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I have seen several times users attempting to use tags as a way of clarifying their question, and assuming that the question will be understood based on which tags were chosen. I think this is a bad way of both asking questions and of tagging - the question should clarify everything you need to know to understand the intent of the question, and the tag should just be a way of finding questions of a certain type. I don't think there are hordes of people trafficking the help-center pages, but perhaps a note should be added to the description of the purposes of tags specifically pointing out that this is not what tags are for:

DO NOT use tags as a part of your question. Questions are meant to be self-explanatory, and tags are meant to categorize them.

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  • FYI such an edit would have to come from Stack Exchange employees. Site moderators can't edit that page.
    – msh210 Mod
    Mar 30, 2014 at 20:42
  • @msh210 so then this post is rather out-of-place here? Mar 30, 2014 at 20:48
  • No, it's not. SE employees will see this post here eventually. And if they may be editing only MY's help page, not every site's -- which AFAIK is possible -- then this is just the right place for the post.
    – msh210 Mod
    Mar 31, 2014 at 3:13
  • The page currently has guidance to not use tags for / in titles, could you elaborate a bit more about what else should go in the copy? The suggestion you have seems to reiterate what's there, unless I'm not understanding this properly (happens more than I'd like to admit)
    – Tim Post
    Apr 11, 2014 at 7:03
  • @TimPost I was referring to where people depend on the tags that they use, as tags, to explain their question, in such a way that the intent of the question is only clear based on the selection of tags. For example, if someone would ask "How come I can't get called up to the Torah 3rd" and tag it with "Kohen" and expect us to figure out that they want to know why a Kohen (priest) only gets called up in the first slot. Apr 11, 2014 at 15:53

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