Can we please standardize the Microsoft tags?

Question

Tags for Microsoft products are currently a mess.

Office:

• office, microsoft-office
• office-2007, office-2010, office-2010-beta, ms-office-2007, office-2008, microsoft-office-2010, office-2010, office-1997 _(wow...), office-2002, ms-office-2003, office-2003

Word:

• microsoft-word, msword, word
• microsoft-word-2007, microsoft-word-2010, microsoft-word-2003, microsoft-word-2008
• word-2007, word-2003

Excel:

• excel, microsoft-excel
• excel-formula
• excel-2003, excel-2007, excel-2010, excel-2002

Powerpoint:

• powerpoint, microsoft-powerpoint
• powerpoint-2007, powerpoint-2010, powerpoint-2003
• powerpoint-video

Publisher:

• microsoft-publisher

Access:

• access, microsoft-access, ms-access
• microsoft-access-2007, microsoft-access-2003

There is very little structure or order in how Microsoft-related questions are being tagged. I think this should be cleaned up. I would like to propose the following tagging recommendations for office questions; feel free to critique my suggestions.

• Questions about a specific microsoft product, like Word, should be tagged like microsoft-word.
• Questions that pertain to a specific version of office, and would not apply to all/other versions, should be tagged like microsoft-office-2010
• Questions pertaining to any or many versions of office should be tagged microsoft-office

A question could have several of these tags, e.g. it might be tagged microsoft-office-2010 and microsoft-word if the question is about Word and is specific to the 2010 version. While more verbose than just microsoft-word-2010, it creates fewer redundant tags.

Tags above which do not fall into one of those categories/naming schemes should be retagged and eliminated, with the following exceptions:

• word might apply to some other things having to do with words, but posts with that tag should be manually checked and retagged if appropriate.
• office might apply to questions about office environments. Those sorts of questions should be retagged to home-office or something of that sort
• access might apply to questions about access control, etc. Those sorts of questions should be retagged to a more appropriate tag, as access is ambiguous.

Most of this retagging should be able to be accomplished by moderators automatically with a batch retag, e.g. ms-office-2007 to microsoft-office-2007. More nuanced ones, like the exceptions above paint and similar, will need to be handled manually; I can do this if need be.

So, do these seem like reasonable suggestions? What changes would you recommend? And how can we try to encourage new users to tag accordingly?

Answer 1

Vote: Microsoft or MS?

Given that the short versions are ambiguous (access, office, word), let's vote between the other two...

• Vote up if you want microsoft, examples given: microsoft-office, microsoft-word

• Vote down if you want ms, examples given: ms-office, ms-word

• Versions aren't included in this voting...

Just checking to be sure, most people like microsoft, but ms is shorter (might not be typed well?).

Answer 2

Full list of necessary retags:

• WORD OF CAUTION: See the list of tags Scheduled for Manual Progress.

• Microsoft Access, any/many versions:

  • ms-access --> microsoft-access
     

• Microsoft Excel, specific versions:

  • excel-2002 --> microsoft-excel-2002
  • excel-2003 --> microsoft-excel-2003
  • excel-2007 --> microsoft-excel-2007
  • excel-2010 --> microsoft-excel-2010
     

• Microsoft Excel, any/many versions:

  • excel --> microsoft-excel
  • excel-formula --> formula
     

• Microsoft OneNote, specific versions: Done

  • onenote-2007 --> microsoft-onenote-2007
  • onenote-2010 --> microsoft-onenote-2010
     

• Microsoft OneNote, any/many versions: Done

  • onenote --> microsoft-onenote
     

• Microsoft Outlook, any/many versions:

  • outlook --> microsoft-outlook
  • outlook-2003 --> microsoft-outlook-2003
  • outlook-2007 --> microsoft-outlook-2007
  • outlook-2010 --> microsoft-outlook-2010
     

• Microsoft Paint, any/many versions:

  • paint --> await manual progress + microsoft-paint
  • ms-paint --> microsoft-paint Done  

• Microsoft Powerpoint, specific versions:

  • powerpoint-2003 --> microsoft-powerpoint-2003
  • powerpoint-2007 --> microsoft-powerpoint-2007
  • powerpoint-2010 --> microsoft-powerpoint-2010
     

• Microsoft Project, specific versions:

  • ms-project-2007 --> microsoft-project-2007
     

• Microsoft Security Essentials, any/many versions:

  • ms-security-essentials --> microsoft-security-essentials - the tag microsoft-security-essentials exceeds the max tag length of 25 chars.  

• Microsoft SQL Server, any/many versions:

  • ms-sql --> microsoft-sql-sever
     

• Microsoft Visio, specific version:

  • visio-2007 --> microsoft-visio-2007
  • visio-2010 --> microsoft-visio-2010
     

• Microsoft Visio, any/many versions:

  • visio --> microsoft-visio
     

• Microsoft Word, specific versions:

  • word-2003 --> microsoft-word-2003
  • word-2007 --> microsoft-word-2007
     

• Microsoft Word, any/many versions:

  • word --> await manual progress + microsoft-word
  • msword --> microsoft-word
     

• Microsoft Office, specific versions:

  • office-1997 --> microsoft-office-1997 + close as too localized, perhaps delete.
  • office-2002 --> microsoft-office-2002
  • office-2003 --> microsoft-office-2003
  • office-2007 --> microsoft-office-2007
  • office-2008 --> microsoft-office-2008
  • office-2010 --> microsoft-office-2010
  • office-2010-beta --> microsoft-office-2010 + close as too localized, perhaps delete.
  • ms-office-2003 --> microsoft-office-2003
  • ms-office-2007 --> microsoft-office-2007

Answer 3

Consensus?

Given that already six people upvoted the question, can we perform the retagging?

As @nhinkle said, adjusted to match @DMA57351's note, example retaggings with Word & 2010:

• Specific microsoft product, specific version: word-2010 --> microsoft-word-2010.
• Specific microsoft product, any/many versions: word --> microsoft-word.
• Microsoft Office, specific version: office-2010 --> microsoft-office-2010
• Microsoft Office, any/many versions: office --> microsoft-office

As for this quote from @nhinkle's question:

And how can we try to encourage new users to tag accordingly?

Synonyms solve this problem, so it's important that they are made where they fit to prevent issues.

WORD OF CAUTION: Manual retaggings are still necesarry for some tags, check the Manual Progress.

Answer 4

Manual Progress

The access, office and paint questions have all been retagged. :-)

_{Removed remote tags in the progress where they that had more specific tags, we also might want speed --> performance.}

Scheduled for Manual Progress

• We still need to do word, which seems quite a bit of work...