There was Great Stack Overflow tag cleanup of 2012 some months (weeks?) ago.

Now this question is deleted.


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Someone seemingly went overboard with the cleanup effort. ;) –  Lix Aug 6 '12 at 10:53
Well the original author was @casperOne. Perhaps he can shed some light on this... –  Lix Aug 6 '12 at 11:07
My hunch is that it became too big and hard to manage. @Lix - Casper is also the one who deleted it so yes, he definitely can explain the true reason. (BTW it was deleted at July 21) –  Shadow Wizard Aug 6 '12 at 11:17
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4 Answers

up vote 11 down vote accepted

This was a post that was promoted in the community bulletin, perhaps a more "graceful" removal is needed.

Indeed there was a "call to arms" when the clean-up effort started, in the community bulletin board and in the featured tab, but what about an "all ok" signal once the objectives have been reached?

IMO, if the issue is big enough to alert the entire community, the same awareness should be created once an issue has been resolved (or in this case canned).

  • An answer could have been added (and accepted) summarizing the clean-up effort, (we all love pretty numbers).
  • A general thank-you could be issued to everyone who spent time helping out.
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Not to mention that now all the "DO NOT USE - Removed as part of The great Stack Overflow tag/question cleanup of 2012" tag wikis link to the deleted post. –  Juhana Aug 6 '12 at 20:20
@Juhana These tag wikis should be edited to link to the specific discussion on meta that concludes that the tag is bad and provides alternatives or recommendations. –  Gilles Aug 6 '12 at 20:50
@AndreyBotalov If there wasn't any discussion, then there's no reason to delete the tag and the tag wiki should be edited to something decent. –  Gilles Aug 7 '12 at 0:10
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The post had accomplished what it set out to do which was get a handle on some of the more problematic tags on Stack Overflow as well as maintain a list of tags that needed to be cleaned up.

Unfortunately, there weren't enough hands for all the work that needed to be done, and the list itself was getting too unwieldy. As a result, there were some isolated cases where people were removing tags without properly vetting them.

Because of these factors, it was better to remove it, as it had served it's purpose for the time being (and what do we do in 2013?).

That said, there are some thoughts on how to continue to do this work while addressing the issues above, which you'll might see in the next few months.

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Why wasn't it closed for historical purposes instead? –  Darthfett Aug 9 '12 at 15:41
@Darthfett That would have given some implication that it was still valid and should be acted on, despite the historical lock. –  casperOne Aug 9 '12 at 15:42
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I think it was deleted because it was not anymore relevant, as the tags were all removed.

In his answer, casperOne says that, with a picture.


The purpose of that question was coordinating the clean up phase; once the cleanup phase is over, the question is not helpful to anybody, especially because it just list tags that should be removed, without explaining why they should be removed. If it contained an explanation about that, the question could have been more useful to future readers, who would have understood why a tag should be avoided, and would have possibly avoided creating similar tags.

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Some explanations were given in answers - only after an answer provided enough proof that a tag should be cleaned up it was added to the list in the OP... –  Lix Aug 6 '12 at 11:52
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The tag still says DO NOT USE and refers to the non-existent post for more information.

While things like browser-history and command-history make more sense as separate tags, I think there is still a need for as in The History Of "...".

Update: This is fixed now, probably around the time of Shog9's comment. :)

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We cleaned these up a while back, but apparently someone rolled that one back. –  Shog9 Jan 10 '13 at 1:12
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