I have been feeling like doing tag work recently and I found that some of the more popular tags that have not been properly described have found themselves rather inconsistently used. A few that leap to my attention are:

  • : Applied inconsistently to file size (for which we have ), to font size (for which we have , and shouldn't this one be called ?), to TeX dimensions (for which we have ), and last, to the nebulous size of symbols/images/tables/other constructs of variable extent.

  • : Refers either to the preview package, to the preview-latex tool (part of AUCTeX) to previewing parts of a TeX file, or to previewing the entire document. None of these really has their own tag.

  • : Used both for questions concerning annotations, and those concerning lecture notes or the like.

That's some, but not all of the undefined tags, which I chose just by scanning the list looking for those without a wiki and which seemed like they would be confusing if I wanted to find a particular topic.

I think we should split these as follows:

Also, all of these should be properly wikied.

I would do all this myself except that I don't know how to do it without bumping every question to the front page; I assume I'd need to ask a moderator to use the appropriate tools. However, what's the opinion?

| |
  • Sounds good. Renaming and synonyms can be done by the mods easily, but there is no way to avoid bumping the Qs to the frontpage when changing the tags (beside some magic SQL-fu by the SX gods) – Martin Scharrer May 3 '13 at 6:15

Splitting vague tags is time-consuming, causes lots of random bumping, and is only worth it if all or nearly all of the relevant posts are sorted out and the new distinction is valuable. So, I'd be cautious.

If you are still keen, I suggest tackling just the clearest case and reporting back. That seems to be the preview case: of 78 tagged questions, 20 match auctex as a search term. In any case, having the synonym for preview-latex seems like a good idea, since it will encourage qners to avoid vague tags.

| |

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .