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We killed off this tag some time ago - I noticed it in use during the current cleanup, and it has been used 360 times since then (at least). I suppose that there's a perfectly good reason, other than folk not knowing how to read, but this is still annoying.

How do we ensure that the tags arn't necromancised? Do we have a master list of killed off tags and periodically reclear them, or would blacklisting them be an option?

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  • 2
    Related.
    – Daniel Beck Mod
    Commented Mar 10, 2013 at 14:12
  • If a really bad tag keeps reappearing, we can request for it to be blacklisted. Blacklisting is done pretty rarely though, and cannot be done directly by a moderator.
    – nhinkle Mod
    Commented Mar 10, 2013 at 18:12
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    What's the big deal with blacklisting? Seriously, all the work we do retagging in the cleanup seems so pointless if tags reappear. Why not ban them outright?
    – user 99572 is fine
    Commented Mar 10, 2013 at 20:07
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    To me it makes sense that if at some point we decided to get rid of a tag, wading through it with massive effort from the community, we shouldn't make it possible to create that particular tag ever again.
    – slhck Mod
    Commented Mar 10, 2013 at 21:51
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    @user99572isfine: because all blacklisting does is block the recreation of the tag. It doesn't stop the folks recreating it from switching up and creating new lousy tags. Generally, the posts that result in this stuff have to be retagged manually anyway in order to not suck.
    – Shog9
    Commented Mar 11, 2013 at 16:47

1 Answer 1

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You post here asking for it to be blacklisted. It's usually preferable to just remove a bad tag, but if it persistently returns in volume that can't be kept under control by normal retagging, then it becomes appropriate to block it entirely.

I've gone ahead and done this now for .

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  • Not sure why it's bad policy to automatically blacklist removed tags, but even if it is, it should be obvious that some tags will always do the Walking Dead thing. Any tag for a company with a wide variety of products, for example.
    – Isaac Rabinovitch
    Commented Mar 13, 2013 at 18:14
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    @Isaac: the user experience for blacklisted tags is pretty bare-bones - it just tells you you can't use it, it doesn't suggest better tags or offer synonyms that might clarify what you're trying to say. So for companies, if that's the obvious tag then there probably needs to be some viable alternatives created before blacklisting. Simply banning the tag doesn't necessarily do anything more than change the appearance of the whack a moles.
    – Shog9
    Commented Mar 13, 2013 at 18:33
  • I think we should blacklist the company tags, but a moderator is disagreeing with me. What do you think? meta.superuser.com/questions/8439/blacklist-the-company-tags
    – gparyani
    Commented Sep 4, 2014 at 5:53

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