Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers.
@Ramhound agreed upon finding out that they changed the kernel version from 6.2.XXXX (Win8) to 6.3.XXXX (Win8.1). Windows Vista stayed as 6.0.XXXX through SP0/1/2, and Windows 7 SP0/1 had kernel version 6.1.XXXX. So I'd agree, windows-8.1 and windows-8 should indeed stay as separate tags (question updated to reflect this reasoning).
@nhinkle agreed, I think we should just avoid even having a windows-blue tag unless absolutely needed. I edited the original question to focus on the issue of having windows-8.1 a synonym of windows-8, only because there is no service-pack specific tag for windows-7 SP1 either.
While the windows-8.1 tag exists, specifically regarding adding it as a synonym of windows-8 is a valid issue to bring up, and not technically solved as of yet. I edited your question to focus more on this issue, but feel free to roll it back or further modify it. (Also, since it remains an open-issue after my re-wording, you might want to un-accept my answer until we gather some additional feedback from the community.)
@slhck I see what you mean (assuming you're referring to the linked blog post, which might give off the impression of being hardware-specific). Do you think it might be worth adding something to the help center regarding "How do I post a question that might deal with recommending software"?
I like this, but I think it might be worth grouping software + hardware together, as those are usually what I think of as "concrete" products (and it would be pretty easy to tell from the question which one we're dealing with). That would leave services and learning materials together, and while IMHO they should be separate, at least for the questions that would be closed with that reason, whether it's a service (is there a web API to do X?) or learning recommendation (how do I make a script to do Y?) would likewise be quite apparent.
