Preamble
Why do you pull BSD and Linux people into your business?
Context
The moderators of this site don't understand what synonym means ("exactly or nearly the same as another word") and put freebsd, bsd, linux, ubuntu into the synonyms of unix. The related issues are listed below
Done
- The question tag synonym cleanup - sed and awk / unix asks to remove
sedandawkfrom the synonyms of the tag unix on AskDifferent.
Work in progress
This question asks to remove
freebsdfrom the synonyms of the tag unix on AskDifferent.The question Separate Linux tag from Unix asks to remove
linuxfrom the synonyms of the tag unix on AskDifferent.The feature-request Add option 'exclude these sites' in a filter rule, if implemented, would allow blacklisting sites in tag-search
The feature request Add the ability to exclude sites in global searches, if implemented, would allow blacklisting sites in global-search.
Simple solution would be renaming the unix tag to unixly (see the answer below).
This question might be considered either a
bugorfeature-request. It was changed todiscussionby the moderator.
Remove freebsd as a synonym of the tag unix on Ask Different, please.
In the first place, what is the solid argument for
freebsdbeing a synonym tounixonAskDifferent?When I filter by the tag
freebsdI'm not interested in questions tagged unix onAskDifferentMac people use to tag their questions unix instead of macos. For example, how to let
clearcommand just clears the current screenI'd like to avoid answering unix questions to find out it's about macos. For example, to avoid the comments in Pipe to mv command
It is not clear whether the questions about using the 3rd party software (FreeBSD, BSD, Linux, Ubuntu) are on-topic here. If they are off-topic (see the answer below) the synonyms
freebsd, bsd,linux, ubuntushould be removed.
If you want to improve something put the default first tag apple to all AskDifferent questions. The topics says it's monothematic:
- Apple HW
- Apple SW
- Apple services
- 3rd party ... use with Apple products
Any browser tab label of AskDifferent should be of the form:
apple - <title of the question>
The rules are strange at the moment
- How to let
clearcommand just clears the current screen: 1st tagmacosin the label - Can't partition Macintosh HD or increase free space: No tag in the label at all
- Unable to access new Macbook Pro: 2nd tag
networkin the label. Why not the 1st tagmacbook-pro? BecauseMackbook Prois in the title?
Answers to some questions from the below comments:
Q1: "Are you arguing that each name is important enough to have a unique tag here?"
A: Yes. The synonyms freebsd, bsd, linux, ubuntu of your tag unix not only pollute the network-wide feeds but also disable proper searching by these synonyms at AskDifferent.
Q2: "Are you saying that all flavors of Unix should have distinct tags, none of which should be synonyms of Unix?"
A: No. Not all flavors. Unix is a superset of many operating systems. Include them as needed. AskDiferent tag synonyms for unix are: freebsd, bsd, linux, ubuntu. If I search tag freebsd on
AskDifferent I get the 'Mac branded' description of unix! This is absurd. You should remove all the synonyms here and add them as tags if needed.
Q3: "'They can add both' is a counterargument to deduplicate them."
A: This depends on the description of your tag unix. The current description is not sustainable in the long term. The mess resulting from the set of unix synonyms, which are not synonyms even by far, is growing. Take a look at the Unix site. Among the topics are both:
- Using or administering a *nix desktop or server
- The Unix foundation underlying MacOS
Take a look at the proper set of tags. For example, [macos] [freebsd] questions. This is how your tags should look like.
Q4: "That implies some effort to retag questions."
A: Yes. Remove the synonyms and create tags instead. Then, add these tags to the unix questions. There are 1060 of them atm. Nearly half of them can be easily recognized by the title: gnu (10), freebsd (2), bsd (7), linux (226), ubuntu (166), sed (12), awk (3), posix (2).
Let the users create new tags as needed.
5: Quoting from the comment by the administrator @Monomeeth: "Ask Different is for users of Apple products, be it hardware, software or service - all Apple. And, when it's about a 3rd party hardware, software or service, they're only on topic here if the question is about using them with an Apple product"
A: The answer by another administrator @nohillside contradicts your statement (in bold).
Q: "Not sure I understand the point about the apple tag."
A: Because of the topics all AskDifferent questions should be tagged apple. SE concatenates a label in the browser tab from the first tag and the question title. As a result, all AskDifferent questions should have a label of the form apple - <title of the question>. Not in the form unix - <title of the question> if the first tag in the question is unix.
appletag: All questions here relate to Apple products, what is the value of a tag which applies to all questions?freebsdtag? And if yes, would the majority of askers share that distinction?unixtag, it seems to be an appropriate tag for the „clear“ question.Appleas a default first tag. After all, Ask Different is for users of Apple products, be it hardware, software or service - all Apple. And, when it's about a 3rd party hardware, software or service, they're only on topic here if the question is about using them with an Apple product, so it's implied that every question relates to Apple anyway.freebsdas a synonym for Unix, I'm open to supporting that. But I agree with @nohillside - can you list questions which would benefit from having a distinctfreebsdtag? And if we went down that path, are you saying that all flavors ofUnixshould have distinct tags, none of which should be synonyms ofUnix?appletag is simply redundant. Tags should be used to make topics easy to follow, not to look nice in a UI.