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Why is it that is used for questions relating to iCalendar? Can we have iCal or even iCalendar instead? I don't know if upper casing is allowed in tag names, but this could also be ical or icalendar respectively. We could also use i-cal and i-calendar.

In my opinion, the ics tag should only be used for ICS. You know, Internet Connection Sharing. I think this is a more proper use for this tag. Most of the questions that are tagged as ics actually don't have anything to do with iCalendar at all. Most of them are relating to ICS.

I understand that this is a conflict. My suggestion is that we create a new tag for iCalendar questions and edit the description of the current ics tag and include "Internet Connection Sharing" in the description.

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    Note that these questions are (likely) not about the software iCal (now: Calendar.app) specifically, but about the files and their support in (quoting Wikipedia) Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, GoDaddy Online Group Calendar, IBM Lotus Notes, Yahoo! Calendar, Evolution, eM Client, Lightning extension for Mozilla Thunderbird and SeaMonkey, and Microsoft Outlook and Novell GroupWise.
    – Daniel Beck Mod
    Commented Sep 22, 2013 at 17:58
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    @DanielBeck So every file name extension should have its own tag then?
    – Samir
    Commented Sep 22, 2013 at 17:59
  • @DanielBeck What tag do you suggest for ICS then? How can we resolve this conflict?
    – Samir
    Commented Sep 22, 2013 at 18:00
  • The important file formats should have their own tags. ics is important through pretty widespread support. And while the file format name apparently is iCalendar, we don't use the common file name extension for many other formats as well, so it's consistent. And regarding the ambiguity, feel free to support my feature request for solving tag ambiguity on MSO: "You entered ics, did you mean icalendar-file or internet-connection-sharing?"
    – Daniel Beck Mod
    Commented Sep 22, 2013 at 18:01
  • FWIW there's connection-sharing, but it's not exactly popular. Note that I'm not against your request, so far, I'm undecided.
    – Daniel Beck Mod
    Commented Sep 22, 2013 at 18:05
  • @DanielBeck But in my view, connection-sharing can have several meanings. I guess that's why it's not very popular. While ICS or Internet Connection Sharing refers to a very specific Microsoft technology used in Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and chances are that it's still the same in Windows 8.1.
    – Samir
    Commented Sep 22, 2013 at 20:18
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    "ICS" can also stand for "Ice Cream Sandwich", aka Android 4.0.
    – ale
    Commented Sep 23, 2013 at 15:10
  • Not to mention...en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICS
    – ale
    Commented Sep 23, 2013 at 15:13
  • @AlEverett Most of those are not relevant in the context of SuperUser. The Android one can be easily solved with android-ics, but SU probably should not have tags for specific versions of the Android OS anyway.
    – Bob
    Commented Sep 25, 2013 at 6:28
  • @Bob: My point was that ICS, like most TLAs, is probably not sufficient on its own. It will need to be disambiguated, as it were.
    – ale
    Commented Sep 25, 2013 at 12:19

3 Answers 3

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My suggestions for this essentially mirror Oliver's:

  • Retag all of the questions about Windows' Internet Connection Sharing to
  • Retag all of the questions about .ics/iCalendar to

However, I don't feel that it's necessary to synonymize to either of these. Someone will inevitably tag their question with without realizing it synonymizes to the wrong thing.

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I would suggest going through the questions that are tagged right now and retag them to where applicable.

Questions that refer to the ICS file format, should have the tag removed and should optionally be tagged with or .

The should be made a synonym of either tag. If nobody has a good reason to pick either one of the tags as the synonym target, I would pick .

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  • We can't use internet-connection-sharing, as it violates the 25 character maximum length.
    – nc4pk
    Commented Sep 29, 2013 at 14:35
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    @tapped-out: Ugh, that sucks :P How about windows-ics then?
    – Oliver Salzburg Mod
    Commented Sep 29, 2013 at 14:42
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.ics for an extension, ICS for internet connection sharing, and The Program name for the program that any .ics discussion is about.

Straw man argument tossed out.

I think All extensions should be include the DOT .ics when searching for an extension. If it doesn't have the dot it will come up with many many possible 3 digit abbreviated terms in many fields. If the SU extensions are to be found, then they should be extensions not abbreviations for anything.

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    A) ics refers to the iCalendar file format supported by MS Outlook, Lotus Notes, Novell GroupWise, Lightning for Thunderbird, and Apple Mail, not a $2 app by some random developer. Read the tag description and/or Wikipedia. Nice straw man argument there. B) Almost all other file name extension tags (pdf, rar, zip, doc, docx, xls, xlsx, swf, exe, mkv, mp4, mp3, 3gp, vob, m4a, msi, wmv, wma) have tags without a leading dot, making your "make it a real extention with the dot" suggestion completely baseless.
    – Daniel Beck Mod
    Commented Sep 22, 2013 at 20:37
  • Hey its not my fault that the way it was done was wrong from the start. Extentions are extentions and Abreviations that can mean anything dont have a dot. I certannly wouldnt have set it up that way myself. It is already bad enough to find out what program an extention is for.
    – Psycogeek
    Commented Sep 22, 2013 at 21:35

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