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Welcome to the Sesquiannual Puzzling Tag Cleanup!

Almost a year and a half has gone by, and it's time to take a closer look at some of our tags. This question is a place anyone can post tags that need to be cleaned up in some way, and everyone can work on fixing them up.

Here are some things to look for:

  • Meta tags. These are tags that describe the question's context, rather than the question itself. My personal litmus tests are whether the tag can fill in the blanks for a question here:

    This question is a question about/on ________.
    This question is a challenge question structured like a ________ [question].

    Examples of meta tags include "beginner," because there is no such thing as a question about "beginner." An example of something that isn't a meta tag would be "trivia," because there are such things as questions on trivia.

  • Tags that are misnamed or would be better under a different name.
  • Tags that need to be synonymized into a more appropriate tag.
  • Tags that should be removed for some other reason.

Please note: tags that have no questions in them are removed automatically by the system every 24 hours without intervention.

If you see one of these, post an answer below containing what the tag is, what should be done, and why it needs to happen.

If you see answers below that you can do something about, please feel free to do so! For instance, if someone posts a meta tag with only a couple questions in it, you can edit the tags out of those questions, then edit into their answer.

While editing, please do try to be thorough. Instead of simply retagging, please scan the post quickly to see if there's something else that can be fixed up while you're there.

If it's something that requires a moderator to handle, we'll take a look at it and fix it up.

Answers here will be deleted when they are completed, and will be undeleted when the tag cleanup is finished.

Thanks, and happy cleaning!

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    $\begingroup$ If it's once in a-year-and-half, it's sesquiannual. $\endgroup$
    – user4682
    Sep 2, 2015 at 3:33
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    $\begingroup$ @NormalHuman Well, that's nifty. Thanks for that! (No guarantees that it's once per year and a half in the future, though.) $\endgroup$
    – user20
    Sep 2, 2015 at 3:34
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    $\begingroup$ @NormalHuman There's a word for that? O_o $\endgroup$
    – Doorknob
    Sep 2, 2015 at 11:09
  • $\begingroup$ What are the pros and cons of creating synonyms vs. retagging and deleting? It seems to me that if a tag has only a couple of questions and can be synonymized into another tag, then it probably makes more sense to retag and then delete the barely used tag. Is that SOP? $\endgroup$
    – GentlePurpleRain
    Sep 2, 2015 at 17:01
  • $\begingroup$ @GentleP Most of the time, they can just be removed. Synonyms are for tags that we think are likely to be used again, and should be remapped instead. Burnination is for tags which either should be removed by consensus, which are typos, and also for not-useful tags. Also, these tools our the site's to use how we see fit, so don't feel limited to these reasons. There are plenty more valid reasons than these. $\endgroup$
    – user20
    Sep 2, 2015 at 17:08
  • $\begingroup$ Would a tag about a subject be worthwhile? Supposing in the future, we had an event centered around zucchinis, and we ended up with 36 zucchini puzzles. Would zucchini be a "meta" tag? $\endgroup$
    – Kingrames
    Sep 2, 2015 at 17:19
  • $\begingroup$ As long as the tag's foremost purpose is to describe the content of the question, rather than that it was part of the event, it's not a meta-tag @King. $\endgroup$
    – user20
    Sep 2, 2015 at 17:23
  • $\begingroup$ All answers on this question are merely suggestions at the moment. When can we definitively convert these suggestions to reality? I mean, what benchmark do we use to decide if the suggestion is valid or not. If it's upvotes that drive it, then how many upvotes before it can be done? $\endgroup$
    – CodeNewbie
    Sep 2, 2015 at 17:48
  • $\begingroup$ @CodeNewbie Upvotes are a decent measure of support. If you're making changes yourself, then it's fine to use your own judgment. Nothing irreversible will happen here, so if an issue comes up, it's not hard to fix. $\endgroup$
    – user20
    Sep 2, 2015 at 18:12
  • $\begingroup$ @Doorknob In general, the prefix "sesqui-" means "one and a half". $\endgroup$
    – user88
    Sep 8, 2015 at 17:00
  • $\begingroup$ Lesson learned: we're really good with consistent tag usage. I doubt this will be necessary again for a while. $\endgroup$
    – user20
    Sep 13, 2015 at 20:38
  • $\begingroup$ @Emrakul Maybe you should delete completed answers here as well, this page is getting bloated. $\endgroup$
    – Rohcana
    Sep 15, 2015 at 20:01
  • $\begingroup$ @Anachor Good point. Doing that now. (Will undelete them once this question is automatically un-featured.) $\endgroup$
    – user20
    Sep 15, 2015 at 20:20
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    $\begingroup$ @Doorknob xkcd.com/1602 $\endgroup$
    – flawr
    Jul 8, 2016 at 16:40

16 Answers 16

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A little discussion needed on this one before it can be done. and has been created by the same user and have 2 and 1 questions tagged respectively. Can we dump these tags and instead tag them with ? Since I believe that solving these two questions requires knowledge of idioms and proverbs, the umbrella of is enough.


Following enough support, these questions have been retagged to .

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Is there really a need for both and ? I feel like can go, but I may be missing something.

- is now a synonym for

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    $\begingroup$ Arithmetic is a subset of math, but as a tag it doesn't really add much. $\endgroup$
    – Anubian Noob
    Sep 2, 2015 at 15:03
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There are a number of tags that could probably be "synonymized" into the tag:

(1 question)
(1 question)
(1 question)
(2 questions)
(3 questions)
(3 questions)

There is also , but I assume that should stay as its own tag.

