Should we break up the Windows version tags into categories?

Sometimes when I ask a question about Windows 8, I'm afraid more people have Windows 7 than 8, and so more people with Windows 7 would answer it than people with 8, but if they're only looking at Windows 7 questions (or they think "Windows 8 is stupid, so I won't help people with it, because they're stupid") they won't find my question and so won't answer it. Heck, most solutions to Windows 8 are probably applicable to Vista or even XP.

However, we'd need to draw the line somewhere. For example, the Start menu was first created for 95, so while most questions about it could apply to 95-7 (and sometimes 8), they wouldn't apply before 95. Hence, categories. Maybe we could have 1 category for versions before 95, another for versions 95-Me maybe, then another for anything after. I know we could have a tag for Windows-9x or Windows-NT, but considering 1. we don't have either, and 2. they might be confusing to non-technical users (i.e. Windows-9x could apply to 2000), do you guys like this idea, or could you propose an alternative?

Thinking ahead, maybe we could make something like this a standard feature.

  • Windows 2000 is not part of Windows 9x; it's part of Windows NT. – gparyani Mar 12 '14 at 0:44
  • Oh, sorry, I never really worked with 2000. We pretty much went from 95/98 to XP. Plus I was 9 in 2000, so there's that. But you get the general idea, some categories could be confusing to non-technical users. – trysis Mar 12 '14 at 3:55
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    If someone won't answer your question because it's tagged windows-8, chances are you didn't want to have that answer anyway. – Der Hochstapler Mar 12 '14 at 8:40
  • That's true. Maybe that's the position I should take. I still think in a perfect world you could list every OS you knew would apply to your question, but I guess we don't live in a perfect world :( – trysis Mar 12 '14 at 15:49
  • This is what tags are for and specific details are for – Ramhound Mar 13 '14 at 22:56

The Windows tags are already broken into categories. Being that of versions.

The line is drawn on what version of the OS you are currently on and need answers for. If you're on Windows 8, then you would tag it accordingly. If you're working with two versions of the OS, add the other as necessary.

If you think it may help to ask for more, then you can either add a tag or another specific version.

Above all, don't try and over think it.


If you ask a question and you know that it applies to multiple OS versions, just put all the tags there: , , , etc.

If you aren't sure which OS versions it applies to, take your best guess, but no one is going to incriminate you for having more than one OS version in your tag list.

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    Yes, but there are only 5 tags there, and I think some questions could apply to more than 5 Windows versions. Plus, I was also thinking other StackExchanges, that don't have as much space for OS's. – trysis Mar 11 '14 at 23:49
  • It does not make sense to make it "global". Pets.stackexchange or mechanics.stackexchange will basically never have any on-topic questions about software, so these tags will never exist there, and any conceivable feature asking "what is your operating system?" will never be useful there. You'd have to somehow fork the SE codebase and make a special version of it for StackOverflow, SU, SF, WA, and the other software sites that support more than one operating system. On the other hand, it's not really useful for Ask Ubuntu, because if you aren't running Ubuntu, it's kinda off-topic. – allquixotic Mar 12 '14 at 1:11
  • I meant the same idea being global. Not necessarily operating systems, just anything that could be separated like that. – trysis Mar 12 '14 at 3:53
  • @trysis - windows tag exists for that reason. A question about Windows is either specific to that version or applies to multiple versions. There are not even 5 versions of Windows that Microsoft currently sells. – Ramhound Mar 15 '14 at 12:25

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