The Upper Room

general room announcement: we are looking for someone to take week 4 of advent as a blog post. This can take whatever form you'd like as long as the theme is related to the typical theme of advent week 4 (that being Love).

Possibly also someone to write something specific to Christmas to be published on the 25th. I can take one of these and I'd love to have someone who either has written in the past but hasn't recently, or is completely new to the blog to take the other one.

Jon Ericson

6:12 PM

@waxeagle Looking through our tags and tagging questions, I don't see any comprehensive tagging suggestions. (By the way, one of those should probably be the synonym of the other. Can we make tags canonical?)

wax eagle

@JonEricson as far as I'm concerned yes

Jon Ericson

@waxeagle By "we" I mean "you". ;-)

wax eagle

@JonEricson of course :)

Jon Ericson

I'm going to ask a meta-question about our tagging philosophy and make a first cut at an answer. (Soonish.)

wax eagle

@JonEricson sounds good. I'll try to chime in.

Jon Ericson

6:30 PM

@waxeagle This is helpful reading:

A: "bible" tag too general?

The tag "bible" seems overly general to me (much the same way the tag "john" is too general) Wait a minute... john isn't too general - it's ambiguous! There are multiple Johns. If you were arguing that we need multiple bible tags because there are multiple bibles, this would be a good compar...

Caleb

Hey guys I think we need to say something about the tag summaries needing to be useful for explaining when to use a tag or not, not a copy/paste of a dictionary. And not "Christian perspective on [tag name]".

Jon Ericson

@Caleb Yes. I tried looking at the wiki suggestions and despaired. I don't even have the heart to fix them. :-(

wax eagle

@JonEricson I approved a couple, but got tired of a simple sentence about the tag and rejected enough that he probably has a 24 hr edit ban

Jon Ericson

6:51 PM

@waxeagle Can we clue them into:

Blog - Stack Exchange: Redesigned Tags Page

Jeff Atwood on March 23, 2011

In the spirit of our recent redesign of the users page, we felt it was time to enhance the tags page, too.

As you can see, the tags page now shows a bit more information about each tag, namely:

The first three lines of the tag wiki excerpt for the tag. The number of questions asked in that tag over the last two relevant time intervals — day, week, or month. These intervals are also clickable so you can zoom into recent questions with the tag.

The number of questions asked in that tag over the last two relevant time intervals — day, week, or month. These intervals are also clickable so you can zoom into recent questions with the tag. …

wax eagle

@JonEricson probably. Let me see if they've been to chat before

@pavel Hope this is the right Pavel, do you have time to talk for a moment about tag wikis?

Caleb

@waxeagle I just approved one, rejected one right before stepping in here.

Pavel

7:44 PM

I'm here.

I know - I went too enthusiastic about wiki edits recently, and the quality is just... hmm...

wax eagle

@Pavel Hey, I'd like to talk to you about tag wikis a bit. I love that you're working on them as they are a neglected area of the site so they need the love.

See the blog linked above and then all I'd have to say after that is just make sure that the wiki pertains to the usage of the tag, assume the user already knows the what

Pavel

I'm reading it.

wax eagle

or at least get both the "what it is" and the "how to use it" into the summary :).

That said I love that you're working on these, again they've been neglected for too long.

Jon Ericson

@waxeagle Absolutely. It's a valuable service.

Jon Ericson

8:19 PM

@Pavel I'm not sure if you've done any singleton tags, but this has not been implemented yet:

Q: Do not expire single-use tags that have a tag wiki

Single-use tags automatically expire after a few months. This is arguably the right thing when the tag is a misspelling (though I'd prefer some way of reviewing the process — but this post is not about that). However, if the tag was clearly deliberate, the default should be not to delete it. I pr...

So you might lose some work if a tag has only been used once.

wax eagle

@JonEricson we have orphaned tag wikis under the mod tools if that happens

Jon Ericson

@waxeagle True. But it could still be easier:

Q: Homeless orphan tag wikis need original names, euthanised

Orphan wiki tag posts should indicate their original designation so we can right the wrong of the cutting of the umbilical cord in the harsh sands of loneliness. Almost everyday a tag wiki post is severed from its house and left flailing in the wind to wind up at the Orphanarium of Tags, Our Bla...

feature-request tag-wiki orphaned-wiki

wax eagle

I love me some random

Pavel

@JonEricson: the least used tag I have editted was used for three or four questions.

Jon Ericson

@Pavel Ok. No worries then.

Pavel

8:30 PM

@waxeagle since last year I try to keep some resolution every Advent and Lent. This year it could be in the spirit of dominican "conteplata aliis tradere" - to add some meditations to my program and write a blog from the conclusions. I'd prefer the 4th Sunday of Advent, it's readings (Micah 5:1-4; Hebrews 10:5-10 and Luke 1:39-45) and the end of Advent. I can add Czech traditions concerning Nativity Eve (the main holiday here) to the bowl if you want to. Anyway, God knows what the result will be.

wax eagle

@Pavel sure. Would love to have you contribute.

We've been pretty lenient about when posts are due, but if you could have yours in a week or so in advance that'd be great. If you could post a comment on the blog I can give you author priviledges

actually, just click the "log in" button down by the comments section, no need to even leave a comment

@Pavel hop on by our blog room if you get stuck:

Eschewmenical Blog Room

a room to discuss the blog of C.SE Eschewmenical christianity....

2 hours later…

Stack Exchange

10:12 PM

Q: What is our tagging philosophy?

Scanning through our tags questions will turn up many specific concerns about tag usage, but only one general concern: Is it better to have more tags or fewer? Shog9 also wrote an excellent explanation of how tagging works and why bible is not too general. Jeff Atwood says, "It is my strong be...