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Tags for the Drupal version has been changed from to , but is still the most used tag on Drupal Answers.

  • What is the next step? Should we check all the questions tagged with , decide if keeping the tag, changing it with , or removing it?
  • What should we do if users keep to use the version tag when it is not necessary?
  • What should we do if one of the tags is used for half of the questions?

So far, is still used for 976 questions, and it still is the most used tag. This means that, if nothing has changed since the last post from @Jeff Atwood about the version tags being bad, we are still in the same situation we were when was not a blocked tag.

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  • I wrote this question, as writing any decision in comments is never a good idea. Some ideas have been proposed in comment of a @Jeff Atwood post, but they are in comments.
    – apaderno Mod
    May 26, 2011 at 12:43
  • The problem is that drupal-6 and drupal-7 have been renamed to "please-remove-this-tag" and that was then renamed to "7". So now all questions that were tagged with either of these versions are now tagged "7", from what I can see. Unless we can restore the old tagging information, we'll have to manually re-tag all these questions.
    – Berdir
    May 26, 2011 at 13:57
  • @Berdir The problem is not that. Even if we would still have questions tagged "drupal-7" we would have a similar problem. As @Jeff Atwood reported that such tags should be used only when necessary, we should still need to review all the questions, and see which questions really need to be tagged with one of those version tags. The fact the tag is "drupal-7," or "7" doesn't change anything.
    – apaderno Mod
    May 26, 2011 at 14:03
  • Renaming the tags as "please-remove-this-tag" would have helped people to understand that they don't need to use that tag, which means they should have pondered which tags they really need. "please-remove-this-tag" is a tag used when bulk retagging questions in other SE sites, such as cooking.SE, which uses that tag with the purpose of removing undesired tags that have been used in too much questions to be manually removed one by one.
    – apaderno Mod
    May 26, 2011 at 14:11
  • You could ask why it's not possible to remove such tags directly, without to first rename them. The difference is that renaming a tag through the moderator tools doesn't bump an old question in the front page; the dummy tag would then be manually replaced with the correct tags (or completely removed) step by step, avoiding to re-tag too many question in once, and hide the new questions in the front page. At the same time, the undesired tag vanishes from the list of tags in an instant; there is still a track of the questions that needs to be retagged, though.
    – apaderno Mod
    May 26, 2011 at 14:28
  • @kiamlaluno That is not what I meant. I only meant that the drupal-6 and drupal-7 tags were first merged together and then renamed to 7. So all questions that were tagged drupal-6 or drupal-7 are now tagged with 7. Which means that we irreversibly lost the version information and will have to manually go through these tags. So I think we're better off with removing the 7 tag from the old questions and then re-tag them as appropriate instead of going to through all 7-tagged questions and remove or change to 6.
    – Berdir
    May 26, 2011 at 14:32
  • @Bedir The problem is that if you remove the "7" tag from all the questions, you don't know anymore which questions had a version tag, and which not. The result is that we would check all the questions, and decide if to add a version tag or not. Would not be easier to do it only for questions that uses "7"? In How can I obscure the fact my site uses Drupal?, I removed the version tag because the question was not specific to Drupal 7. Would you check it again to decide if adding the version tag?
    – apaderno Mod
    May 26, 2011 at 14:38

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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The tag (now renamed to ) was so prevalent because it was so easy for users to stumble into using them whenever they started typing D-R-U-P… It pops up in the text completion so users say "oh, I must need a version tag!".

I would start going through the questions tagged and start culling them from questions, except for those rare, rare cases where the question is truly about the specific version.

Users will imitate what they see. Now that they can't create drupal-* tags, and they wont see 7's sprinked everywhere, I suspect you will see them being used less and less.

Anytime a user does use a version tag, just take a look at the question and remove when it's not appropriate. As with any other community self-moderation issue, leave a brief comment why the tag was changed or removed. Such comments will continue to instruct those who come after.

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I noticed that the tags had changed, I had missed all of the discussion on meta.

I am still a little torn over the issues. Personally I think that has to be a good middle way.

Perhaps rather than editing the tags, we could edit questions to say for D6 or D7 or (5, 4 or 8). While I like the idea of a gradually updated wiki of answers reflecting the most relivant version of an answer with perhaps exceptions for different versions explained I don't think any community could be big or diligent enough to maintain that.

The current experience is (and this is not specific for DA), someone needs help with a problem and they post a question. They are really looking to find a solution to their problem. This will be specific to the version of the software which they are using. If someone posts an answer for a different version they have not had a good experience on the site and may not return.

So I think that we need to know the version of the software so that we can help users. If tags are not the answer ( and I do see the point with the Drupal-6 and drupal-7 tags polluting the site) then I think that amending the question with the version is the only way forward.

Those of us that answer questions can perhaps be a bit more verbose, and outline the solution, or at least what is different, for other versions of Drupal. But to give a specific answer I still think that the version number is required.

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  • See what reported by @Jeff Atwood in meta.drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/251/…, and meta.drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/229/…. In short, he is saying that such tags should be used only when necessary and, for what I understood, using it in 976 questions out of 1047 question is not that he defines using a tag only when necessary.
    – apaderno Mod
    May 26, 2011 at 14:18
  • 3
    @kia that is true, but also I have learned that Drupal is unusually version-centric. So long as the tag does not become a de-facto default on all questions, I think that is sufficient. It is OK for many questions to have the [7] tag if the community strongly feels those questions are indeed specific to that version. So long as we have thought about it, and this is not being done mindlessly or accidentally, I at least am satisfied.
    – Jeff Atwood
    May 28, 2011 at 6:44
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The first step, IMO, is to let the users understand that version tags should not be used to tag questions that are not relevant for a specific Drupal version.

For example, the following questions are not specific for a Drupal version:

Using because I am developing for Drupal 7 is wrong, as reported by @Jeff Atwood, because the tag is not being used when strictly necessary.
If I would have used with https://drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/1999/is-there-any-site-like-api-drupal-org-for-the-functions-implemented-by-third-part, it would have been wrong because

  • Probably there aren't sites that document the hooks implemented only by the Drupal 7 version of third-party modules;
  • if somebody is interested in a similar site for Drupal 8, they should ask a new question, but tagged . Differently, if the question is not tagged with a Drupal version tag, somebody could had an answer reporting that for Drupal 8 there is also another website (and say which one is it).

We should put write a FAQ question where it is explained exactly which kind of tags should be used; I was thinking of "Which tags should I use when I write an answer?", for which multiple answers would report exactly the type of tags to use, or the ones that should be avoided, with an explanation of why they are bad, and when they should be added.
The wiki pages for the tags partially explain when to use a tag instead of another, but the question I am thinking of should explain also which tags are better not created or, for example, what happens when a tag could be used to refer to a module, or for a completely different meaning.

Everybody can create a FAQ question; it just requires a moderator that changes the question to CW, and adds to the question. For proposed FAQ questions, there is , or at least that tag is available on meta.SO. If such tag doesn't exist here, then I will create one.

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How about renaming to for now? Eventually they need to be reviewed. After they've been reviewed or enough time as passed, just delete the tag.

(I would put this in the comments but I don't have enough rep!)

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  • I would have suggested this initially (rename the please-delete-this-tag to "may-need-version-tag" but right now, a lot of questions are already correctly tagged 7. So I guess it's too late for that.
    – Berdir
    May 29, 2011 at 14:40

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