18

Should the tag be renamed to ? I think this would help make it clear that the tag should only be used on questions regarding the macOS Terminal.app.

General command line questions not specific to the Terminal app should use , as mentioned in the tag wiki excerpt for :

questions narrowly about terminal.app alone should use this tag. Please consider using **command-line** for any question not specifically about the native terminal app

However it is still misused heavily. Other macOS app tags have the ‘.app’ extension, however this one doesn't.

Can the tag be renamed?

7
  • It won't make a difference people don't seem to read tag wikis - they use the terminal so terminal to do the command so the tag must be terminal
    – mmmmmm
    Commented Jan 13, 2017 at 9:50
  • @Mark That hasn't really been true for [photos] vs [photos.app] and other such cases. It's just in this case the tag for Terminal is the style of the former rather than the latter. Even if it doesn't help which I doubt, the tag still doesn't fit with the rest of the tags on the site.
    – grg Mod
    Commented Jan 13, 2017 at 9:51
  • I could make a synonym for this. Seems reasonable and it's easy to reverse or undo if we decide it didn't help or hurts.
    – bmike Mod
    Commented Jan 13, 2017 at 13:39
  • Pointing to [terminal] doesn't help though? No-one's trying [terminal.app] — the problem is people are using [terminal]. My suggestion to show [terminal.app] would help indicate that's not what they're after, but with the synonym you set up pointing to [terminal], that's the wrong direction?
    – grg Mod
    Commented Jan 14, 2017 at 15:38
  • Ok. Then let's wait for more consensus. I don't think having command-line and terminal and terminal.app is a good change.
    – bmike Mod
    Commented Jan 14, 2017 at 18:30
  • 5
    Neither do I; I'm suggesting only [command-line] and [terminal.app], just to be clear.
    – grg Mod
    Commented Jan 14, 2017 at 18:31
  • Let's clear up this [terminal] confusion.
    – Andrew Grimm
    Commented Jan 27, 2017 at 0:08

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
15

I agree with this proposal. 'Terminal.app' makes it clear that it is the app and no the general subject of command line or terminal questions. A synonym defeats this, but renaming the tag should work.

'Command-line' for command line issues, and 'terminal.app' for the program.

5
  • I agree in theory with this. In practice, we would need a team to start editing all the terminal questions to retag them with command-line. Once that effort is 25% of the way done (say 1 thousand of the 3.7k posts tagged with terminal), we might be OK making the change to the tag summaries? Or we could make terminal.app and have three tags temporarily. Still process the 3.7 k posts to add terminal.app only where needed and then merge?
    – bmike Mod
    Commented Jan 16, 2017 at 19:25
  • 5
    @bmike My initial plan (if this was to go ahead) was to rename [terminal] to [terminal.app] without any need for retagging initially. The tag is misused at the moment, but renaming the tag to something more appropriate won't cause any additional harm in the cases where it's misused currently (it's wrong at the moment, renaming wouldn't make it any more wrong). Then, as part of cleanup, slowly go through the [terminal.app] questions and retag to [command-line] as appropriate. What change to tag summaries are you suggesting? I don't think having three tags is the way to go, even temporarily?
    – grg Mod
    Commented Jan 16, 2017 at 19:37
  • @bmike All things considered I am in favour of this proposal. However, I do feel that a cleanup should happen as soon as possible, otherwise we risk creating a bad user experience for some users. FWIW I'd be happy to be a part of any team to edit/retag the questions.
    – Monomeeth Mod
    Commented Jan 23, 2017 at 3:14
  • 2
    @bmike I'm just wondering whatever happened with this? If nothing, how do we know when a consensus has been reached (one way or the other)? Just asking because I'm happy to help edit/retag questions if necessary.
    – Monomeeth Mod
    Commented Mar 6, 2017 at 23:03
  • Does SE have functionality for "depreciating" tags? We could let current questions retain the "terminal" tag but bar new questions from using it, so that everyone is forced to use either "command line" or "terminal.app" going forward.
    – Wowfunhappy
    Commented May 25, 2017 at 14:05

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