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Currently, the tag on Stack Overflow has a description that indicates it is for the Microsoft UI Automation Framework. However, there is a scripting tool within Apple's Instruments package that is also called UI Automation. There are a significant number of questions regarding the writing of scripts for testing of applications within the tag, as can be seen here and here.

I've noticed that dtuckernet has recently started to retag all of the Apple-related UI Automation questions to , but I'm not sure that this is the best approach in this situation.

It's not obvious to people asking questions about the UI Automation instrument that they should be thinking about it as iOS UI Automation, so I believe people will keep tagging their non-Microsoft UI Automation questions in this manner. It would seem to me that adding the appropriate platform-specific tags like would make it clear what the question was referring to.

Would expanding the definition of the UI Automation tag wiki to include this other tool be a more appropriate course, or is retagging to a more specific term as is currently being done preferred?

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2 Answers

I'm in agreement with this. The UI Automation tag needs to either have no platform specific information, or information specific to both platforms. I am in favor of mentioning both technologies, but bear in mind that this term may grow to other usage, so perhaps it should be platform/technology agnostic.

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In my opinion - two things need to happen.

  1. The tag needs to have any platform specific text removed from the tag wiki. It needs to become a general place for questions about core concepts of automation testing across multiple platforms.
  2. Each platform needs its own tag. This is essential. For example, what things do iOS developers using automation testing have in common with .NET developers using automation testing? Nothing. The tags become infinitely more useful if siloed to their respective technology. (I understand the argument about tag pairs, but it is still comparing apples and oranges). This was my reason for creating .

Even if the first item is not possible, I believe we need to move forward with the second item.

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How many people asking questions will know to use the [ios-ui-automation] tag? Apple doesn't refer to this tool as "iOS UI Automation", just "UI Automation", so people who come here to ask questions about it will tend to use the latter. It seems like it would be easier to make sure that questions regarding this were tagged with the appropriate platform, rather than retagging everything that people will ask going forward. Something similar happened with [iphone] as a tag, rather than the more specific [iphone-sdk]. Few people used the latter. –  Brad Larson Sep 5 '11 at 19:44
This might have been true before the changes that made the tag wiki information more visible, but I do not believe it is the case now. Before I created ios-ui-automation there was no tag that covered this topic (according to tag description) - and now there is. Users now get instant feedback while entering tags - so I think we should strive to do the best thing here in creating tags that match exactly what a user is asking about. –  dtuckernet Sep 5 '11 at 19:59
+1 for the first idea. Not so +1 for the second...I'm not sure if those tags would do any good. –  Time Traveling Bobby Oct 5 '11 at 21:47
I don't get your argument for platform specific tags as opposed to [platform] + [ui-automation]. See my answer to meta.stackexchange.com/questions/107838/tags-for-language-pairs/… and others. –  agf Oct 5 '11 at 22:07
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