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Immediately after I saw this question: Batch retag all questions with [google] [analytics] to [google-analytics]

I thought, why not remove altogether? I cannot see how a programming question may sensibly be tagged with since it will always be about one of the APIs, e.g. , , etc...

And if it really concerns the search enginge, there is . But Google is a company. You don't tag questions about Java with either.

It would also be best to blacklist it too, since it will probably be recreated in a short time.

If it's not suitable for removal, can we at least encourage users to use one of the more specific tags?

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closed as off-topic by animuson, Martijn Pieters, Al E., Undo the Snowman, Anna Lear May 8 at 0:40



-1: What about for questions asking about searching Google? I'm referring to programmatically of course... –  Danny Beckett Apr 30 '13 at 7:30
@DannyBeckett then we can introduce google-search –  MDeSchaepmeester Apr 30 '13 at 7:31
Fair point! Never knew of it's existence! Changed to a +1. –  Danny Beckett Apr 30 '13 at 7:32
Considering the popularity of google (it has more than 13k question as of now), it would be created again within a very short span of time. The tag would need to be blacklisted altogether. –  Aditya Apr 30 '13 at 7:36
@Aditya I'm new to tag terminology on SO, should I include this suggestion in my question? I've also heard about "to burninate a tag". Is that the same? –  MDeSchaepmeester Apr 30 '13 at 7:37
Burnination means they would just be deleted. Another user with tag creation privilege (just requires 500+ rep) can easily create the same tag again. However, blacklisting means that no one would be able to create that tag again, the system wouldn't allow its creation... If you should include the blacklisting suggestion in your question depends on you. For more details read the tag-wiki for burninate-request and tag-blacklist-request. Add proper tags to this question based on your preference :) –  Aditya Apr 30 '13 at 7:42
google will need to be cleaned up first. –  Al E. Apr 30 '13 at 14:23
@AlEverett is it not possible to just delete this tag and having it automatically removed from all the questions? I can't imagine this getting done if we manually need to retag all 13K+ questions. –  MDeSchaepmeester Apr 30 '13 at 14:36
Wholesale tag deletion generally doesn't happen. It requires a tremendous community backing and action by either diamond mods or the developers themselves. With "only" 13k questions, the tag could be cleaned up via community effort within a few weeks... if enough people care. Once removed, the New Tag Deletionst Cabal would keep the tag dead, as we do for ~40 other tags that get frequently recreated but aren't bad enough to go on the blacklist. –  Charles Apr 30 '13 at 18:09

2 Answers 2

We can possibly remove from questions tagged with [google-*] (in batch, without checking each of them?).

Search (4031 questions).

I wasn't sure whether to make this an answer, comment or another question (since this question is a bit old, a comment is not particularly likely to draw attention, as far as I know).

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There are also others that can be cleaned up. For example, if you see both the google and maps tags. –  thegrinner Oct 16 '13 at 17:43
But you may still have to double check those (in case there's some other type of maps - it's possible). The ones I listed are already marked as [google-something], so removing [google] doesn't change much. Although '[google] [maps] "google maps"' is probably safe. –  Dukeling Oct 16 '13 at 17:57

After some review I've burned google and blacklisted it.


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Unfortunately this burnination has thwarted the cleanup effort. There were a lot of questions that did the tags-as-keywords thing that we can no longer sanely target for correction... –  Charles Jan 6 at 2:49

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