What do a writer, taxi, and horse have in common?

Question

Answer: we don't yet have questions with the hack tag covering these, perhaps the only common uses of the term not included.

hack and its synonym hacking are undefined and have 44 questions. The term is used so loosely, it isn't clear that it is a useful tag.

• Is there a useful definition that would serve a purpose on the site to provide context or focus, or attract knowledgeable answerers?
• Should we clean this up?

Answer 1

It seems to have three primary uses:

• The poster thinks they've been hacked, and they want to undo what the bad software/entity did. Example.
• The poster is trying to break into something and needs help doing so. Example.
• The poster wants to do something that may require whacking some system's internals (e.g. they're looking for a "Registry hack"), and wants to know how to twiddle those internals. Example.

In the last two senses, hack is just a meta tag; it doesn't tell you anything about the environment or the task. If the tag is not equally undesirable in its first sense, it seems possibly duplicitous of security.

If we want a tag for "I think I've been hacked!", then we could restrict this tag to the first definition. One could argue that there are experts in examining and restoring hacked systems. Unfortunately, it can be difficult for people to tell what behavior is actually the result of malware. Also, doing a decent job of malware inspection often requires poking around to see exactly what changed; it may not be possible to include everything necessary in a question.

Since it means a bunch of different things at the moment, it should definitely be removed at least from questions using it in the last two senses.

Answer 2

Just to close the loop on this question, the tag has been cleaned up. The majority were simply decoration, others were retagged as appropriate, following suggestions in the answers and comments.

Answer 3

Given that this is Superuser, I'd suggest the following definitions (closer to the original meaning of hack):

Hack: Whacking/twiddling some system internals in a way not easily accomplished via standard GUI functions, usually accompanied by a disclaimer that the solution may break the computer if not done with care

Malware / Security: tags to use if you think you've been hacked, or if malware has messed up your system and you need help fixing/recovering it

We don't really need hack to be related to malware or security, since we have those tags. And if someone asks how to hack into a bank server I imagine we won't be assisting. So those meanings of hack don't need to be covered by the tag.

The tag 'hacked' in past tense could be used for people suffering security / malware issues if we really need another tag for that. This would differentiate from 'hack' in the sense of messing with the registry etc.