What guidelines should be used for creating tags?
Tag which component the question applies to: writer, calc, base, impress, math. Don't use common unless it is important to indicate that it applies across components. EDIT 2018-May-21: Quoting a wiki error message, "At least one of the following tags is required: common, writer, calc, impress, base, draw, math, or meta." So there is no choice but to use common
in many cases.
Add other applicable tags. These may include:
- Operating system: x64, linux, windows.
- File format: docx, doc, odt, xls, csv, pdf.
- A category for the topic: styles, font, formula, chart, print, date, currency, tables, forms, search, spellcheck, filter.
- Macro language: basic, python, java.
Don't use non-applicable tags to draw in more readers. There is no need on this site, as it's possible to browse all new questions. A good number is perhaps 2 to 6 tags, depending on which tags apply.
Research tags on this site to see how they are most commonly or appropriately used. Have a look at the most popular tags. For example, I would choose styles
over style
because it is more popular.
Use tags from other better-designed sites.
There is a related question at https://meta.stackexchange.com/questi....
What makes a tag the most useful?
As @Mark McLean said, tags help find related questions about a particular topic.
Tags also provide more information about the question. So, if the question is "How do I write a macro to say Hello, World" then the answer will be different depending on whether it is tagged writer
or calc
.
I see all sorts of variations of the same words and combinations with _ or -
On occasion, I go through each variation for a particular tag and then retag to standardize. Click
, change the values and press Enter. This requires 50 karma points.
However, this site's flaws make it difficult to encourage consistency for tags, so in many cases, this may not be practical. Fix the tags that are most important to you.
Is that a problem for conducting good searches?
To some extent, although searches can be performed on full text to avoid this problem.
And worse, you can't fix a tag if you discover later you've made a typo.
Can't you Retag?
There is a lot of clutter, but as you can't contact moderators, or anyone else fo r that matter, it's hard to get it cleared - you have to agree on rules for tagging to prevent people retaining the same tags over and over.
Are there guidelines used in other forums that could be applied here?
I agree that is a problem to not be able to change tags. I just realized that I should have used "meta" rather than "common" as a tag here but alas, the retag function does not appear to work.
I retagged the question by clicking "retag," changing the values and pressing Enter. It requires 50 karma points, so you should be able to do it.
Jim, when I try what you suggest, my edit does not get saved. It sounds like ajlittoz may have the same problem.
I also tried to retag and it didn't work.
I just discovered you need to type return inside the tag line to save the edit
Works for me now. Maybe typing return inside the tagline is what made the difference (although I would think I did that before). Thanks for the tip!