, you're right; I tend to find a lot of other bad tags when editing out a single tag and lots of off-topic questions.

@damryfbfnetsi Yeah, that's often the case. Often, users with privileges to create tags try to fit in as many tags as possible, creating three useless tags at a time. We have to follow up on that, but it's not easy.

@slhck So why don't we make the bot suggest edits to remove the tags rather than edit them directly? Then that would be semi-automated (as opposed to completely automated) as mods and privileged users can simply approve its edits with the click of a button. They would be able to see the posts, but it would add an automation factor to it. It wouldn't gain enough rep to actually perform edits (as there is a hard limit of 1k rep from suggested edits, and the edit threshold is 2k rep).

The only problem is that it will have to suggest in batches as it may take longer for suggested edits from humans to be reviewed, and the suggested edits queue at the moment has a maximum capacity of 200.

Oh, and concurrent edits and rogue users may reject its edits, which would take longer for a tag to be removed from a particular post, and could lead to an edit ban if too many are rejected, effectively rendering it useless. (The upside of this is it could be used by mods to temporarily shut the bot down without having to suspend the user behind it.)

But rejected edits from Community aren't counted towards a ban (whether concurrent or unhelpful improve).

@OliverSalzburg Read our discussion of a possible bot that may be used to automate the editing of tags

@damryfbfnetsi Yeah, I was talking to @slhck about that recently. But I thought we weren't being serious. Either way, I won't write it ;D

@damryfbfnetsi I would love that actually

@damryfbfnetsi Not a bad idea. Unfortunately, reputation does not always correlate well with… a good sense of what's good for the community.

@slhck @OliverSalzburg I think it warrants a Meta discussion (about the rep increase). It may help in the long run

But it might help. Honestly, we rarely need new tags.

When do you really need a new tag?

@slhck Almost never

When a new software starts gaining popularity. Ok, flag the question, say you want the tag added. When a new Windows version is released. Ok, how often does that happen?

So what do you think about the bot?

@slhck Next year, Windows 9

@slhck But those are rare cases

... Then 9.1, 9.2, then 10.0-beta, 10.0-rtm, 10.0-retail

@damryfbfnetsi Also not a bad idea. I'm thinking whether it'd be prone to abuse. I mean, it basically means less work for all involved if we know we want to remove these tags anyway.

@damryfbfnetsi Exactly my point.

But even with a bot, it's just shifting the actual problem that we don't have the proper tools to just handle the tags as we see fit. Read: Destroy them in one click.

@damryfbfnetsi Make that a feature request – I'd support it.