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2:39 PM

Q: Should we blacklist or delete the "research" tag?

Should we blacklist or delete the research tag? This site is about mathematical research, so I don't see how the "research" tag is helpful, any more than a "mathematics" tag would be helpful. Of the 23 questions with the tag, 7 have been closed, and all 23 have other tags. Alternatively, someo...

The tag research was blacklisted - I was able to confirm that.

in MO editors' lounge, Jul 14 at 9:35, by Martin Sleziak

@theHigherGeometer It's possible that you have checked that yourself - I just want to confirm that the tag research is blacklisted. (I.e., if it is added in an edit, the edit cannot be submitted. The same should happend when it is used in a new question.) Here is a screenshot:

in MO editors' lounge, Jul 14 at 9:35, by Martin Sleziak

But is was not burninated - there are questions which have this tag.

@AsafKaragila what is the conclusion now that this is [status-completed]? There are still questions at mathoverflow.net/questions/tagged/research, unless the burninator takes time to work through the questions. — David Roberts Jul 13 at 7:31

@David: I think that it was blacklisted. I'll see what's next for us on this (without manually editing all of the questions). — Asaf Karagila ♦ Jul 13 at 8:31

As it's status-completed it would be useful to have an acceptable answer summarizing the status completion. — YCor Jul 22 at 14:46

@Catija Concerning the status-completed status of the issue with research - are there plans also to burninate the tag, or will it be only blacklisted?

YCor suggested that it would be nice to have also an answer which says what was done.

Also looking at David Roberts' comment, it seems that he was also a bit confused that there are still questions with that tag.

Catija

We generally don't burninate stuff that the community can handle themselves. This tag has under 50 questions - the burnination process specifically states that removing the tags in that case is up to the users to do.

Martin Sleziak

Thanks for the response!

I definitely haven't seen all of the FAQ, but I probably missed that there is some kind of threshold.

Catija

122

Q: When to burninate

Upon seeing this question, I took a look at the user tag, and it currently has 1366 unanswered questions, and 4326 total questions. Seeing as that's quite a lot, I thought I'd help with the burnination (am I correct in thinking the burnination is done by users?). However, I can't really tell when...

discussion tags burninate-system

> Now, even if you can edit without approval... You probably shouldn't bother if there are more than a few dozen questions. Even if you have a few other people involved, 50-100 is probably the most you should bother with unless you're down-right masochistic.

Martin Sleziak

> If you still have a solid case for burnination, then raise the matter for discussion on that site's Meta. You MUST have community consensus before burninating a tag with more than a few questions, and Meta posts are required on Stack Overflow for tags with over 50 questions (other communities may have different standards).

Ok, so the status here is that the tag was blacklisted - but it won't be burninated.

Catija

Yes. I did tell Asaf that but it was in the mod room.

Martin Sleziak

2:48 PM

If MO users prefer removal of the tag, either it can be removed manually or a moderator can merge this tag into some tag. (AFAICT this was done quite often here on MO.)

@Catija Would you (or Asaf) be willing to add some kind of summary on that post. (Maybe even as an answer?)

Or is it enough if I add a comment linking to this chat conversation?

Catija

I can leave an answer - I'd intended to but I failed to do so.

Martin Sleziak

Thanks a lot!

This shows my insufficient knowledge of the burnination process - I posted the answer suggesting burnination, but I did not know about the 50+ condition.

Catija

Why is this tag called this?

mathoverflow.net/questions/tagged/ho.history-overview

why does it have the ho.history-overview ?

Martin Sleziak

@Catija Do you mean the "prefix" ho?

Catija

Yes.

It's very messy looking and doesn't make sense to me immediately.

Martin Sleziak

3:02 PM

BTW I guess "burnintating" is a typo and should be burninating.

There is something on this here: Why are MO tags formatted as they are? and Frequently asked questions about tagging on MathOverflow.

Basically, MO keeps the prefixes same as on arXiv.

There is a recommendation that each question should have at least one of the top-level tags, but it doesn't work 100%.

in MO editors' lounge, Jan 14 at 12:39, by Martin Sleziak

Total number of questions without a top-level tag (by month of CreationDate) and Percentage of questions without a top-level tag (until the given month)

in MO editors' lounge, May 6 '20 at 4:30, by Martin Sleziak

top-level-tags 22.036% of questions without top-level tags, 17.240% of questions if we take the less strict interpretation.

This decision was made a long time before I started visiting MO. (And a long time before MO became a part of SE.)

One of the mods praised this system when we discussed some tag-related issues:

in MO editors' lounge, Oct 16 '17 at 4:06, by François G. Dorais

@MartinSleziak Yes, the tag management on MO is very different than on Mathematics. There are several reasons for that. For example, the systematic use of broad area tags borrowed from the arxiv on day one brought a lot of stability to the general tagging system here. Mathematics explicitly decided not to use such tags in the early days, which I think was a wise choice since a great deal of users on Mathematics are unfamiliar with the arxiv classification.

I'll add here a link to your answer - in case somebody looks here at the discussion concerning the tag research.

A: Should we blacklist or delete the "research" tag?

The tag has been blocked and can no longer be used. I leave removing the 40 tags from the existing questions - "burninating" - to you all. Please do look at the guide to how to burninate. It's important to make certain that all of these questions have been reviewed and retagged as necessary to en...