Should the tag [format] exist/be split/clarified?

Question

The wiki currently states - The arrangement of data for storage or display, also used as a term to empty a partition.

This alone gives it two different definitions and indexes, and clicking the tag itself you can see you get results ranging from

SD Card Locked Error on camera

to

How to have Excel recognize date in format MMM YYYY (e.g. Mar 2015)?.

Wildly different subjects yet now married up by this tag.

Should this be split to be clearer? format-storage and format-display, format-layout... or something?

I guess as I started writing out this question, the split is quite tricky as the same word does have two different meanings depending on context. Thoughts?

Answer 1

Each tag should mean exactly one thing, and at the moment, format is used for numerous things, including:

• disk formatting → formatting, according to its summary is exclusively for this, but is often misused to indicate any structure of information
• date/time formatting → date-format exists, but is only used for 19 questions at the moment; it might just be sufficient to tag questions with date or date-time
• text formatting → text-formatting exists, and has >150 questions, but it seems to me that how to format text would vary wildly across different programs
• image formats → image-formats exists, but has only 10 questions; the tags for specific image formats (like png) are much more widely used

You're right - format is currently providing no useful information. Questions that use it should be retagged to be more specific. Remember, every tag should be able to stand on its own.