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One of the most misused tags on our site. Love it or hate it, we have to do something about it.

I first created the tag 6 months ago when I was cleaning up . There were two questions which needed a tag, but none of the existing tags fitted. Hence, I came up with (what seemed like at the time) a brilliant idea to create an all-encompassing tag for these sorts of issues about the Foundation itself.

What I did not forsee when creating this tag, was that newbies to SE would search up raspberry pi when tagging their question, and since the new tag was the only tag containing the words raspberry pi, they would think that they have to tag their question with this tag.

Now, gets ~20 mistagged questions per month. Luckily, myself and other community members have been editing this tag out of questions before they get too out of had, but we shouldn't have to do this. We need to do something.

Our original plan was to enable a tag warning. However when we took this to the CMs, they wanted us to rethink whether we actually need the tag, and if we do need it, discuss if there is a better way to solve this problem.

Now is when we discuss these issues. So, if you have something to say in this discussion, please:

  • state whether or not you think the tag should be kept, and why
  • and if it should be kept, what is a better way to deal with this problem.
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Reset to default
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I'll weight in as someone who doesn't care much but if the decision were left solely up to me, I'd get rid of it. I've definitely removed from stuff once or twice a week. So on the one hand, it helps in my race vs. Jacobm to the next copy editor badge.

In all seriousness, there's five with it right now. One is closed as a duplicate about how the Pi got its name, a question which screams out instead for a

"History" Tag

Another is also closed because it is an irrecoverably bad question

Is there an official Raspberry Pi site for computer scientists?

(Which some lunatic besides the author actually wants re-opened, but never mind that). BTW: I think there should be an actual off-topic and/or bad question tag but my efforts to do that in the past mysteriously failed -- go figure.

That leaves only two questions:

Wiring diagram software

Where there are two other, more specific tags, and the foundation one is a bit superfluous, and finally,

Has the Rasberry Pi website taken on a new theme?

Which may or may not have been the result of an April Fool's day joke -- leading to my suggestion:

Close the tag!

As in, leave those question and disallow any more. This isn't possible as far as I know, unfortunately -- so I guess I'm fine with getting rid of it except I don't think that will solve the problem, if the the problem is misuse of the tag because it contains "raspberry-pi". The problem will more likely just change shape -- e.g., people creating new superfluous tags, which is harder to deal with. At least this way we have a well known honey pot.

Coming to a straightforward decision: Replace it with a (and probably plain foundation) tag.

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  • I am not a great user of tags (most usages seem arbitrary) so I don't really care whether it stays or goes. I do delete it whenever I see it. My main use of tags is to filter out questions I am not interested in (for the record windows-iot & pi-zero). I think an off-topic flag would be good (obviously this would only be used by editors).
    – Milliways
    Apr 7, 2016 at 4:24
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    I do object to using an off-topic tag for general questions (we don't want to be running around replacing the tags on bad questions with off-topic), however if it is used as part of a cleanup, or to mark questions for mod deletion (only the ones which wouldn't automatically be deleted) then I'm fine with that. Anyway, back to the point, a 'history' tag might be a good idea.
    – angussidney
    Apr 7, 2016 at 7:12
  • @angussidney, I agree with that. off-topic should not be a tag. There are procedures to handle off-topic content. Tags are mainly to support categorization, search, and notifications (fav/ignore topics) not to flagg content for deletion. To be honest the mere existance of an off-topic tag will lead straight down hill, new users might even start to use it on their questions.
    – Ghanima Mod
    Apr 7, 2016 at 16:51
  • Well, TBH in my heart of hearts I agree. I believe it had to do with some housekeeping work last year and bunches of stale questions with only untagged -- something the system uses for stuff that's migrated with no equivalent local tags. We're supposed to/should watch for/beware of them (right now there aren't any/it appears to not exist). I'm not sure what eventually became of those questions (which were still nothing but off-topic here) except noticing at some point my little piece of snide-ness had disappeared.
    – goldilocks Mod
    Apr 7, 2016 at 16:56
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Should we keep this tag?

Maybe. While some of the questions which are tagged with this are closed, there are still some useful questions there. However @goldilocks' idea of a tag probably would be better.

But, according to the help center

If your question is about:

  • Materials published or provided by the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

… then you’re in the right place to ask your question!

But how should these questions be tagged? Possibly with , or maybe a new tag (e.g. ).

A better way to solve this problem, if we keep the tag

Why is it happening in the first place?

New users, unfamiliar with the SE tagging system, just search for raspberry pi in the tag box. Since all our model names are now prefixed with pi- (no raspberry), the only tag to pop up is . Hence, they choose this tag, after not being able to find an appropriate tag with minimal (no) effort.

How can we stop this behaviour?

By removing the word raspberry from the tag, or by coming up with another name entirely.

If we simply name the tag , then users searching for pi will see all the version and library tags instead of this single tag, therefore increasing the chances of them picking an appropriate tag. In fact, the only way to come across the tag will be to search directly for foundation.

TL;DR: Should we keep it? Maybe. Are there better ways of solving this problem? Yes.

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  • Okay, so here's what I ended up doing: Removed completely the raspberry-pi-foundation tag (except, tee-hee, from meta, which has its own set of tags) and replaced it with official-foundation (which turns up if you search tags for "foundation"). I also added a history tag and appended that to the two questions about the name.
    – goldilocks Mod
    Apr 7, 2016 at 16:44
  • I'll 'close' the tag warning question based on that.
    – Ghanima Mod
    Apr 7, 2016 at 16:53

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