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Right now, we have a whole load of tags we need to kill off, but it's an uphill struggle.

We try not to flood the front page (and with awesome moderator powers, we could actually do that), but honestly, it's a pain in the rear. We've considered alternatives, but really there's not much happening.

This is what I want to propose.

Over one weekend, at most every two months, we have open season. We hunt down our errant tags. We cull our queues.

I'd like to propose that we do this on the 27th, and 28th. Timezones are a bit of a pain - I know Stack Exchange is American, but maybe from midnight on the 27th to midnight on the 28th UTC (27th 00:00 until ---28th--- 29th 00:00 UTC for the pedantic) seems to be a good idea (since everyone can add or subtract from that to their local time). But it's a month away, and we can adjust that.

Yay, nay, or the traditional thrown fruit? Am I missing anything obvious in my zeal?

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  • I suppose this raises the question of what powers do mods have? I always thought 'edit without bumping' and 'mass retag' were things you guys could do, and you were just waiting for (overwhelming) community consensus before acting?
    – Robotnik
    Commented Sep 5, 2014 at 3:42
  • 1
    We can't. I wish we did. You can see a full official list of our powers here. Practically outside more powerful tools, and one shot kills of closed and deleted questions and spammers, its not all that different from being a 20Ker. If non bumping edits were possible, I'm pretty sure someone would have already handled the tag situation.
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Commented Sep 5, 2014 at 3:46
  • Just need to motivate folks.... +2 for each cleanup should get the rep ho's in motion. It would probably benefit the various queues too. It beats the ostrich algorithm when dealing with the back logs. Or maybe each elected mod should be able to designate to a hand picked team of 4 or 5. That's a 5x mod multiplier.
    – jww
    Commented Sep 6, 2014 at 23:17
  • Is that midnight 00:00, or midnight 24:00?
    – user
    Commented Sep 8, 2014 at 8:58
  • Start of the 27th midnight
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Commented Sep 8, 2014 at 9:00
  • So 27th 00:00 until 28th 24:00 UTC? Or 27th 00:00 until 27th 24:00?
    – user
    Commented Sep 8, 2014 at 13:02
  • What if the site happens to be locked in "read-only mode" during this scheduled time? We should let the SE team know that they should not conduct tests during this time. Additionally, maybe you should also tell them to temporarily show the "recommended" homepage (stackoverflow.com/?tab=recommended) during this time (so as not to show a filled "active" homepage).
    – gparyani
    Commented Sep 8, 2014 at 16:19
  • Thats un-necessarily complicating things. I'll look at getting a community moderator message so people know. If we could trivially, and without dev-bothering do that, this would be easier. If we do happen to have unscheduled maintainance, we can always adjust our edit window.
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Commented Sep 8, 2014 at 23:07
  • If we can get official word on it, What about a "double-xp" weekend? Instead of +2, make it +4 per edit or something
    – Robotnik
    Commented Sep 9, 2014 at 6:05
  • This isn't 'official' in the SE Corporate official sort of way. Its something someone who happens to be a mod, and is annoyed at a problem we're trying to fix, fixing it. We can have a banner without too much trouble saying its tag-fix weekend. I'd rather not require active cm/dev intervention.
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Commented Sep 9, 2014 at 6:09
  • @JourneymanGeek That's a better idea, keeping in mind that it's only CMs and developers who have the ability to post system messages, and not moderators.
    – gparyani
    Commented Sep 10, 2014 at 0:06
  • @Robotnik Given that the maximum rep you can earn from having suggested edits approved is 1000, if your idea was to be the case, you'd need only 250 edits, not 500, to max out.
    – gparyani
    Commented Sep 10, 2014 at 0:09
  • @damryfbfnetsi - I was thinking that the limit would be ignored for the duration of the weekend - the idea was to encourage edits. But yeah JG is right, it would require Dev intervention.
    – Robotnik
    Commented Sep 10, 2014 at 0:23

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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a picture of a tidal wave.

Bring on the (temporary) tsunami of unbridled tag destruction. If you happen to be Mayan, you might want to revise your end-of-world predictions. Mark it on your (stone) calendar.

or, alternatively:

full throttle

Bring it on! /me slams to the bar with his nose ring

Full Throttle iconic picture from the 1995 game.

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  • Make sure that whatever method of mass destruction you pick is swiftly. :)
    – Tamara Wijsman
    Commented Sep 9, 2014 at 8:30
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Personally, I think we could give it a try, but I don't know how successful it would be compared to how we currently handle it.

I probably wouldn't be around for the event. I usually clean up tags during the weekday. Code is compiling? Clean up 5 questions!

I don't see myself waiting around for a single weekend each month just to crack down on tags.

That being said, everything that helps us get rid of all these crappy tags is a welcome change and I'm all in favor of it.

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1

ಠ_ಠ

Bad idea. We would lose, like, 12 potential spambaiters users over that time! Such a terrible loss of "life" would be unacceptable. Status quo plz.

Here, have a picture of a tomato.

a picture of a tomato.

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  • 5
    I am hungry for a tomato now!! Curse You!
    – Ramhound
    Commented Sep 4, 2014 at 19:43
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The clean up idea sounds good, but what is to keep these non value tags from being resurrected after the tsunami?

I had suggested a while ago about having low rep users tag creation face similar scrutiny of First Posts. This review process could help keep some control by the community to eliminate vague tags from being created in the first place.

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  • It'll be easier to maintain primarily. We've proposed changes to the tag creation process in the past. Different problems really. It'll be easier to maintain these tags once emptied, than constantly bailing them out.
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Commented Sep 6, 2014 at 3:16

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