3

Should a question where the topical stuff is mostly in the answer(s) be tagged based on its answers?

I'm thinking primarily of and questions, and also of questions.

For example, "Shisha Ushloshim Umatayim - mi yodeya?" has two answers to date. The accepted answer relates to and the other answer relates to . Should we tag the question with either/both of those tags?

Another example: the riddle "No Bracha Before Yes after" has an accepted answer relating to . Should it be so tagged?

A benefit of this is that people searching for stuff on theft will find information they may find useful.

A downside is that questions with multiple answers will quickly exceed the five-tag limit, and we'd need to decide what to do then. (Incidentally, if we do this, we should probably detag from the questions to make room for other tags, if we do such things.)

1

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

If the question is lacking "meat", and only has taggability based on it's answers, well then the question should be edited into a better form. (That is assuming it does not need to be closed outright).

A good question should be clear and specific enough to clarify its own tags, otherwise it's either "Not a Real Question", or is just waiting to be fixed up, so go right ahead.

On the other hand, if a question is good enough on it's own, BUT an answer takes it in a new direction, jumping into another tag's territory unexpectedly, that still doesnt mean that the question should be retagged (even assuming the answer isn't off-topic).

Tags are not intended primarily for searchability, it's for findability (i.e. grouping, tracking, and related questions). Searching for a term will work just fine if it appears in the answer...
(There are other aspects, such as SEO, but tags dont help for that either, except for the one that is prepended to the title.)

As for the and type tags, well... those are different anyway (would usually be closed on other SE sites as NaRQ, but here they're well accepted...), and they're not really about the content of the answers, anyway.

3
  • 1
    mi-yodeya-series contains real questions that often (but not always) get very interesting answers. They're a little different from other questions in that they're programmatic and simple. Riddles, on the other hand, I'm in favor of dropping. (Eventually, there will probably also be a meta question on the m-y-s.)
    – Isaac Moses Mod
    Commented May 22, 2011 at 4:03
  • 1
    @Isaac it seemed to me that the m-y-s are real questions only in the aspect of numerology... Yes, some of the answers are very interesting, but rarely would you need to categorize according to the answers...
    – AviD
    Commented May 22, 2011 at 8:11
  • 1
    I agree that we should tag based on questions.
    – Isaac Moses Mod
    Commented May 22, 2011 at 10:09
1

I think it would be reasonable to tag hollow questions based on rich answers for exactly the reason you cited: findability by searching.

I know that this has been done in the past (long ago) and I will see if I can dig up some examples.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .