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We currently have 385 questions tagged with and looking towards the impending release of Windows 8 I am wondering what will happen to the -preview tag.

I guess that we will have a proper tag, though it seems to be synonymed with -preview at the moment.

The main thing I can see happening is that the synonym gets reversed so that now redirects to and effectively all current -preview tags get swapped over but this seems messy to me. Surely there are some questions that are only applicable to the preview and these should simply be closed.

To my mind these are the options:

  • Close all questions as they are no longer relevant (though some may still be)
  • reverse the tag synonym and go through all the questions to check which are still valid, closing and deleting those that are not
  • break the tag synonym and let the preview questions get weeded out and retagged by the community on an "as is" basis

I'm sure I'm missing something here.

Has a decision already been made on this?

5
  • 2
    That depends on whether they are specific to the preview or not eh? But the preview obviously has a limited live time, so at some point those questions will render useless/outdated
    – Ivo Flipse
    Jul 12, 2012 at 13:17
  • I guess the main problem is that we have no way of knowing what will change between the release candidates and the final release and whether or not the questions will become useless without reviewing them on a case-by case basis. I don't like the idea of simply nuking a well used tag, but as a tag it would no longer be desirable to have it at all once Windows 8 is released.
    – Mokubai Mod
    Jul 12, 2012 at 13:24
  • we'll probably end up removing the synonym.
    – Sathyajith Bhat Mod
    Jul 12, 2012 at 13:30
  • 1
    > go through all the questions to check which are still valid, closing and deleting those that are not — that'd make sense IMO. Someone just has to collect a list of questions that aren't useful anymore.
    – slhck
    Jul 12, 2012 at 15:00
  • 2
    I've been thinking/worrying about this too. Right now I'm thinking maybe we should remove the synonym, but not retag everything. Questions and answers can be updated to apply to the final release as necessary, and retagged as such.
    – nhinkle
    Jul 12, 2012 at 17:00

3 Answers 3

4

With couple of months to go for general availability, I've removed the synonym; since the RTM is also available from MSDN(AA).

has 456 questions no doubt some limited to the preview, we'll take a look at them soon enough

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  • How should people using the RTM tag their questions? BTW, I agree with that last part. I deleted my preview question as the problem went away with the RTM. Aug 16, 2012 at 11:06
  • 1
    @Louis RTM builds are same as ones for general availability right? Just windows-8 should be fine
    – Sathyajith Bhat Mod
    Aug 16, 2012 at 11:37
  • @Sathya GA is in October, not August. 10 days + 2 months?
    – nhinkle
    Aug 16, 2012 at 16:35
  • @nhinkle woops - jumped the gun there
    – Sathyajith Bhat Mod
    Aug 16, 2012 at 17:21
  • 1
    @Sathya it's probably fine to have the tags be separate now though, since some people can get it through MSDN already.
    – nhinkle
    Aug 16, 2012 at 17:25
1

Looking at the tags today, it seems the OP's third bullet point was applied:

  • break the tag synonym and let the preview questions get weeded out and retagged by the community on an "as is" basis

Of the options suggested here, I think that one does make the most sense.

To my mind, unconditionally closing "preview" questions later because deeming them no longer relevant is not a good idea. A question asked during the technical preview may turn out to be irrelevant to the RTM product, but equally it may turn out to have exactly the same answer in relation to the RTM product. We don't know which till the RTM product's released.

The question's now come up again with Windows 10.

and are currently synonymous.

If we are to have "product version preview" tags, we should not make them synonymous with the corresponding "product version" tags. We should keep them separate, so that preview-tagged questions can be filtered later. Otherwise there's no point in having both tags.

(Related: Deprecate product version preview tags - just use new version tag straight away)

-2

Well i can suggest that

  1. we can redefine the synonym

2.we can also place the line as described in windows 7 tag

Windows 7 is the current release of Microsoft Windows and is the successor to Windows Vista, released for general retail on October 22, 2009. If your issue does not relate to Windows 7 specifically, use the [windows] tag instead.

we can reedit and

Windows 8 is the of Microsoft Windows and is the successor to Windows 7, If your issue does not relate to Windows 8 specifically about your preview edition, use the [windows 8-preview] tag instead.

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  • @Mokubai consider my answer and may i knew am i suggested any wrong recommendations? Aug 16, 2012 at 7:11

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