19

As it is, the tag is ambiguous. Even the tag wiki excerpt is split:

DOS is an acronym for "Disk Operating System." DoS is an acronym for "Denial of Service." Do not use this tag for questions about Windows command line programs or scripts.

To make matters worse, nobody seems to read the last sentence.

This is what I'd like to do:

  1. Most questions tagged as an acronym for "Disk Operation System" should actually use one of the following (existing) tags instead:

    Retag accordingly.

  2. Retag the questions about DoS attacks as (new tag).

  3. Last but not least, either one of these to options:

    • Leave the remaining questions from paragraph 1 – if any – tagged as and edit the tag wiki accordingly.

    • As suggested by @avirk, retag the remaining questions from paragraph 1 – if any – and ask some kind Mod to burninate™ the tag.

Since this would be a major retag (137 questions), I thought I'd ask here first.

8
  • Yeah, you are right it should be edit. Then probably it should be remove from the community and should be restricted to create again.
    – avirk
    Commented Jun 9, 2012 at 19:09
  • There might be questions where a [dos] tag would be appropriate. If the tag is going to be burniated, I guess we could tag those [disk-operating-system].
    – Dennis
    Commented Jun 9, 2012 at 19:12
  • Yes they should be. However dos is ambiguous so it should be through out. :D
    – avirk
    Commented Jun 9, 2012 at 19:26
  • I'm torn between the two options, so I incorporated your idea in the question.
    – Dennis
    Commented Jun 9, 2012 at 19:32
  • The first one is also good. But if dos tag goes away forever then the remaining question should have to retag.
    – avirk
    Commented Jun 9, 2012 at 19:53
  • 9
    I'd prefer [denial-of-service] instead of [dos-attack].
    – Daniel Beck Mod
    Commented Jun 9, 2012 at 20:30
  • 9
    And once again... "You entered 'dos', did you mean [cmd.exe], [dosbox], [ms-dos], [freedos] or [denial-of-service]?
    – Daniel Beck Mod
    Commented Jun 9, 2012 at 20:39
  • 1
    I dare to say that some questions/answers apply equally to several DOSes (free and otherwise), so some tag should exist for those cases, without having to add free-, ms-, -box, etc. There should be a generic tag for those cases, doesn't it?
    – jarnowic
    Commented Apr 6, 2016 at 21:30

5 Answers 5

Reset to default
9

Points 1 & 2 are very much preferred. Since each question will have to be looked at, there isn"t any automated way of doing this.

I suggest taking the questions in batches and spacing out the edits to prevent edit flooding of front page

2
  • I know it can't be automated. I was just looking for approval before starting to retag. I'll do it in batches, as you suggested.
    – Dennis
    Commented Jun 9, 2012 at 23:36
  • 1
    @Dennis forgot to mention this, don't take it up all by yourself, join Root access and ask for help from the folks in there!
    – Sathyajith Bhat Mod
    Commented Jun 10, 2012 at 5:34
7

This tag has been burned and blacklisted:

Please help to clean up

2
  • Wait a sec, did you guys just implement this?
    – slhck Mod
    Commented Oct 24, 2014 at 18:07
  • Not exactly, but this provides a work-around.
    – Shog9
    Commented Oct 24, 2014 at 18:19
5

enter image description here

7
  • 1
    Is your point that the job is completed? If so, maybe add a bit of text to that effect - right now this answer's sort of confusing.
    – nhinkle Mod
    Commented Jun 26, 2012 at 16:36
  • @nhinkle: My point was to signal that there are 0 questions that are tagged with the dos tag when I posted the answer.
    – Oliver Salzburg
    Commented Jun 26, 2012 at 17:24
  • It's been recreated now, again.
    – gparyani
    Commented Oct 23, 2014 at 23:21
  • @damryfbfnetsi: What the… O___o
    – Oliver Salzburg Mod
    Commented Oct 24, 2014 at 8:47
  • @OliverSalzburg If a deleted tag removed as per a tag cleanup request gets recreated again, should we tag the older question as planned again, or should we have to create a new request for the same tag?
    – gparyani
    Commented Oct 24, 2014 at 15:12
  • 1
    @damryfbfnetsi: Good question. Most importantly, we need to find whoever re-created it and lynch them! It would probably be best to somehow notify a moderator of the situation so that they can mark the question planned again.
    – Oliver Salzburg Mod
    Commented Oct 24, 2014 at 16:33
  • Oh, and if a certain tag gets cleaned and recreated several times, it should be blacklisted so as to prevent future recreation. This, I think, applies to the company tags.
    – gparyani
    Commented Oct 24, 2014 at 20:04
2

Migrated from comment and expanded

@Dennis, i dont think what DoS (network attack and more likely a serverfault subject) prevails over DOS (operating system and source of various superuser problems).

I've sampled 30 of question tagged [dos]. All of them were more or less related to DOS (there are lot of mixing up real DOS prompt and NT command processor). None of them were related to network attack. So, i think your retagging initiative will not improve quality.

Moreover, tag wiki suggests being more specific on which DOS is being discussed in the question. This is simply wrong; in reality, most of DOS forks (there are whole bunch of them, including rarities such as Panasonic DOS, etc) are compatible enough to be discussed as single subject, and the most of problems encountered with DOS are unspecific to DOS fork used (there is more "specifity" flavour depends on the DOS version instead)

For example, look at the typical MS-DOS machine (most probably virtual nowadays). There is a good chance to find a plenty of "foreign" binaries along with MS-DOS core toolset, usually originated from PC-DOS, or FreeDOS (in the modern times), or Caldera (old days).

3
  • 1
    DoS doesn't prevail over DOS. I'm retagging DoS questions as [denial-of-service] and DOS questions as [command-line], [disk-operating-system] or a "subtag" of the latter. You may be right that all DOS forks should be merged in [disk-operating-system], but the [dos] tag has to go.
    – Dennis
    Commented Jun 10, 2012 at 2:48
  • 1
    @Dennis, i figure that out, but i do agree with first part only. Additionally, there are lot of questions about [command-line] of GUI OS and they are specific to NT command processor instead of DOS command processor. But removal of DOS tag will only add more obscurity, people and search engines will keep asking about [dos], not about [disk-operating-system] (which, again, refers to ancient System/360 mainframes).
    – user539484
    Commented Jun 10, 2012 at 3:19
  • Do external search engines even analyze question tags? Beyond that, if a question relates to DOS (as opposed to DoS), wouldn't the questioner include that in their question? And if the questioner (through inexperience) failed to mention that in the question, wouldn't someone be likely to come along and edit the question to make that clear?
    – killermist
    Commented Jun 17, 2012 at 19:56
1

  1. Instead of focusing on MS-DOS, we could be talking about systems. This is probably similar to OP's 1st point, alas more generic.

  2. I'm not sure if DoS or DDoS attacks are more frequent, but DDoS is definitely more powerful and annoying. I presume that every self-respecting attacker will either use a botnet or cooperation of his peers to attack, thus the tag could work. also works fine, probably better.

I couldn't, unfortunately, find official stats to back-up my proposal, especially the second one, so if someone finds related references please DO comment!

1
  • 1) DOS-compatible sounds a little confusing to me. This could defer to DOS-compatible hardware, DOS-compatible programs or operating systems closely related to some DOS flavor. 2) I ultimately went with @DanielBeck's suggestion and used [denial-of-service]. Every DDoS attack is by definiton a DoS attack, so it fits perfectly. [ddos] is already a synonym.
    – Dennis
    Commented Jun 11, 2012 at 17:36

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