EDIT: I have retagged the questions with the first four tags, as indicated above. The others might need a little more input, since doesn't necessarily deal with the game directly, but with the method of guessing it employs, and refers to puzzles that involve dominoes, but aren't necessarily related to the game.

Someone with more rep than me will need to delete the tags.

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: It has only two questions which are not really good example of what the tag represents. It could be merged with

- the tag has been manually edited out of these questions

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and have 0 questions, and no descriptions. I think they can be safely burninated.

- automated scripts made lunch of these tags last night (tags with no questions are deleted automatically), and they are no longer with us.

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    $\begingroup$ Tags with zero questions end up being removed automatically by the system. $\endgroup$
    – user20
    Sep 2, 2015 at 16:03
  • $\begingroup$ These tags are removed automatically every night (or maybe every few nights). And tags with a single question (and no tag wiki) are removed after six months. $\endgroup$
    – Kevin Brown-Silva
    Sep 2, 2015 at 16:26
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should be merged into . They cover effectively the same topics, and their tag wikis are similar as well.

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2
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There are a number of tags that could probably by "synonymized" into the tag:

(1 question) - by retagging
(3 questions) - by synonymization
(40 questions) (not sure about this one)

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    $\begingroup$ I'm not sure about rubiks-cube. I think it could be better on its own, since it's a useful categorization. The other ones I agree can be synonymized. $\endgroup$
    – user20
    Sep 2, 2015 at 17:11
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There is no tag wiki for this tag, yet it has 14 questions. It can be safely removed from any of the the 14 existing questions. This, in my opinion, is a prime example of a bad tag. Any puzzle can have numbers in them. But it adds nothing about the actual content of the puzzle. Most puzzles tagged this would fall under , or .

Is there any way to "lock" this tag so that in the future it cannot be used (it seems like a convenient catch-all for someone who doesn't want to think too carefully about tagging their question). Perhaps if they enter this tag, they get a message with some suggestions for other tags (as above) that might be more relevant?

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The tag also seems like it could fall under the umbrella of . Can we retag the 3 questions with this tag and then burninate the tag?

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    $\begingroup$ This makes me wonder if "trivia" could/should be broken down into "literature," "language," et cetera, instead of the other way around. $\endgroup$
    – user20
    Sep 2, 2015 at 5:17
  • $\begingroup$ @Emrakul: I feel people would not use the literature tag until the answer is found, as it can often be a big giveaway. I expect this tag's inclusions to usually be done later on. What do you think? $\endgroup$
    – CodeNewbie
    Sep 2, 2015 at 5:21
  • $\begingroup$ I see what you mean, actually. That makes sense. $\endgroup$
    – user20
    Sep 2, 2015 at 5:23
  • $\begingroup$ That would bloat the trivia tag considerably, I'm thinking. $\endgroup$
    – Kingrames
    Sep 2, 2015 at 17:16
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There are a number of tags that could probably be "synonymized" into the tag:

(1 question)
(1 question)
(2 questions)
(6 questions) (not sure about this one)

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has only one question and IMO is not useful. Can be merged with

This has been manually retagged out of questions.

Also, maybe not the most relevant here, but from the description for , maybe it should be renamed .

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  • $\begingroup$ But the puzzles tagged "games" are often for seeking optimal strategies for simple "bar-betting" type shenanigans. $\endgroup$
    – Hackiisan
    Sep 3, 2015 at 17:55
  • $\begingroup$ @Hackiisan In that case the tag wiki needs editing. $\endgroup$
    – Rohcana
    Sep 3, 2015 at 18:11
  • $\begingroup$ About game and gam theory, perhaps relevant? $\endgroup$
    – Illyasviel
    Sep 3, 2015 at 23:59
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There's a tag and an tag. I believe the latter should be merged into the former (as "einsteins-puzzle" isn't very descriptive of the actual problem type at all), but it looks like the former is being used for things that aren't the type of "is/is-not logical deduction" puzzles by the second tag.

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-

This and can be considered synonyms. Since we are having a topic challenge on , it makes sense to synonimize this with

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  • $\begingroup$ Wow, that was fast. $\endgroup$
    – Rohcana
    Sep 29, 2015 at 17:59
  • $\begingroup$ Yeah, I went ahead and made this synonym, because I have no idea how these could ever be construed as having different meanings. $\endgroup$
    – user20
    Sep 29, 2015 at 17:59
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Here are a bunch of other tags that could be retagged/deleted or synonymized. I didn't create a separate answer for each one, because I thought that would create too much clutter. If it's better to do it that way (so they can be voted on individually), just let me know.

falls under
falls under
falls under

is synonymous with - by synonym
is synonymous with (as Anachor pointed out, these are not synonymous)
is synonymous with

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  • $\begingroup$ Latin squares are not synonymous with sudoku. Sudokus are a special case of latin squares with an additional constraint (each 3 X 3 board must have 1 to 9) Therefore if something is deleted it should be sudoku, which is not a good idea. $\endgroup$
    – Rohcana
    Sep 2, 2015 at 17:11
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There is an open proposition to merge into .

Should this synonym be made? I personally think it's a valid synonym; just posting here before confirming, because it affects a large number of questions.

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was created to gauge interest in promoting puzzling as a service, but the suggestion was shot down.

are empty tags that don't have much to do with puzzling in the first place.

might be meta-tags.

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    $\begingroup$ There aren't any questions with those tags. They'll get cleaned up by the system automatically. $\endgroup$
    – Illyasviel
    Sep 3, 2015 at 23:55

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