The tag is meaningless because it appears to cover pretty much any API between two systems or components. As a result, nobody can be an expert and most questions correctly tagged should be tagged with more specific tags (e.g. )

-1 objective-c has protocols which are kind of like interfaces. –  Daniel A. White Jun 11 at 16:08
@DanielA.White then it needs to be renamed, is a generic term. –  Braiam Jun 11 at 16:24
Why do't you just abandon all protocol and burn the tag yourself? Get it? Get it? Abandon protocol and delete [protocols]? Heheheheheh— gets strangled –  The Guy with The Elf Hat Jun 11 at 16:26
I am with @Braiam here. If it is ever useful, it would need to get a specific name, otherwise burn it. –  lpapp Jun 11 at 16:50
@DanielA.White There's already an [objective-c-protocol] tag. –  Michelle Jun 11 at 17:00
Unfortunately, most people go with [protocols] over [objective-c-protocol] for Objective-C questions, and the tag wiki appears to be targeted at this usage, so you can't even really blame them. It will need some cleanup if we're going to kill the more popular tag. –  Chuck Jun 11 at 17:03
Clojure also has protocols (see: which is something quite powerful in the language. –  wheaties Jun 11 at 17:25
@wheaties: sure, Qt has multimedia, widgets, network, etc, but they are called qtmultimedia, qtwidgets, qtnetwork, etc. They are not being tagged as multimedia, widgets or network. I would remove any of those tags to be honest if I saw them. –  lpapp Jun 11 at 17:57
What about questions like "What is this protocol?", "How can I search by protocol in wireshark tcp dumps programmatically"? etc. –  NoBugs Jun 12 at 1:24
@NoBugs In those instances, simply using the word in the question title/text should be enough. Not everything needs to be tagged. –  Andrew Medico Jul 11 at 19:02
Please see: When to burninate –  Deduplicator Aug 10 at 19:49

2 Answers 2

I think you are on the right track. Such tag is too generic and invites the misuse of the tag to refer, as can be seen by the most upvoted answer, stuff that weren't meant to. So, while you are on the right track (the tag should not exist) I think that it shouldn't be done automatically. Retagging of all to whenever it applies and remove the rest.

then we should do something similar for interface and interfaces –  Daniel A. White Jun 11 at 17:41
@DanielA.White: I agree. –  lpapp Jun 11 at 17:56
@DanielA.White I'm all in for unambiguous tags, those sound quite ambiguous to me. –  Braiam Jun 11 at 18:05
There are currently at least 600 questions that would need to be fixed for [objective-c-protocol] alone. That is a lot of manual editing. It would also make certain grumpy people unhappy. –  JasonMArcher Oct 9 at 23:52
@JasonMArcher let the grumpy people meet the grumpy cat.... –  Braiam Oct 10 at 0:04
I agree with that sentiment. –  JasonMArcher Oct 10 at 0:07

My personal opinion is that we should keep the protocols tag. While it is likely true that no one would be an "expert" at all protocols, I believe it can still bring users to find a useful result (especially when combined with other tags). For example, say someone wants to know which protocol (e.g. tcp or udp) to use in their code, if they search for something like "which protocol: tcp or udp", hopefully the protocols tag, along with tcp and udp would direct them to a useful question and answer. In this case, my thought is that protocols should be renamed protocol, however.

Edit: Perhaps a more "on topic" question a user could search for is "How do I make my block of code (with the code listed in the question) work with the TCP protocol". This could also direct someone with the answer to find the user's question.

Which protocol to use would be off-topic on SO. If you find one, please close-vote/flag it. –  lpapp Jun 11 at 17:56
@FinalContest: Which protocol to use in a given situation is not inherently off-topic. It's too broad if all you ask is "Which protocol do I use?", but with more details it certainly can be answerable. –  Chuck Jun 11 at 18:13
@Chuck: by off-topic, I mean suitable or not for SO. Such a question is at least primarily opinion based, but there could be further close vote reasons as you mention one. –  lpapp Jun 11 at 18:22
@Chuck: Yeah, I got that. Correspondingly, by "not inherently off-topic," I mean potentially suitable for SO. I don't see how asking, for example, "Would my latency-sensitive game networking protocol better be done over TCP or UDP?" is off-topic. –  Chuck Jun 11 at 18:28
@Chuck: because it is primarily opinion based as written. –  lpapp Jun 11 at 19:50
@FinalContest: Not in the sense that is off-topic for Stack Overflow. Stack Overflow allows questions that call for expert opinion so long as there is actually expertise and fact involved. Things that are purely a matter of opinion (e.g. "Is Ruby or Python better?") are off-topic since there isn't really a right or wrong answer, but the example question I gave is not that way. –  Chuck Jun 11 at 20:06
@Chuck: there is no fact in whether you like one better than the other for personal reasons which is what that is calling for, even if you do not want it so. –  lpapp Jun 11 at 20:09
@FinalContest: What question are you thinking of here? The question "Would my latency-sensitive game networking protocol better be done over TCP or UDP?" most definitely has a fact-based answer. –  Chuck Jun 11 at 20:16
@FinalContest Wouldn't an expert opinion based largely on fact be valable / acceptable on Stack Overflow? For example, with the latency-sensitive game protocol, I think the expert opinion would be that UDP would be better because it does not have as much handshaking, hence it is faster. However, if data must be completely accurate than TCP would probably be better (the handshaking helps ensure packets are not lost). –  Jonathan Jun 11 at 20:19
If indeed that particular question is still determined to be off topic, I believe there would be some questions involving protocols that would be on topic (e.g. the one I listed in my edit). My understanding is tags such as "it", "the", etc... should be removed, and something entirely not related to programming (e.g. "bunnies" or "black-hole") should be removed. –  Jonathan Jun 11 at 20:23
In fact, here is a very similar, highly voted / well received answer on Stack Overflow (and it hasn't been closed):… –  Jonathan Jun 11 at 20:29

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