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A couple of days ago, I came across this question and noticed it's tag - . When I looked at the questions list, it seems that many of these questions have been migrated from other sites (Electronics.SE in particular) and haven't been given any new tags on the new site.

Stack Overflow's untagged tag wiki states that this tag is:

a special tag that is designed to be used only by the system for questions that have had all of their other tags removed

for various reasons (in our case, mainly migration).

It also says:

You can help clean up some of these questions! If they're good questions, edit them to remove the untagged tag and add more descriptive tags. If they're not so good, use the usual tools: downvoting, flagging and voting to close/delete.

So, I think we should start cleaning up our list. I've done a bit of editing myself, and I'd like it if the community could help me.

So, help me clean up our pile! Edit the question to use the correct tags and fix any other mistakes while you're at it. If the question is a candidate for closing, flag or vote to close. Let's try and clear this tag so it has zero questions!

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    Nice catch I had not noticed this tag until reviewing your suggested edits.
    – Steve Robillard Mod
    Commented Sep 30, 2015 at 9:55

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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I was not aware of this tag either, thanks much for bringing it to our attention and putting in some care taking work.

I've just reduced that list from 13 to 5 (actually I think Steve or someone did a few of those during the same time period); it should be completed easily, and I'll keep my eye open for it in the future.

Some of them are also off-topic here; we don't have to accept all migrated questions, which are sometimes, ahem, just poor quality (aka. garbage) and should have been closed, not migrated. I don't migrate programming questions to S.O. when I know they will fail there too, I just close them as off-topic and indicate in comments what the OP needs to think about if s/he wants help anywhere.

Anyway, for that purpose I've added the tag. One of these was already closed as such by others, the other one I just closed. There's no point in coming up with tags for them (they're off-topic), but this way we can keep them separate from "untagged" questions that have been legitimately migrated but not properly re-tagged.

Such off-topic, migration rejected questions should be deleted after a reason (-ably short) period of time.

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  • I edited about 6 questions earlier in the night and flagged a few to be closed. About the off-topic tag, it sounds too much like a meta-tag to me. Jeff Atwood specifically discouraged these greatly back in 2010. So maybe it would be better if we tag with the closest possible tag, even if it is only remotely related?
    – angussidney
    Commented Sep 30, 2015 at 23:16
  • Alternatively, we could simply delete them after they have been around for (3?) months or so
    – angussidney
    Commented Sep 30, 2015 at 23:20
  • When I see Jeff Atwood I will remember to bring this up with him (and cross my fingers he doesn't slash my paycheck as a volunteer, lol). Which is a slightly (un)serious way of saying, it's a somewhat community driven system, not a pure vertical hierarchy. I actually agree with your point -- this is a bit outside the bounds of the general purpose of tagging -- and I was aware, but unless "specifically discouraged" in this case amounts to "we won't stand for it", then no harm no foul? After all, untagged itself is exactly the same kind of meta-tag, which exists I presume because...
    – goldilocks Mod
    Commented Oct 1, 2015 at 1:34
  • ...it is simpler than a system that requires, e.g., a "migration queue" so things can be reviewed and fit into place [Of course, it could be said, "No, you don't get it, it's not the same thing at all!" and we could both write long theses about this...]. There are a lot of (less whimsical) one-size-fits all aspects of S.E. that are probably detrimental to RPi.SE, which the rampant Panglossianism that dominates at Meta tends to, as they say, Pangloss this over, so I don't feel bound to give it all automatic respect.
    – goldilocks Mod
    Commented Oct 1, 2015 at 1:34
  • Put another way, while I think the S.E. system is awesome (I wouldn't put in hours almost every day doing this otherwise), I don't see it as beyond criticism, or the "best of all possible worlds", or my (or anyone's) role to simply be exegesis of a doctrine [Wow -- I must have been keeping that bottled up for a while!] But point taken, and those questions certainly should be deleted anyway. Note that community managers do periodically come around here and if they are upset by my quackery and want to politely contradict me that's 100% fine,
    – goldilocks Mod
    Commented Oct 1, 2015 at 1:35
  • but until then I'll stick to the premise that this is harmless (and certainly, no where near as stupid as a dupe blurb that says, "This question has already been asked and has an answer...", when in fact dupes do not necessarily have an answer, an issue people have been pointing out for years, but neither Jeff Atwood nor anyway else in a position to correct it have bothered to correct, something I noticed the other day looking through Meta -- they just close all questions about this as dupes leading back to one which, hysterical irony, of course has no answer! ROTFL!)
    – goldilocks Mod
    Commented Oct 1, 2015 at 1:35
  • Maybe I'm doing this so you will think I am too crazy to argue with ;) Or maybe because I don't want to seem dismissive when I say, honestly, the idea that we should "tag with the closest possible tag, even if it is only remotely related" just so we do not contradict the sentiments of a fallible Papacy is like, absurd. That said, if you don't like the off-topic tag idea, feel free to ignore me. I can respect that.
    – goldilocks Mod
    Commented Oct 1, 2015 at 1:35
  • I do agree with you (and disagree with Jeff), in that some meta-tags are good for the community. If the questions in the off-topic tag were cleared on a periodic basis, it would be great since the tag actually has a purpose from an administration point of view. However, if we're just going to go around retagging every off-topic question as off-topic, it would be a bad meta tag.
    – angussidney
    Commented Oct 1, 2015 at 8:14
  • So I don't think I phrased my comment correctly. I really meant "I agree with you, I like this off-topic tag idea, but it is against what the SE community at large has agreed on."
    – angussidney
    Commented Oct 1, 2015 at 8:18
  • Thanks for not running in horror after all that. Probably a better thing to have said would be, I agree that's a meta tag, but so is "untagged", and while I don't think anyone should go crazy inventing more such things, I'm okay with making an exception in this case. Lest we think I am a total wingnut: raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/q/26187/5538 What can be said about that? I don't like the idea of, e.g., sticking audio or something on it. It's just off-topic. It's old -- but bizarrely, just migrated yesterday -- it probably should just be deleted, and maybe it will be...
    – goldilocks Mod
    Commented Oct 1, 2015 at 11:37
  • ...But part of me feels there's a benefit to leaving things like that around, because it will still show up in a search and unequivocally demonstrate this is off-topic here. Kind of a negligible benefit, but we are talking about real corner cases here. Exceptions, so to speak. With an exceptional tag.
    – goldilocks Mod
    Commented Oct 1, 2015 at 11:37
  • It's basically sitting there at the moment, off-topic, doing nothing. I vote to delete it. (well, just philosophically, I don't have close or delete votes yet :))
    – angussidney
    Commented Oct 1, 2015 at 11:40
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat.
    – angussidney
    Commented Oct 1, 2015 at 11:40

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