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Tag cleanup weekend 1 is now complete! For afterthoughts, see here:
Tag cleanup weekend 1 - After action reports and impressions

Considering that we're attempting to short circuit some of the usual things we normally do in order to clean up the site, we're having our first, very experimental tag cleanup weekend.

The cleanup will last for 48 hours and will be running from 2014-09-27 00:00:00 to 2014-09-29 00:00:00 UTC. To see that converted into your local time, you may visit http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/.

The cleanup will consist of clearing out as much review queue items as possible, and attempting to destroy as many of the tags that have been accepted to be cleaned by the community. What you need to do will be listed in the tag cleanup request for each of the specific tags you are going to clean.

I've set up a room for coordinating these things for the actual day and this may be useful for discussion and getting things done faster. Popping in, saying "I'm clearing out the tag" and then letting folks know you're done with that is a great idea if you're going to go all out on the edits, or to suggest that we put a question out of our misery.

Our front page is likely to be covered with edits so using the questions page would be advised if you're not taking part in the cleanup. Apologies to any new users who've just come across this - it's not something we do very often.

I'd suggest not taking the lazy way out and using an automated tag edit script - one of the goals here is to see if an organized, coordinated cleanup actually works.

I'm attempting to decide on various things we may have trouble with and how best to make sure we do this in an orderly way. I'll be consolidating things into a single post, but feel free to chip in on ideas.

I'd like a bit of input on a few things specifically:

  • Should we be a little more lenient on minor edits or non edits on retags?
  • Should we encourage flagging, and off-label non flagged deletions if you're out of flags It makes sense to kill these off rather than retagging?
  • Considering we have many tags, should we have people focus on one tag each, and clean them out as much as possible?
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    Can this become a event?
    – Braiam
    Commented Sep 22, 2014 at 19:54
  • Do as many edits as you want at once. That's really the point of it. As for being an event, it depends on how well this goes, and how often we need cleanup. If there's a need, it works well, and there isn't too much disruption, we may run these as needed in future.
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Commented Sep 23, 2014 at 0:25
  • I've made an edit to the link. We only want accepted tags to be cleaned, right...?
    – ᔕᖺᘎᕊ
    Commented Sep 24, 2014 at 16:28
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    @JourneymanGeek Could you also tag the company tags cleanup request as approved because it is being actively being pursued by the community?
    – gparyani
    Commented Sep 24, 2014 at 16:34
  • Some other questions: Should we temporarily reinstate the old privilege that allowed 0.5k+ rep users to edit tags without having to go into the suggested edits queue during these weekends? Should we extend inline tag editing abilities (normally only given to 10k+ users, I think) to all such users with the ability to edit tags without being reviewed (0.5k+ or 2k+)?
    – gparyani
    Commented Sep 24, 2014 at 16:36
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    Nope. I'l be keeping an eye on the edit queue and I'll encourage others to do so. I did say, repeatedly I didn't want to bother the devs or CMs to make drastic changes.
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Commented Sep 24, 2014 at 23:27
  • I now know how to spell aisle, but it just looks wrong. (I'll, ial, aisle, isle, ile, iel, iyl, eye-lll)
    – Robin Hood
    Commented Sep 25, 2014 at 2:08
  • @damryfbfnetsi I'm a native English speaker, but I've never had much need for spelling aisle, and it's not the type of word to look how it sounds, which is why I was surprised.
    – Robin Hood
    Commented Sep 26, 2014 at 6:21
  • Could I ask for a slight clarification on event timing? To me "2014-09-27 00:00:00 to 2014-09-28 00:00:00 UTC" implies we have 24 hours only to cleanup (i.e. ending midnight morning on the 28th) while I take it from "tag cleanup weekend" that we are going for 48 hours. I'd prefer the time say "2014-09-27 00:01:00 to 2014-09-28 23:59:00 UTC" if we are going for the full weekend. I'd like to help out but have some commitments on Saturday that I have to deal with first.
    – Mokubai Mod
    Commented Sep 26, 2014 at 12:49
  • Yeah, partially cause I didn't want to accidentally set a 3 day tag cleanup, and partially since this is so new. It wouldn't be a bad idea to extend it
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Commented Sep 26, 2014 at 13:53

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Considering our main goal is to clean up tags, and to get people aware of things that need cleaning up There's a few things in addition to edits that users engaged in Tag Cleanup Weekend need to be aware of.

  • Try to fix other issues as well while fixing tags. However I would consider this optional, rather than mandatory considering the volume we intend to clear.

  • We're going to need people to approve edits. While its not a reason to robo-review, we're hopefully going to get a good quantity of new users doing tag edits. I'd suggest "approving" or "edit and approving" where possible, since our goal is to eliminate these tags. This is a great way of getting your review badges. I'd suggest adding Tag Review Weekend and the precise edit reason to expedite the review process.

  • If you have VTC rights, spend a little time in the review pages to try to clear those up. We've made good progress, but a few more eyes would be nice. You can do this right now, but I'd like to raise awareness of this. If you don't have VTC rights, if you find questions that you think deserve closure during your tag searches, cast recommend closure flags against them so that those who do have VTC rights can see those in the review queue and cast close votes against them if needed

  • If a question is too poor to bother fixing, flag it or mention it on Aisle 3. If you have VTD rights, downvote, VTD and mention it on Aisle 3. Don't retag it, this is a much more immediate end to the problem.

  • We will be flooding the front page. I'd hint that this would be a terrible day for new questions, and that if you want new questions to answer, to use the questions page instead. Hopefully we'd have made enough of a dent on bad flags that we can go into acquaintance instead of having to fire up the pumps to bail out all these bad tags, and we don't need to do it too often.

  • Once you think you've removed a tag, you may not be done yet! Go back to your search query, add locked:1 to it, and flag those locked questions containing the tag so that they can be removed. Remember, locked questions (except those locked as merge stubs or migration stubs) don't show up in tag searches by default, so adding locked:1 will bring up those locked questions.

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    What about situations when removing tags, someone comes across an old question that is closed, and no amount of editing will make it a good question? (it's off-topic or whatever). They shouldn't suggest an edit just to remove the tag - they'd be better off either voting to delete if they have that privilege, or flagging for mod attention right? (I ask because this is a situation I've come across a few times)
    – Robotnik
    Commented Sep 25, 2014 at 1:09
  • Oh, and once you think you've removed a tag, you may not be done yet! Go back to your search query, add locked:1 to it, and flag those locked questions containing the tag so that they can be removed. Remember, locked questions (except those locked as merge stubs or migration stubs) don't show up in tag searches by default, so adding locked:1 will bring up those locked questions.
    – gparyani
    Commented Sep 25, 2014 at 15:11
  • I'd like to add something to your third bullet: If you don't have VTC rights, if you find questions that you think deserve closure during your tag searches, cast recommend closure flags against them so that those who do have VTC rights can see those in the review queue and cast close votes against them if needed.
    – gparyani
    Commented Sep 25, 2014 at 15:17
  • These that would like to ignore our efforts, better check the firehose superuser.com/questions?sort=newest
    – Braiam
    Commented Sep 26, 2014 at 14:54

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